Tusk, Tsk
This is the defining moment, the raison d’etre of the Trump presidency:
[Image: Washington Post]
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Dopey Sex
I just read about a local woman’s experience being roofied by another local person. The incident occurred a few years back and the roofie-er, a man, is now somewhat well-known in the community for positive accomplishments. The roofie-ee still suffers from the memory of the experience. As of this moment, she is weighing whether to identify the man by name, although a lot of people have deduced who he was/is.
This got me to thinking: Why would a man want to roofie a woman?
Okay, sure, he wants sex, desperately, pathologically, criminally — you name it. Well, we all want sex desperately, to some degree or another. The vast majority of us — I would hope! — aren’t prone to getting sex via knockout drugs. I mean, what’s the point?
I guess it’s the entertainer in me. I want my partner to be there, a hundred percent, with me as we do whatever we decide to do. I want her to be an appreciative audience. I want her applause — or the passionately carnal analog of it. And I want to applaud her in kind — and be certain she knows I’m giving her a standing ovation.
Sex with someone who’s sleeping is no sex at all. It’s a bodily function akin to excreting, something you have to do in order to satisfy one or another physiological urge. Good sex should be a celebrazione, a simkhe, something like a sacrament but sans the religious overtones. It can’t be if one of the partners is doped into oblivion.
It’s ironic — I’m a man, yet there’s very little about men that I understand.
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Cop To It, Men!
[MG Note: Hah! I wrote this entry on Wednesday. I’ve been swamped the last couple of days so I haven’t posted here since. It turns out this was prescient. Minnesota Sen. Al Franken got nailed for being a horse’s ass back in 2006 and — wouldn’t you know it? — did precisely what I said guys like him should do. Read on.]
In another context, this’d be called fire prevention. Rather than waiting for fire to start, prudent people take care to minimize or even eliminate those conditions that can cause fire.
It works in a variety of circumstances, not solely in combustion. Take drug usage. A little background: Let’s go back to 1987, when St. Ronald Reagan nominated a fellow named Douglas
Franken
Ginsburg to be on the Supreme Court. Ginsburg, poor dope, had to pull out when it was revealed he’d smoked a little pot when he was a college student. Like, who hadn’t in the ’60s? Following that realization, times began to change. Not four years later, George H.W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas was found to have puffed a time or two in college and it did nothing to derail his nomination. Even though recreational drug use was morphing into a shruggable offense, a bust and time served for, say cocaine dealing, could well kill the career of a celebrity well into the 1990s. Now, of course, youthful dope experimentation is as noteworthy as a scoop that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning. The news that a struggling young actor had moved a little blow when s/he was broke isn’t at all earth-shattering. Like I said, times change.
Anyway, in those transitional ’90s, standout comedian Tim Allen was one of the biggest stars on television, headlining the sitcom Home Improvement, based in large part on his standup persona. Even as his star rose, he harbored a secret: He’d been busted for dealing cocaine, specifically 1.43 pounds of the stuff, in 1978 and subsequently served 28 months in a federal joint. That was the kind of juicy tidbit grocery store rags like the Star and the National Enquirer would have loved to get their hands on. Had they, the revelation would have surely killed Allen’s career.
So, rather than let the tabloids wreck him, Allen decided to reveal the bust and prison term himself. He held a press conference, copped to the whole deal and, lo and behold, most of the nation painted him a stand-up guy. In fact, tons of folks sympathized with him. He swore he was now clean and acted sufficiently apologetic. The potentially explosive story became no story at all within a few days.
That’s fire prevention. See how it works?
Take the current corporate media rage for scoops on sexual improprieties. Louis CK got caught in the flames. Yet, immediately after he was publicly accused of waving his wang at unsuspecting females in inappropriate settings, he said, Yeah, sure, I did it. And I shouldnt’a.
Of course, he has yet to address why his junk is so important to him and seemingly always in his right hand. And still, his name is mud in a lot of arenas right now but, surely, the stink from the revelations about him is not as great as those following guys who swear up and down on stacks of Bibles that any such accusations are rotten lies. I’m willing to bet Louis CK’s rep will be rehabilitated long before Judge Roy Moore’s.
Which brings me to the obvious Q: Why doesn’t Moore simply say, Yeah, I did it. Those women are telling the truth. It was stupid. I was wrong. He can even cop a bit of a plea. He can say, Y’know those were different days. Morality was different then. And I was a dumb punk. Thank heavens I’ve grown up and learned since then. I hope to stand as an example for all young men who are tempted to pull pranks like that today.
And you know what? The groping and dating teenaged girls scoops just might be found on page 2 or even farther back in today’s newspapers had he done so the very day the first woman stepped forward. People could say he owned his idiocy and has atoned.
Why don’t any of the pathologically priapic goats being dragged into the court of public op. these days do that? What can be gained by denying the charges of five, ten, or a few dozen women? Once the revelations become routine, the logical among us conclude, well, smoke = fire.
Let me repeat: There’s very little about men that I understand.
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The Right Move
Shelli Yoder, acc’d’g to my best sources, has divested herself of interest in a company that wants to open a waste transfer facility on the west side. Even Shelli’s biggest fans were aghast when it was revealed she was a co-owner of the operation. The fact that she’s a member of the Monroe County Council and therefore has a hell of a lot of sway in the granting of permission for the facility made the whole thing stink to high heaven.
Yoder
And, as one observer pointed out, her husband, Josh Perry, teaches biz ethics at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. You’d think he’d have cautioned her one evening over dinner. As far as I could determine, Yoder’s ownership in an outfit hoping to do business with the county was not illegal but, then again, neither is parking millions and/or billions in off-shore tax havens. My religious ethics teacher in high school, Fr. O’Malley, used to harp on what he called “technical virgins” during class, making the point that one could follow the letter of the law but still be morally suspect.
In any case, Shelli’s done the right thing and you can bet I’ll be on the horn with her trying to get her on Big Talk to explain how this mess came about.
[More notes: Go here for the state’s list of applications for Solid Waste Facility permits. Indiana Green Transfer and Recycling LLC’s application is the second down in the second page, permit #53-04.]
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