Double Standards

Hugh Hewitt has a weird post up drawing attention to his own hypocrisy: "I realize that I did not say this about Senator Vitter, but Craig's behavior is so reckless and repulsive that an immediate exit is required." Radley Balko remarks "Guess there's some sort moral distinction between cheating on your wife via anonymous gay sex and cheating on your wife by paying for hetero sex with a prostitute."

I can imagine distinguishing between these cases, but I would think that any difference would tend to cut in favor of Craig rather than against him, since paying prostitutes for sex is a real crime and it's still unclear to me what it is Craig's guilty of -- he mostly seems to have been brought up on charges of "being gay in the Midwest." Either way, Hewitt seems to be drawing the distinction based on pure homophobia.

UPDATE: Megan McArdle notes:

if I were Craig's wife, I'd be far more worried about my husband trolling random bathrooms for anonymous men, than by his sleeping with prostitutes. Given the relative risks of male-to-male and female-to-male HIV transmission, I'd be crazy not to worry more. Should that matter to the public, if not the police?

That I suppose I can see that from the wife's perspective, but I still don't see any case that Craig needs to resign but Vitter doesn't. Scott Lemieux notes that the real source of Hewitt's double standard may be partisanship rather than homophobia since Louisiana has a Democratic governor.