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Senator Larry Craig - WTF?
By Bill | August 29, 2007 | Email This Post
Any time your name appears in the a headline that ends “…says ‘I Am Not Gay, did no wrong” you can be pretty sure that your life has taken a sudden unpleasant turn. That’s the case with Republican (why is it always Republicans lately?) Senator Larry Craig, who earlier this month signed a guilty plea on a disorderly contact charge stemming from an incident where he seemingly was cruising for anonymous homosexual sex in the men’s room at an Minneapolis airport.
Stop and reread that. United States Senator. Anonymous sex in an airport bathroom.
This is one of the hundred best leaders in the country?
The press is making much of rumors that have circulated for years that Craig is gay, which he’s always denied and have never been substantiated. This incident adds fuel to the fire, but as far as I’m concerned that issue is pretty far removed from the point. I couldn’t care less if he’s gay, or even if he’s into anonymous sex… although, decorum requires he find a venue wherein he’s not likely to be discovered by a member of the public who doesn’t wish to be made into an unwitting voyeur. (Airport Bathrooms? Really? Hasn’t he ever heard of Craigslist? To say nothing of the poor officer who made the bust… when he was a kid playing superhero, with visions of fighting crime, surely crouching for hours in a fetid men’s room stall did not feature prominently in his dream? And if you pulled such duty, would you rather be stationed in an airport or a park restroom? The questions are endless.)
And here’s the best part: the Senator now wishes he hadn’t plead guilty to the lesser charge… as if, somehow, he never considered that he might regret having done so. Or that the incident might escape public attention, despite his insistence on trying to throw his Senatorial weight around with the cop, flashing his Official United States Senate Business Card (note to self: a trip to the print shop is in order.) And, as kind of a piece de resistance, The Smoking Gun reports that the Senator even wore the ubiquitous American flag lapel pin in his mug shots. So now we’re treated to the customary Press Conference of Denial at which the Senator tries to “contextualize” his actions (which include playing footsies with the officer under the divider and reaching his hand into the next stall and making back and forth motions… good luck with finding a context that your Idaho constituents will accept, Larry) while a dutiful, sunglass-bedecked Mrs. Craig stands in the background.
No, the problem isn’t that the Senator is apparently into gay sex. The problem is that the initial incident in the restroom, his subsequent plea, and now his retraction, all combine to prove that he’s a dumbass of epic proportions. We must demand that our leaders exhibit better judgment, and the Senate can start by sending this one home.
Topics: Ethics, Issues, Republicans |