What Counts as Scandal

America has nipple anxiety. This is a documented condition. A country that pixelates breastfeeding and loses its mind over a half-second wardrobe malfunction will, sooner or later, discover that a television actor has sex, and respond as though someone has defecated on the Constitution.

After Paris Hilton, R. Kelly, and High School Musical alumna Vanessa Hudgens—who keeps getting photographed naked despite the country’s best efforts to pretend celebrities don’t have bodies—the latest entry is Eric Dane. McSteamy from Grey’s Anatomy. He and his wife Rebecca Gayheart were for years held up as evidence that Hollywood can do relationships. Then a video surfaced. He and Rebecca and actress Kari Ann Peniche, in a bathtub, smoking crack, and doing what three people in a bathtub eventually do. The internet found it, as the internet always does.

The US is spiraling. I find the whole thing kind of charming. A married couple has a threesome. Drugs are involved, which is the one part that approaches actual bad news—but honestly the crack makes Dane more interesting to me, not less. There’s something almost relieving about a professionally handsome person turning out to be this specifically messy.

The real question is what any of this actually breaks. Is a sex scandal the end of civilization? Does it hollow out children’s souls? Or is it just raw meat for the kind of people who show up with pitchforks and torches while privately nailing missionaries every Sunday in the dark? I know which way I’d bet. And if you’ve got a little something in your own sock drawer, filmed in a moment of relaxed judgment—well. Now you know the business model.