It might be time to make hypocrisy a crime.

If I endorse law abiding measures for other citizens and work to make them law, them I’m certainly right at the top of the list for being crucified if I break those laws. Senator Larry Craig’s supporters suggest what he does in private is his business and that’s true. If Larry Craig wants to have penis parties at his house and not in the men’s room at the Minneapolis St. Paul airport, that’s just fine with me. He’s still a hypocrite, but it’s in the privacy of his own crib and that’s sacred. Anything that happens there is his business. Craig’s one of those logs of political excrement polished with the slick patina of privileged access and excess. They lose track of what the rest of us expect from people who pretend to represent us and our national expectations that the country will survive despite their lack of devotion to justice for all. Senator Craig has endorsed legislation that punishes and condemns the type of behavior the senator engaged in when he attempted to hustle a fellow patron in the next stall in the men’s room at the airport. Those who support Craig as a politician rabidly snapped at reporters who dared intrude upon the senator’s personally private life. But waving your hand under the crawl space of the dividers between the toilets at the airport, inviting a fellow defecator to a party in your pants is not part of your personal privilege or behavior. Its sexual harassment or worse, depending upon in which jurisdiction the discretion occurred. In some states, you could be hornswoggled. In other states, it might be nothing more than a misdemeanor. But in Craig’s case it was much worse. If you’re a congressional closet queen, please don’t cover up your insecurities by composing laws that ban the very behavior you’re attracted to. The founding fathers didn’t set the country up to have its representatives of the people pass laws to restrict their own hang ups from being acted upon. They’re supposed to be passing laws for the common good. Larry Craig violated one of those statutes by interrupting the easy moment of quiet and solitude we all expect behind the closed aluminum door of the men’s room cubicle. And he did it by waving his hand under the stall, something that will likely live on in the mind of the man who was being waved at for the rest of his life. It’s actually funnier than hell if the joke wasn’t ruined by Craig’s whining that he’s not gay and wasn’t looking for sex. At least he could have come up with a better excuse. “I ran out of toilet paper. I was waving my hand to see if the guy could slip me a couple of sheets.” We can’t expect him to be as quick on the draw as the rest of us would be if we were caught in the same silly lie. After all, we’re just part of the unwashed mob. Larry Craig is a dignified United States senator. That fact alone makes him a bottom feeder. And for that we should cut him some slack and just have him arrested for being a law passing, hypocritical crook.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 10:59 am and is filed under Stuff I know. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.