Out of the toilet stalls
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
Public
men’s rooms stink, but the publicity that emanates from illicit
sexy encounters behind those closed stalls casts
a truly
toxic bouquet — for the scandalized public figure that gets caught.
Children learn they should not discuss functions done in those
places. Indeed, scores of “dirty” words derive from acts
performed there — the same “dirty” ones done by every human from
birth to death.
What
makes public men’s rooms so exciting for men like Larry Craig or
Walter Jenkins (a top Lyndon Johnson adviser who got caught in 1964
doing a sexual no-no in a YMCA men’s room)? Like Craig’s
attempted homosexual dalliance, Jenkins’ rendezvous created public
flutter.
“Poor
Walter,” commented President Johnson when he learned of Jenkins’
arrest. But he made sure his humiliated friend would no longer work
at the White House. Ironically, a Harris poll showed two thirds of
the public shrugged off the incident, as most probably do in 2007
when homosexuality no longer remains a hidden taboo — for practice
or discussion. Most people respect privacy, but not hypocrisy. If
Rudy Giuliani cross dresses in his house, that’s his business and
not necessarily related do his thuggish nature. Bill Clinton had the
opportunity for “playing around” — Monica’s words — and much
of the public said: “go for it, Bill!”
Not
Larry Craig. “The American people already know that Bill Clinton is
a bad boy, a naughty boy,” he
admonished the President during the Lewinsky scandal,
like a parent scolding a child. “I’m going to speak out for the
citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is
probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.” Was that Craig’s voice
or his mother’s when she caught him as a child diddling himself?
If
he believed Clinton was a naughty boy, how would he characterize his
own pick-up routine, employed in the Minneapolis airport men’s room
to proposition an undercover cop in the next stall — who shouldn’t
have been there in the first place? Right wing republicans’ harsh
judgment on others for their sexual conduct creates a smarmy pool for
themselves when they get caught. Polls show voters have turned
against republicans; not for their closet — or men’s room —
behavior, but for hypocrisy. “I’m not gay,” Craig bleated
before resigning.
Craig’s
former friends and colleagues forced him to resign to limit damage to
“the Party” — meaning themselves in the 2008 elections. His
erstwhile good buddy and loyal companion Mitt Romney didn’t say
“Poor Larry” as Lyndon Johnson would have. Instead, he called
Craig’s behavior “very disappointing” as he disassociated him
from the Romney presidential campaign, the one Craig had headed in
Idaho.
I
await Romney’s forthcoming book: “Rules of Eternal Loyalty and
Lasting Friendship.” The Craig incident, said Romney, “reminds us
of Mark Foley and Bill Clinton. I think it reminds us of the fact
that people who are elected to public office continue to disappoint,
and they somehow think that if they vote the right way on issues of
significance or they can speak a good game, that we’ll just forgive
and forget,” he told CNBC (August 28). He summed up his feelings
succinctly. “Frankly, it’s disgusting.” (Foley and Clinton voted
very differently, by the way. But who cares about facts when running
for President?)
John
McCain, another Republican contender, also confronted behavioral
aberrations. Rep. Bob Allen, co-chairman
of his Florida campaign, got
busted for propositioning an undercover cop for a blow job in a
public park’s men’s room. The Titusville, Florida, cop reported
that Allen “approached the plainclothes officer and offered to
perform oral sex for $20” — in the men’s room. Where else?
Allen,
in his seventh year in the Florida House, had intimated he planned to
run for the Senate in 2008. Allen feebly explained that the cop was a
“burly black man” and he “didn’t want to become a statistic”
so he offered to blow him instead. (Orlando
Sentinel,
July 11, 2007)
Allen
had previously supported Governor Jeb Bush’s proposed law to ban
gays from adopting children. He also co-sponsored a bill to increase
penalties for “offenses involving unnatural and lascivious acts”
such as indecent exposure.
Congressman
Mark Foley and Reverend Ted Haggard also helped give hypocrisy a bad
name. Foley chaired the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited
Children and expounded vocally against child pornography. In charge
of protecting young congressional pages, Foley hit on them instead.
For a decade, he sent sexually suggestive messages and e-mails to
good looking teenaged boys in the page program.
Homosexual
and drug hating Haggard paid his masseuse to insert methamphetamine
up his rectum before inserting himself. Haggard spent three weeks in
“recovery” and then declared himself “completely heterosexual.”
A major mover and shaker in the fundamentalist evangelical movement,
Haggard also went to weekly meetings with Bush and his top aides and
offered them spiritual advice — like shun homosexuality and fight
against gay rights.
Before
the elders fired him, Haggard had made $138,000 a year as head of the
National Association of Evangelicals and the 14,000-member New Life
Church. Now he’s begun to fundraise again, this time, as Colorado
Confidential
headlined it, for “Ted Haggard’s Cash-for-Heaven Offer.”
KRDO
Channel 13 in Colorado Springs reported that Haggard wrote to
consumer reporter Tak Landrock about his plans to move into the
Phoenix Dream Center to minister to ex-cons, recovering alcoholics,
drug addicts, prostitutes, and “other broken people.” He already
has spun a money-raising pitch: “It looks as though it will take
two years for us to have adequate earning power again, so we are
looking for people who will help us monthly for two years…Thank you
so much. We feel our move into the Dream Center is the next step God
would have us take. Any help we can get with this will be greatly
appreciated and, I believe, rewarded in heaven.”
Louisiana
Senator David Vitter’s name turned up on Madam Deborah Jeane
Palfrey’s escort service in Washington, D.C. Vitter apologized for
his affinity to hookers, and made the usual references to how much he
loved his family. Since his hanky panky occurred with the opposite
sex, his Party colleagues and fellow parishioners didn’t punish
him.
Other
incidents with non elected Republican heavies add to the duplicity
charges. According to one inside blogger, Glenn Murphy Jr., National
Chairman of the Young Republicans, “got a fellow Young Republican
drunk and then spent the night at his house. The other young man woke
up in the middle of the night to find Murphy giving him
mouth-to-penis resuscitation. After this incident, a 1998 sexual
battery report came to light in which Murphy was alleged to have done
the exact same thing.”
Republican
candidates had paid Murphy substantial fees as a consultant who
regularly advised them “to use gay marriage as a wedge issue to
paint their opponents as out of touch with traditional values.”
(John Marcotte, Badmouth.net, Aug 31)
One
gay wit quipped that “our average public restroom has more gay
republicans in it than clean hand towels.” Another added: “The
holier-than-thou party has spent an awful lot of time on their knees
this past year, but they haven’t been doing a lot of praying.”
Very funny. But men in the closet have had to use bathrooms for a
century to engage in their sexual activities. It’s time to teach
our kids to define politics and personal sexual proclivities in
separate spheres.
As
global warming, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a looming one in
Iran demand public attention, the media and the politicians focus on
an issue that doesn’t belong in the political arena: what a person
does with his or her genitals, as long as it isn’t damaging others.
Craig’s outing continues the trivialization trend of politics. The
axiom of U.S. politics has become: preach righteousness and don’t
get caught being human. Instead of examining Craig’s horrible
pro-war, anti labor stands as Senator, most widely read blogs and
gossip columnists will ask the irrelevant question: which Republican
Senator will get caught next? “The Day of the Locust,” as
Nathanael
West
predicted almost 70 years ago, is upon us.
Landau
is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. His new book is A
BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD.
His new film, available on DVD, is WE
DON’T PLAY GOLF HERE.
Write roundworldproductions@gmaiul.com
