June 13, 2011 - Technology has taken over our world. For instance, as a couple of recent events have shown us, it used to be that if a guy wanted to expose himself to the opposite sex all he needed was a raincoat. Now he has to Twitter and Tweet, Facebook it, Craig’s List it, or indulge in some other social networking contrivance to satisfy his fetish. Each new development brings a new twist, as happened when Xerox machines came out which led to reports of some young women swept up in festivities of company Christmas parties would lift skirts to sit bare-bottomed on copy machines to share rather intimate photo of themselves. We’ve come a long way since those primitive days.
About 25 years ago, shortly before I retired, when we at last caught him in the act, a typesetter in the advertising department. I do not know exactly how the personnel director finally tracked him down to a phone hanging on the wall just outside the type setting room (crude as it may seem before everything went digital type had to be set on machines and pasted on boards) but it was a big relief.
He seemed a nice enough guy, rather quiet, didn’t socialize much with his fellow workers, married to a woman with a good management level position at the local newspaper. It was noticed that he rarely went to lunch with the group, hanging around the office instead, often surprising him on that phone and I suppose it should have been noticed there was a furtive look in his eyes at times as he seemed to quickly hang up, but it wasn’t. It turned out that when left alone he was calling phone sex lines and the bills, hundreds of dollars worth, were charged to the company number but to no specific phone. Which is why the personnel director had been beside himself. We demanded restitution (he seemed genuinely shocked that he had run up such a bill having given no thought of how the calls were paid for) and fired him of course. A rather sad tale of a solid citizen, working at a decent job, in a good marriage who gave in to an inner drive that seems to lurk within all of us and can pop up like Jack in the Box at any moment.
All of this comes to the fore because of the scandal du jour, featuring New York Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner that follows on the heels of several other recent scandals. Once we get through being titillated by this we might stand back and analyze how we should view it, what we should do about it, and what the ramifications are since it seems we are going to face something like this with due regularity.
First let’s say this is not to cut him any slack on a partisan basis, a tendency that Republicans seem to have for one of their own. There is much hue and cry amongst them for Weiner to resign, understandable, but where was that hue and cry for the resignation of fellow Republican Louisiana Sen. David Vitter’s whose telephone number turned up on a prostitute’s client list? Or Nevada's John Ensign, a Republican leader in the Senate, involved in a nasty scandal. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi quickly called for Weiner’s resignation, as have many other leading Democrats, and called for an investigation by the House Ethics Committee. Lots of pressure. A weeping admission but so far he has not given in. House ethics rules state that members should conduct themselves “at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.” Weiner, like Republican Chris Lee whose provocative photo turned up on Craig's List causing him to resign, did not live up to that standard, so what should the punishment be? How heinous is what they did? What actions should be considered cause for being ejected from Congress? Or just rebuked then let voters decide?
All sex scandals are not equal. Infidelity is one kind of thing, all too common, all too human, and without seeming to condone it would question whether it prevented a member from continuing to serve as usual. A question of character to be judged by constituents. The sex drive is here. Even Jimmy Carter admitted to committing adultery in his heart many times. But when exposed, the miscreant always seem to lie about it at the beginning, and lies can get punished. And if Weiner used government issued property to send what one writer called “his little emotionally stunted tweets late at night” on government equipment that is a definite no-no.
No, the Weiner saga seems not to be the usual case of infidelity, not even intended. As he said: “I’ve never had sex outside my marriage” and there is no indication that he wanted to do so. This is a fantasy obsession, like earlier phone sex (an old episode of the TV show “Friends” has Ross recounting a moment on a date when his female companion asked him to “talk dirty” to her and all he could think of to say was “vulva”). So why did the Congressman seem to need to do this? He probably had a need for feedback like this, reported by NYT columnist Maureen Dowd, as coming from his blackjack dealer cyber friend in Las Vegas: “I bet you have so many chicks after you! You are our liberal stud.” As an unidentified friend is reported to have said: “But you go beyond sin, this is mental illness. It’s strange.”
Then there was his recklessness. He knew that months earlier there were people on the net who were on to him, advising young women not to respond to him, and sending him copies, yet he continued anyway, like Gary Hart who dared reporters to catch him, and they did. Both of these factors suggest a need for psychiatry to step in. Meanwhile, the question is still here, for this case and others yet to come. Should he serve until the next election when voters can decide his fate, or should his peers in the House deal with it? Keep in mind, being a sorry human being does not in and of itself mean you can’t govern effectively. By the end of the week Weiner had not agreed to calls for his resignation, but asked for a leave of albescence in order to go into treatment.
Three more points to make (as I read somewhere the other day “Opera is long, life is short” … even a soap opera like this one). First, I personally hate it when we lose the services of talented people in government service or something like this, like Elliot Spitzer for whom I once had great long term hopes, as many had for Weiner. Second, there is personal tragedy here of course, the probable ruination of a man expected to do great things in public service, considered to be the best bet for next mayor of New York City. He has spent his whole life in politics and has nothing to fall back on.
