Tap, Tap, Tappin' on Heaven's Stall...
Ah, the pungent smell of irony. The whole Larry 'I'm Not Gay' Craig debacle, even more than the rest of the NeoCon Hypocrite Downward Spiral, is a work of staggering perfection that only a collaboration between, say, John Waters, the Coen Brothers and Terry Gilliam could produce. After all, the screenplay is quirkily brilliant: rabidly anti-gay, virulently homophobic Republican Senator gets caught trying to cop some action in a mensroom from...wait for it...an undercover cop, in a 'sting' operation that is wholly unconstitutional and yet wholly in accord with tactics the NeoCon-hijacked Republican Party has been supporting for years. In other words, be careful what you wish for, Larry. If the NeoCons weren't hell-bent on making sex -- especially of the homosexual variety -- a crime, and if they weren't also hell-bent on eliminating due process and turning the Bill of Rights into -- ahem -- toilet paper, then ol' Senator Craig would be happily tapping his foot with the sovereign confidence and freedom that our forefathers intended. So while most of the Republican leadership tries to distance itself from poor Larry the Loo Lizard, primarily because their ranks seem to swell with his closeted compatriots who live in fear of being the next one outed, now we have some of them crying 'foul' at the very notion that such 'overzealous police profiling and entrapment' should occur in our precious Free Country. They're even calling for a boycott of the Minneapolis Airport where the 'incident' occurred, saying it's tantamount to a 'war on the West', whatever THAT is supposed to mean. Gosh, imagine that. An overzealous cop...in AMERICA! This is an outrage!
Of course, the thing is, I agree with them. Larry didn't do anything wrong; he simply tried to pick up on someone -- something that happens every five seconds in every bar, restaurant, gas station, grocery store, and, yes, restroom. To call it 'entrapment' isn't even the point, though that too plays a role, since entrapment is a tactic fomented by an overall disdain for the spirit of the Constitution. The fact is, it's not a crime to cruise for a date -- even if you're a creepy old ugly guy, and even if you are clumsy at it, as long as everybody's over 18. Nobody was harassed or threatened beyond the normal course of what we have to deal with from occasional creepy/clumsy fellow citizens in a free Republic, and basically the man was arrested for nothing -- unless, of course, you believe that homosexual advances in and of themselves are abhorrent and therefore wrong, and therefore should be illegal. Which, of course, is the stance that Larry Craig and other hypocrites like him have publicly espoused and attempted, in some cases successfully, to legislate. So one could say that, right or wrong, Craig is a victim of his own policies. What we here in California like to call KARMA.
So the lesson in all this, which unfortunately no fascist hypocritical NeoCon will likely learn, is that if you plant enough landmines, you might just find yourself stepping on one of them. Ask not for whom the foot taps, my friends. It taps for thee.
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Of course, the thing is, I agree with them. Larry didn't do anything wrong; he simply tried to pick up on someone -- something that happens every five seconds in every bar, restaurant, gas station, grocery store, and, yes, restroom. To call it 'entrapment' isn't even the point, though that too plays a role, since entrapment is a tactic fomented by an overall disdain for the spirit of the Constitution. The fact is, it's not a crime to cruise for a date -- even if you're a creepy old ugly guy, and even if you are clumsy at it, as long as everybody's over 18. Nobody was harassed or threatened beyond the normal course of what we have to deal with from occasional creepy/clumsy fellow citizens in a free Republic, and basically the man was arrested for nothing -- unless, of course, you believe that homosexual advances in and of themselves are abhorrent and therefore wrong, and therefore should be illegal. Which, of course, is the stance that Larry Craig and other hypocrites like him have publicly espoused and attempted, in some cases successfully, to legislate. So one could say that, right or wrong, Craig is a victim of his own policies. What we here in California like to call KARMA.
So the lesson in all this, which unfortunately no fascist hypocritical NeoCon will likely learn, is that if you plant enough landmines, you might just find yourself stepping on one of them. Ask not for whom the foot taps, my friends. It taps for thee.
* * *
posted by brioSphere at 12:33 PM
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