Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Last thing about this, I promise.

From the Salon Broadsheet, interrogating the bathroom Senator on their blog-

''Apparently, when questioned, Craig claimed to have been innocently waiting outside the stall. But what about the foot touching? He has a "wide stance" when going to the bathroom. And the hand waving? He was reaching for a piece of errant toilet tissue. Who cares that the police report specifically states that there was no paper on the floor, or that his hand was palm up?''

Huh?! Huh?! Answer me, dammit! See what I mean? It doesn't take much for liberals to start sounding as authoritarian as conservatives.

4 comments:

Holly said...

Maybe I'm talking crazy talk here, but... suppose just for a minute, the man was, in fact, soliciting sex in a public toilet. Let's imagine he's gotten arrested for that, because it is illegal where he was at the time, and suppose that he just went with the guilty plea because he was guilty of the illegal thing that he did, with the bad luck of doing it in a place where the long arm of the law was sitting around waiting for that to happen.

Can he just ... pay the fine, or get the probationary sentence, or whatever the deal is, and we can all get on with our lives? That vice cop probably arrests a lot of people for the same thing, and those aren't news, because those aren't politicians, but that doesn't change any of the rest of it.

It doesn't matter at all what his deal is. If the thing he did gets him a sex offender rap and ruins his career, so be it. If the laws aren't appropriate, they can be changed, but they're not going to get changed before his court date.

Call me old fashioned, but I believe the important part of flaunting the law is not getting caught. He failed. So what. Lots of people fail at that. It's fairly certain that laws help keep people from doing what they were ALREADY NOT GOING TO DO. Penalties do more, in terms of preventing actual crimes.

Those kids getting high in their basements are doing it in the basement, because that's where they can get away with it. If they could get away with it ANYWHERE, they'd get high in the diner, because the strawberry milkshake can be on the table before the last ember dies on the little brass screen.

If the politician is trying to solicit sex in a public toilet, it's because he thought he could get away with it there, that's all. He was wrong, that happens. Many people are quite fond of having sex, and generally, one much solicit sex, in order to have sex. It's not as if one can simply recline on a chaise lounge awaiting the arrival of unsolicited sex, unless they're filming porn at the time.

If anything, this whole situation is horrifying, because it indicates that the senator's constituency has hired an incompetent ass. The man can't even manage to arrange the kind of sexual liaison he prefers, and this is one of the fundamentals of his kind of life form. What does that say about his ability to perform higher functions, like, oh, I don't know, tending the interests of the community he claims to represent? That IS horrifying.

Same deal as with Bill Clinton, frankly. I could care less than he was using interns as jizz-rags. What was shocking is that he was incompetent at getting away with it.

Rufus said...

I'm fine with the idea that he did the illegal thing he's been accused of. I think what I'm responding to really is the weird idea that this very banal crime reveals something dark and fundamental about his character. We watched CNN for about 5 minutes last night, until Claire said 'Oh God, this is depressing. Just turn it off.' You would have thought he killed someone from the way they were talking.

Part of the problem is that the country has already demanded that politicians tell us if they think gay sex is icky or not, which is totally stupid and irrelevant in itself. So, now, they see it as shocking if the politician on the 'gay sex is icky' side actually dabbles in gay sex. I don't really. Mostly because I don't particularly care.

As for the laws, when cops find two teenagers fucking in the park, they tell them to knock it off, or they're going to arrest them. I don't get why they can't do the same with gay guys in bathrooms. Is it really such a problem that they have to arrest people for playing footsie? Yes, I think the laws are inappropriate. I also think it's inappropriate that it's illegal to smoke dope in your basement. But the laws probably won't get changed because Americans are the sort of people who believe that they need cops and laws to protect them from footsie. And everything else for that matter.

To be honest, I don't find any of this surprising. People do dumb shit. They're weak, and irrational, and often don't think straight. Particularly when sex is involved. In this case, the guy's career is going to be ruined because he hit on the wrong person in a washroom. I feel like, before liberals rush onto the 'gotcha' bandwagon, they should consider whether we really want people's lives to be ruined because they played footsie with a stranger. Or whether we all need cops to protect us from footsie.

Holly said...

Maybe everyone secretly hopes that someone will come to their senses, and say, "You know, this is all bullshit, and unimportant. Let's ditch that law, and forget about who likes girls and who likes boys, and get on with something more important!"

Yeah, that's probably it.

Rufus said...

I realized today, while at the library, that all of the long-winded and crabby things I wrote yesterday could be boiled down to, "I just wish someone would stand up and say 'hey, leave the poor bastard alone!'" Instead, I was hearing a lot of Republicans saying "Honestly, if we had known he was a dirty faggot, we never would have hired him!" and a lot of liberals saying, "Ha, Ha! He's a Republican and he got busted for being a dirty faggot... uh, I mean a uh, liar!"

So, I was just trying to throw 'Hey, leave the poor bastard alone!' out there.