Third, in my mind there is one great distinction between a David Vitter kind of scandal and a Weiner one. Vitter, like others in his party who have suddenly to be seen that they are not what they profess to be, was a loud mouth advocate and promoter of “Family Values” willing to push their hidebound “values” on the rest of us while surreptitiously indulging in private bacchanal. Hypocrisy, hypocrisy. Leave my personal bacchanals alone, please.
Continuing our stroll down the primrose path we come to John Edwards, the perfect example of how high you can fly, then how far you can fall. Once a candidate for the vice presidency, once a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, now this week indicted and charged with mishandling funds to pay off his paramour, Mother of his child born out of wedlock. It was that hot thing again. Maureen Dowd noted that his late wife, Elizabeth Edwards wrote in her book that she would have never believed her husband would succumb to a sexy young woman’s line, “you are so hot” (there is that hot thing again). Many people are asking why are we bothering with this now? Remember Henry Cisneros, who as a member of President Bill Clinton’s cabinet lied to the F.B.I.? He was investigated for perjury and obstruction of justice and it cost $12.5 million. As Fats Waller used to sing, it’s a sin to sell a lie, and an expensive one at that. For taxpayers. Can’t we just let Edwards fade away into oblivion, hot hair cut and all?
While we’re here below the waist we might consider the odd development in San Francisco where it appears at this point there will be a provision on the ballot to BAN CIRCUMCISION! How can this be in this day and age? The health benefits of the procedure are phenomenal. Circumcision of males represents a “surgical vaccine” against a wide variety of infections, adverse medical conditions and potentially fatal diseases over their lifetime, and also protects their sexual partners. Google it and you will see line after line after line of its medical benefits: protection from urinary tract infections, that are common over the lifetime, inferior genital hygiene, smegma, sexually transmitted HIV, oncogenic types of human papillomavirus, genital herpes, syphilis and chancroid, penile cancer, and possibly prostate cancer, phimosis, paraphimosis, thrush, and inflammatory skin conditions such as balanitis and balanoposthitis.” For women, “substantial protection from cervical cancer, genital herpes, bacterial vaginosis (formerly termed “gardnerella”), possibly Chlamydia (that can cause pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, and ectopic pregnancy), and other infections.” But the most important quote is: “At least half of all uncircumcised males will develop one or more problems over their lifetime caused by their foreskin, and many will suffer and die as a result.”
Why would there be any crazy objections to it? “Emotive propaganda and opinions” are given as the cause. Perhaps it is because it also increases sexual enjoyment for both male and female and social conservatives can’t have that. These people, who are called “Intactivists” are trying to equate circumcision to female genital mutilation, which is now against the law in the U.S. Those poor unsuspecting infants subjected to surgery without their consent. That seemed to be the stance of actor Russell Crowe who caused a stir with a Twitter calling it barbarism which was taken as mocking religious ritual. “Who are we to correct nature?”, and “babies are perfect” were some of his twittering, but the next day he was apologizing, sincerely it would appear, to his Jewish friends for urging them to give up the ritual. When you focus on it, as Crowe did, as only a Jewish ritual, and not a widespread health procedure it smacks of anti-Semitism when from more than half to as much as eighty percent, depending on the year, of newborns in this country are circumcised each year.
But much of it is overt anti-Semitism, dating back thousands of years as reactions to religious practices of Judaism and Islamic faiths. This became apparent when the leader of the movement in California came out with a scurrilous anti-Semitic comic book. These god people are willing to let “At those half or more uncircumcised males develop problems over their lifetime, many of whom will suffer and die” only because of holding anti-Semitic views.
It really isn’t fair to blame this all on San Francisco. It is just that it caught national attention because Intactivists managed to get enough petition signatures to get it on the ballot. It was going to go on the ballot in Santa Monica until that comic book came out. And these people have already gotten 16 states to ban public (Medicaid) funding for circumcisions. And not everybody buys into the health benefits. And at the time of the Founders it was not practiced so it is not covered in the Constitution. But to vigorously oppose it smacks of something other than skepticism.
I say those in favor of the right to be circumcised unite. Demonstrate. March. Wave banners, flags, and appropriate body parts. Protect our freedom to be surgically enhanced. It is the American way.
Of course the divide in the country is more than between the foreskined and the deforeskined. David Brooks, considered to be every liberal’s favorite conservative columnist, did a good job of defining the differences of the two political parties. I feel about Brooks like I felt about the late William Safire, whose politics I hated, who could infuriated me as he did in repeatedly calling for the invasion of Iraq yet who mesmerized me with his use of language. Brooks shares with him a sense of humor and the ability of self denigration. So Brooks I follow.
In a column on Medicare he wrote that: “Democrats generally seek to concentrate decision-making and cost-control power in the hands of centralized experts.” Republicans “argue that a decentralized process of trial and error will work better, as long as the underlying incentives are right.” And that “consumer choices would drive a continual, bottom-up process of innovation. Providers could use local knowledge to meet specific circumstances” (emphasis mine). So the forever debate will be “the centralized technocratic one or the decentralized market-based one.”
There are a couple of things I have to say to Mr. Brooks and other advocates of “localized” government. Just what is local? At what level do you draw that line? The article was about health care. Are you saying the people in Muleshoe, Texas have different needs that the people in Boothbay Harbor, Maine? Are we from different tribes?
