Prurience and prudery or simply, U.S. politics

Q:
What do you call hundreds of Republican male Members of Congress
marching back and forth in the Capitol?

A:
A Dick Armey (Name of House Majority Leader 1995-2003)

Prurience
and prudery or simply, U.S. politics

By
Saul Landau                                                                         Read Spanish Version

The
U.S. body count in Iraq surpassed 4,000. Fighting erupted between
different factions there. A chunk of ice six times the size of
Manhattan broke off in Antarctica. The U.S. economy continued to sink
into recession. But the media predictably remained obsessed with news
of Brittney Spears’ psychiatric condition and former NY Governor
Eliot Spitzer’s sex scandal.

Politics,
sex and mass media — a ménage a trois of American culture —
shocking as a shower in April! The leading lights in the political
arena who expend unusual amounts of energy getting and staying
elected are often Alpha males, aggressive, driven, confident,
ambitious, and always pursuing more. They inspire and deflate. They
tend toward autocratic and abusive behavior. They have insatiable
appetites for power, food, booze, money and sex — often of the most
innovative varieties.

They
gravitate toward business (CEOs), sports (home run hitters and no-hit
pitchers) and of course power politics. In 1972, I heard the
following conversation behind the stage preceding a musical event
designed to raise money for the newly formed Hookers’ Union of San
Francisco.

WOMAN
1: Hey, I heard you were in San Diego at the Republic Convention. Did
you make some good money?

WOMAN
2: Did I ever! I worked sixteen hour days every single day. But you
know I hardly had to do much.

WOMAN
1: No kidding. So what did you did you do?

WOMAN
2: I pissed and shat on them, and whipped them.

WOMAN
1: Really! Wow! Who were these guys?

WOMAN
2: Oh, you know, Senators and judges, people like that.

Indeed,
look back at the recent scandals involving political Alpha males. In
July, 2007, Sen. David Vitter (R-La) recognized "a very serious
sin in my past." This confession coincided with federal
investigators’ discovery that he, like Eliot Spitzer, rented pricey
ladies from a prostitution business. The media calls it a ring. To
give it a wedding flavor? He tearfully assured the public he would
not repeat such a peccadillo. To prove his contrition, this right
wing solon and expounder of the transgression of infidelity, hid for
an entire week before offering his sobbing apology. Then he quietly
returned to his Senate seat where he continues to emit extremist
moral babble and enjoy the perks of his office.

The
Vitter scandal actually continues the Republican moral crusade that
erupted during their mid 1990s effort to oust Clinton because he lied
about a blow job. Vitter, we should recall, replaced the straitlaced
Bob Livingston, the Republican heavy who had to quit in 1999 because
he too got his testicles caught in the marital unfaithfulness
wringer.

Preceding
that, we learned Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fl) had sent amorous emails to
congressional pages. Foley quit in 2006, but not before parents began
to wonder about the safety of their kids in the aggressive Alpha male
atmosphere of Capitol Hill. Florida prosecutors still probe Foley’s
records to see if he transcended the emails and flirtation stage with
his favorite under-18-year-old boys.

Republican
preacher, Reverend Ted Haggard, had listed homosexuality as a
disgusting crime. Then his homosexual lover (paid masseuse) outed
him. “I booty bumped him,” claimed the masseuse, meaning he
inserted meth-amphetamine into Haggard’s keister and then following
it in with his you know what! (“Double your pleasure” as the old
commercial extolled!)

Bill
Clinton denied under oath that he had “sexual relations with that
woman,” ex- intern Monica Lewinsky. Monica actually supported
Clinton’s statement — “we were only playing around.” The quip
in hip LA circles is that Monica turned bitter and voted Republican
in 2004. “The Democrats left a bad taste in my mouth.”

Barack
Obama owes his Senate seat to seedy Jack Ryan, who quit the 2004
Illinois Senate race after his former wife claimed he took her to
“bizarre clubs” and asked her to do kinky things, like have sex
with him in public. Ryan said he only did it once.

