Susana Polo liked X-Men: First Class but has some concerns, including the fact that “[b]y the end of the film every single non-white mutant allies themselves with Magneto or Sebastian Shaw” so that by the end “the X-Men become an all-white team.”

This didn’t bother me so much (the issues she raises about the depiction of women is a different matter) because if you restrict your attention to what’s actually in the text Magneto is clearly in the right and Xavier’s X-Men are a bunch of dupes. The film is a pretty serious departure from the conventional depiction in this regard, but it’s quite thoroughgoing. Magneto’s mutant pride attitude is in every way more admirable than Xavier’s preference for the closet, and Xavier’s political view that mutants and humans can coexist peacefully if mutants avoid provocations is directly contradicted by the events at the end of the film. When Xavier is trying to convince Magneto (and the audience) that Magneto’s more militant methods will cost innocent life he literally says—to a Holocaust survivor!—that “they were only following orders” and therefore their sins are forgivable.

The mutant pride message is a radical one. It’s too radical for those whose WASP male privilege in their non-mutant lives makes them instinctively want to identify with existing power structures. But a mutant who’s also a Jew, or a woman, or a racial minority, or has had blue or red skin all of his or her life doesn’t suffer from that kind of false consciousness and gets ahead of the curve.

I know not everyone agrees with this, but it always strikes me as slightly bizarre to think that learning about Anthony Weiner’s sexting habits has told us important things about his character that would cause us to re-evaluate him as a public official. Character counts, of course, and you sometimes have very little information on which to base a decision. But in Weiner’s case that’s not true. Even though he’s only 46, he’s been working in politics non-stop since graduating from college. He was on the staff of then-Congressman Chuck Schumer, ran for City Council with Schumer’s support, then when Schumer got elected to the Senate in 1999 he took over Schumer’s old seat. Since that time he’s followed his mentor in aggressively courting media attention, and for a few years now has been wading back into municipal issues as he considers a mayoral campaign. There’s a long record here to explore. You by no means need to limit your analysis to his voting record or his position on “the issues” if you have deeper character concerns. You might disparage him as more of a showhorse than a workhorse. Or you might admire him as someone who’s using the media to punch above the weight of your average backbench House member.

The idea that we should regard this extensive record in the career to which Weiner has dedicated his entire adult life as somehow fake, and his after hours twittering as revealing his “real” character just doesn’t make a ton of sense.

One way to see this through an extreme case is perhaps just to observe that the demands of being President of the United States are straightforwardly incompatible with being a model husband and father. The hours, the travel, and the stress just don’t make it add up. But it can’t be the case that all Presidents of the United States lack the requisite character to be President of the United States. It has to be the case that the kind of character that matters for a public official isn’t the same as the kind of character that matters to be a good husband and father. After all, you want a responsible public official to neglect his family and friends (“hard-working”), to display a certain kind of ruthlessness and cunning (“negotiation”), to be a bit of a phony in certain situations (“diplomacy”), and all kinds of other things that don’t carry over straightforwardly from personal life to public affairs.