In my working life I had homes in three states at one time or another. My health care needs were the same in each state. A governor like Rick Perry will talk about his Texas citizens as though they are a breed apart, but in truth the heavily evangelical population of East Texas has more in common with the citizens of South Carolina, a thousand miles to the East, than to citizens of El Paso, Texas a thousand miles to the West. What kind of patch work quilt of public services do we want to live with in this country?
Now about those Providers using local knowledge to meet specific circumstances. Again, the local circumstances are different in Oregon than in Chicago when it comes to, say health care? And how about the fact of combined buying power? It seems to me we (every American) are all in this together.
Brooks in an odd way admires much about the Paul Ryan scorched earth plan to destroy Medicare and impose drastic cuts in spending on public services which just about everyone not dancing to the official Republican beat view as draconian. Well, if you thought that is bad, it looks like something proposed by Nancy Pelosi compared to a plan issued by announced presidential candidate former governor Tim Pawlenty. It is too much even for many conservatives. Georgetown University Professor Adam Levitin called it “Tim Pawlenty’s Plan to Destroy the World.” Jennifer Rubin, conservative blogger for the Washington Post: “… it is not a very serious budget policy.” Ezra Klein in the Washington Post: “It isn’t a bit vague. It’s a joke.” Among other things it costs three times more than the Bush tax cuts, and still means a tax increase on the middle class. Now that’s the way to attract popular votes.
Jon Huntsman, former governor of Utah and another Republican presidential aspirant, surprised his party in a Brokeback Mountain moment by coming out, so to speak for civil unions.
Will-she-or-won’t-she-run Sarah Palin experienced a high level rebuff when spokesmen for Lady Margaret Thatcher said there will be no meeting between the two of them, saying “Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts.” Now that’s gratitude, after Sarah gave Paul Revere credit for giving British warning of American resistance on his famous ride.
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum officially entered the 2012 presidential race on Monday. Another Mr. Excitement for the Republican Party. However, there was one spectacular development in the presidential race arena: the Newt Gingrich campaign completely imploded. Two dozen disgruntled aides and his entire Iowa operation walked out on him. As Maureen Dowd put it in The New York Times: “Not even at the height of Watergate did we see such a mass resignation.” Taking two weeks off to take his pretty younger wife, Callista, (Greek for “most beautiful”) on a two-week vacation, including a Greek cruise, did it. Newt, you should have stayed home and ordered take-out Baklava while Callista fingered all of those diamonds from Tiffany.
Mitt Romney is still stuck as a Republican candidate with having to trash what E. J. Dionne in the Washington Post calls his “greatest political achievement, the Massachusetts health-care law, was a genuinely masterful piece of politics and policy.” Dionne also had a few words to say about the word “freedom,” banded about by conservatives who seem to think they own it. “Are we less ‘free’ because we spend money on public schools and student loans, Medicare and Medicaid, police and firefighters, roads and transit, national defense and environmental protection? Would we be “freer” if government spent zero percent of the economy and just stopped doing things?” We are free to implode like the Gingrich campaign and seem to be on the road to do it. Dionne cued up the Britney Spears number “Keep on Dancin’ Till The World Ends.” Well damn. I’ve got a bad hip.
Now for a few briefs (no, not those of Anthony Weiner).
Of all the things I could have thought of that might someday cause my demise I would never have come up with Death by Bean Sprout. However as the illnesses and deaths in Europe demonstrated the little devils are a high-risk food for carrying harmful bacteria like salmonella or the toxic forms of E. coli. Now what am I to put in my fu Vietnamese soup?
For a little light reading (no pun intended) we now have available more than 24,000 pages of e-mails Sarah Palin sent in her half-term as governor of Alaska. 24,000 pages. It must get awfully lonely up there during those frigid winter days.
Since 1971, there have been more than 40 million arrests on drug related charges. Well, no, that included some people who were not even in the music business.
The government has issued warnings that formaldehyde can cause cancer. Isn’t that a little late to make a difference to your average cadaver?
These writings today had a lot to do with raunchy sex scandals. When raunchy sex is the subject matter, it calls for appropriate limericks. Try these.
On banning circumcision:
Clipping foreskins of babes as we do
Many San Franciscans eschew.
Will make circumcision
An election decision.
So a nip and tuck vote will ensue.
On Dominique Strauss-Kahn, known as DSK
Monsieur DSK is the one
Grabbing a maid on the run
I dropped the “D”
He said so it would be
The International Monetary “Fun.”
On former presidential aspirant John Edwards
With cash that his campaign engendered
John Edwards is said to have tendered
Not money to cover
Work done by another
But service he personally rendered.
On Arnold Schwarzenegger
Ex California Governor is a Dad
Of a born out of wedlock little lad.
But talk about inflation
In this case the gestation,
That stretch of ten years that the fetus had.
On Congressman Anthony Weiner
Tweets were the way to convey
Just what the man had to say
When Weiner gave vent
No doubt what he meant,
Not when he Putz it that way
Just too juicy to pass up. The Devil made me do it. I need rehab.
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