Senator
Gary Hart (D-CO) became another Alpha laugher. Hart might have
captured the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, but in late
1987 he got caught by a Miami
Herald
reporter passing a frolicking night — and day — with Donna Rice, a
woman that did not resemble his wife. Hart had previously dared the
media to substantiate widespread rumors of his hanky panky. His
fellow Alphas shook their collective heads sadly in public, but got a
few hardy yuks over a photograph of Donna atop Gary’s lap aside a
pleasure boat called "Monkey Business."

Senator
Bob Packwood (R-OR) resigned in 1995 when 17 female employees and
colleagues claimed he came on to them repeatedly. Oh, he also
importuned lobbyists to get his ex-wife a job and doctored his daily
diaries to impede an ethics investigation.

Rep.
Gary Condit (D-CA) admitted he had an affair with his intern Chandra
Levy shortly before her body was discovered in May 2002 in
Washington’s Rock Creek Park. Condit, at first, swore in a
deposition they were just friends.

In
1998, U.S. Rep. Helen Chenoweth, a Republican from Idaho, began
airing anti-Clinton advertisements insisting "personal conduct
does count." Then she got caught and admitted to having had a
six-year affair, in the 1980s, with a married man who later worked on
her congressional staff. In 2004, state Rep. Katherine Bryson, of
Utah, made cootchy coo with a lover on a surveillance camera; her
then husband set up the apparatus to catch a burglar.

Wilbur
Mills, powerful chair of the House Ways and Means Committee drove his
car into Washington’s Rock Creek, while drunk. The police helped
fish Fanne Fox, a stripper in a floozy joint, out of the water.
Wilbur wept: “I’m coming to save you honey.”

In
2007, Senator Larry Craig pleaded guilty to making a pass at an
undercover cop in a public men’s room. Thirty-three years before,
in October 1964, DC Police arrested Lyndon Johnson’s top aide,
Walter Jenkins, amidst a gay dalliance in a YMCA bathroom.

Just
listing the sex scandals involving fast-track political types could
fill the pages of an oversized book. So, it should not have surprised
the prurient public that New York’s governor, son of a multi
millionaire who fought Wall Street, blew his career — the first
Jewish President? Imagine… a rich Jewish boy caught in kinky stuff
with a high priced shiksa hooker!

Those
interested in Alpha male sex psychology might refer to “disorders”
involving “suffering/humiliation of one’s self/partner.” These
types suffer from “persistent fantasies/urges to either inflict or
receive pain as a means to sexual arousal.”

Sometimes,
Masochists “may desire pain or humiliation — to be bound, flogged,
humiliated, or made to suffer. Other activities include blindfolding,
restraint, verbal or physical humiliating acts, whipping, urination,
defecation.” Naturally [what a word], sadists can “hurt or
humiliate willing partners such as prostitutes or sexual masochists.”
In 1993, according to Dr. Joan Anzia, “14% of men and 11% of women”
confessed to having had “some experience with sadomasochistic
activity.” (M2
Psychpathology,
2005)

Spitzer’s
activities with Kristen
did not involve love. Think kinky as kinky, as Joan Rivers once
described it. “My husband was having a heart attack and I was lying
next to him handcuffed to the bed as was the hooker lying on the
other side of him. Lucky the dog on top of her could dial 911.”

Some
of the powerful like to get humiliated. They feel better and go forth
with zest into their world to humiliate others.

Spitzer’s
case differs from the others, however, because the New York governor
aimed his political aggression at the Wall Street money
moguls, like former New
York Stock Exchange President Richard Grasso, whom he censured for
his $187.5 million salary. Grasso then had to resign. Spitzer went
after Goldman Sachs’ former chairman John Whitehead and Hank
Greenburg, former chairman of insurance giant AIG, CEOs who
played roles in generating the current
economic
crisis, because of their avaricious lending policies and
irresponsible manipulations.

Spitzer
wanted to regulate the other Wall Street Alphas. Ironically, his case
distracted the public from financial crimes
of massive proportion, ones approved by the Bush Administration and
Congress — as well as State Legislature. The victims who lost homes
belong to a different class with different sexual practices. They
could not afford a $5,000 an hour hooker?

“What
can you get for $5,000 that you can’t get for $4,000?” asked
Jackie Mason.

Saul
Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow and author of A
BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD.
His film WE
DON’T PLAY GOLF HERE
is available on DVD through roundworldproductions@gmail.com.