You don’t know this about me, and perhaps I risk revealing too much by letting you in on this, but I don’t like public restrooms. It’s almost a phobia for me. I cherish my privacy and a hygienic environment, two things impossible to come by in extremely public restrooms like those found in airports. I’m not alone in feeling this way. I’ve heard Eddie Murphy and Larry David express similar sentiments. So I’m in excellent company. And thanks to Senator Tappy Toes, I have no plans to revisit my stance on the issue. Thank heavens – at least there’s one fewer item to take up mine and Dr. Rosenstein’s precious time.
The mind spins. Who would go into an airport restroom seeking a sexual encounter? Talk about looking for love in all the wrong places. And how do people become familiar with these codes? Not that I would ever find myself in a public restroom stall, but if I did and the guy next to me began tapping his toes, I would have no idea that I had been invited to a forbidden rendezvous. If his tapping toes somehow wandered into my stall-space, I would break a land-speed record getting back to my departure gate.
Other questions abound. Do these guys buy airline tickets just so they can visit the flushing Studio 54 of Minneapolis gay sex? And does every airport have a similar hangout? Boston’s Logan Airport is pretty big. Maybe we have one, too. Then again, this sounds like a very Midwest thing. I think Hugh should make a point of asking Lileks about it on Thursday. I know James is busy this week gorging on the culinary delights that the Minnesota State Fair offers like DingDongs and fried MilkyWays (yum!), but if ever we needed Lileks’ local knowledge, it’s now.
AS TO THE SERIOUS QUESTION OF whether or not Senator Craig should resign, that one’s a no-brainer for someone like me who thought David Vitter should have stepped down. To lead millions of people, one needs at least a modicum of moral stature. Both politicians forfeited that stature when they engaged in their off-campus hijinks. Where one draws the line on such matters is arbitrary, so I don’t think anyone’s being hypocritical if they say Vitter can stay and Craig must go. Unless you’re going to say that no moral and personal code should apply to our politicians, Craig’s career must surely head to the crapper.
Once again, moral stature is the crux of the matter. Bill Clinton’s real crime wasn’t his perjury; his real crime was humiliating his country and insulting the high office that he held. Anyone with a sense of honor would have resigned when the Lewinsky affair became public. Obviously Clinton was therefore exempt.
Vitter falls into the same category. You can’t preen as a moralist and then seek out the services of a prostitute. If Vitter (or Craig or Clinton) had positioned themselves as libertarian libertines, then their private diddlings would have been none of our concern. But all three made a habit of saluting good old All-American family values. How a ranking public office-holder can be so thoroughly revealed as a hypocrite and still cling to his position is beyond me.
ONE LAST PRESSING ISSUE weighs on my mind: Why do so many of the political figures ensnared in these embarrassments seem to be Republicans? You can point to Chris Dodd’s and Ted Kennedy’s special recipe for waitress sandwiches as counterpoints, but Craig’s and Mark Foley’s antics are so much weirder and creepier. Do politicians think membership in the Family Values party provides them with a beard that will insulate them from their secret lives? Is it all an exercise in self-loathing performed on a national stage?
Taking Craig as an example, if he wanted to lead a double life, perhaps he could have found more discreet venues than airport restrooms to do so. Positing that the incident in June wasn’t the only time he tapped his toes in a suggestive manner, you don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to recognize a latent desire on Craig’s part to be caught.
Well, mission accomplished. It’s time for Craig to go. He belongs on Oprah’s couch, not the United States Senate.
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