MPs and Strip Clubs

The NZ Herald has a collection of MP responses to the strip club question.  Now I am as amused as anyone by the responses, but there is a serious question for the media in all this.  First the fun though:

Best story has to be Tim Barnett who took a bishop in his 80s to a gay strip club, as the bishop had always wanted to go.  How can onbe judge a man helping the church 🙂

Rodney Hide can recall some women taking their clothes off, so logically concludes they were probably strip clubs.  Either that, or just very friendly.

Sue Bradford discovered: “Gay male stripping is not necessarily that entertaining for women”.

And John Hayes had a great line: “”I used to work on the Cook Strait ferries. What do you think?”

Best metaphor goes to Jill Pettis:  She had been married for 36 years, so “Why go out for hamburger when you’ve got steak at home?”

But now to the serious issue.  Why are serious newspapers asking MPs this question?

The Kevin Rudd episode is legitimate news.  His strip club visit happened while he was an MP.  Worst it happened when he was travelling on taxpayer funded business.

But that doesn’t make it a legitimate question to be asking every MP about what they did before they were an MP.

There was a story in NZ (in Investigate Magazine) not so long ago about the private sexual escapades of an MP (and please do not name him in the comments – we all know who he is – I am just using the case as an example). That got almost totally ignored by the media, and certainly the NZ Herald did not go around all the other MPs asking them if they have ever done BDSM.

So why the double standard? How is asking MPs about whether they visited a strip club before they were MPs a legitimate question?