Idaho? You da ho!

[by Ross Levine]

After listening to the tape of Idaho Senator Larry Craig discussing his arrest with the undercover cop who nabbed him in the Minneapolis airport bathroom, I would like to say ... all is not as it appears.   Of course, the material is too good to be true -- Republican senator, foe of gay rights and gay marriage, pleading guilty to charges of soliciting sex in a public mensroom.  And now, with a recording of him arguing with the arresting officer over what precisely transpired, we are handed a scandal as delicious as the one ex-Senator Mark Foley delivered courtesy of his instant-message come-ons to underage Congressional page boys.  The temptation, of course, is to smack our lips and rip into this political meat only thinking of the protein but not the fat.

Because Larry Craig is a Republican senator from a Republican state, and a senator who consistently votes against bills that might elevate the status of gay people in this country, we're on him like, well, flies on the proverbial excrement -- political meltdown don't come much better.

And the besieged senator hardly helps his cause by continually insisting he isn't gay and that if he had only known better, he wouldn't have pled guilty in the first place.

But this is only the surface of the tale.

After listening to Craig's conversation with the arresting officer, it seems as if the hapless senator was railroaded, given the cop's insistence that with a guilty plea, the whole incident would be put behind him, and that if he were to declare his innocence, he would end up in court with all eyes and ears privy to the officer's testimony.  Of course, it was a gamble Craig took and lost -- by pleading guilty, he made certain none of his constituents would doubt he was indeed soliciting homo-sex in the mensroom, whereas had he pled innocent and hired a shrewd enough lawyer, he would have had a much better chance of emerging from that toilet stall in tact.

The cop badgers Craig, calls him a liar, tries to coerce a confession from him and keeps reminding him that his only real choice in the matter is to plead guilty.  Craig, the desperate hypocrite that indeed he is, falls into this, a second trap, and seals his political fate.

But here's the broader issue.  In a state like Idaho, representative of those core "American values" that many uphold as the epitome of virtue because they have never felt their vicious sting, there is no way senator Craig could have ever voted any other way on issues concerning the civil rights of gays and lesbians – his career would have been over just as fast as it will be now with not even a single wedding-ringed finger slipped under the divider to the next stall.  The people of Idaho, and the hypocritical Republican Judases who are ready to push Craig over the precipice to give a lift to their own alleged moral superiority, do so not because Craig pled guilty to a crime, but because he pled guilty to this crime.  A sex crime.  A homosexual sex crime.  An especially disturbing homosexual sex crime, because of the venue -- a public restroom.  For not only do we have to admit that there are inverts among us masquerading as gray-suited right-wing family men, but we must also face the fact that human beings urinate, defecate and even use the bathroom sometimes for needs we'd rather leave unspoken.

For this, Craig will be surely forced to resign – yes, it just happened as I write this -- while scores of senators, and our own illustrious president, continue in office, despite greater crimes upon their records – for example, unleashing a storm of death in the Middle East for spurious reasons and against all common sense.  It's back to the Clinton impeachment, when a segment of the American psyche rouses itself in fear of its own nature – human nature -- as expressed in the sexual proclivities of serial philanderers either chasing female interns in the White House or undercover cops in the Minneapolis potty.

Again, greater crimes go unpunished, while lesser ones because of their prurient story line serve to galvanize the public in a way that would never happen over things truly worth galvanizing over.

It's hard to feel sorry for a fool like Craig who uses his wife and children as shields against his own actions and who thinks it's more OK to have anonymous sex in the men's bathroom than to be a gay person attempting to live honestly and freely in society even though hated for any number of reasons, none of them just.

Yes, please, Larry Craig, step down -- one less Republican to vote for Arctic drilling and against stem cell research -- but maybe a large portion of the American public should step down, too, for expecting so much more of its politicians than it does of itself.  If our senators are complete bald-faced hypocrites, maybe we are, too.

August 31, 2007