In a November 24 opinion piece, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank recounts being in a room with “two of the most prominent men in the news business.”  The subject turned to the sexual harassment allegations against New York Times journalist Glenn Thrush and CBS This Morning co-host Charlie Rose.  When one of the men wondered aloud, “How does this all end?”

My visceral reaction to this revelations was, “Are you kidding?  This is just the beginning.  Let’s not worry about the end until we know how widespread the problem is.”  I quickly realized my suggesting this was the beginning was equally inaccurate.  There was a point in time, 41 years ago, when we should have had an intelligent discussion about the way both men and women should deal with, for lack of a better term, our innate sexual instincts.

That moment was then presidential candidate Jimmy Carter’s interview in the November 1976 issue of Playboy.  (NOTE:  The interview hit the news stands in October, just prior to the presidential election.)   In an effort to ease concerns of those who seemed hesitant to elect, for the first time, a Southern Baptist evangelical as the nation’s chief executive, Carter shared the following about his own internal struggle with lust.

I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do and God forgives me for it.

This was four years before Turner Broadcasting launched CNN.  One can only imagine the hours of punditry that would have been devoted to parsing Carter’s declaration.  But the lack of 24/7 cable news did not save Carter from derision and satirical ridicule.  Los Angeles Times cartoonist Paul Conrad posted the following as his perspective of how Americans received Carter’s statement.

However, in hindsight, didn’t Jimmy Carter exemplify what presidential leadership should be.  He took on a controversial issue, spoke honestly from the heart, and risked losing the election (some analysts suggest the statement cost him between five and ten percent of his lead in the polls a week earlier).  This alternative to the actions documented in the news for the last month deserved (and still does) more consideration.

Who among us, men and women, have not looked at another human being in the movies, on television or while shopping and not fantasized about an intimate encounter.  Ironically, beginning in the same year as Carter’s Playboy interview, I have had an unrequited crush on Blythe Danner ever since she appeared on a February 10, 1976 episode of M*A*S*H.  It is these cases that make Carter’s approach both rational and realistic. After all, we are only human with leftover traces of our animal ancestry.  Carter shared what should be the dividing line between people and lower species.  We may have primal instincts, but we also have the willpower to not act on them.

Thanks, Jimmy.  We should have listened to you then.  And today, we need to heed your words of wisdom more than ever.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP