18 April 2012

The Moral Majority vs. The Secret Service; Or, Pots vs. Kettles

Let me perfectly clear:

Hanging around with hookers really is a bad idea. It is epidemiologically perilous. It is socially unacceptable. And when you’re caught at it, it’s embarrassing.

(To some, simply the idea that you utilized a hooker is the embarrassing part. To others, it’s the fact that you couldn’t score without hundred dollar bills.)

Moreover, to recast something Benjamin Franklin said in a slightly different setting, “The pleasure is fleeting, the position ridiculous and the expense damnable.”

Lets consider a target group of poor schmucks who might get caught with hookers. This group I’m thinking of has several unique characteristics:



  • They have 20/20 (or better) vision.

  • They have unusually acute hearing.

  • They have unusually quick reflexes.

  • They are unusually intelligent.

  • All have college degrees and most have advanced degrees.

  • They maintain themselves at a level of fitness equivalent to front line military people.

  • They maintain a high skill level by constant training in a number of specialities, including weapons, tactics, explosives, abnormal psychology and forensic science.

  • They travel very frequently and put in work hours far in excess of average American workers.

  • In the face of a lethal threat, they square up their bodies toward the threat source so that their bodies are protective barriers between the danger and what or who they are protecting.

Clearly, when people from that group get caught with hookers, they have to be involuntarily retired or fired.

How’s that again?

The President of the United States is so angry he’s having a hissy fit. Congress-folk, inhabitants of the fanciest marble whorehouse on Earth, are apoplectic. Every perfect human being with a keyboard is having an attack of the vapors because some of the lads in the Secret Service played “geographic bachelor,” and acted like nitwits with some “ladies of the evening. And any suggestion by anyone that the agents shouldn’t be condemned, castrated and burned at the stake is derided as a personal affront to motherhood, fatherhood, Chevrolet automobiles, Old Glory and Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.

We’re on the front row at a Kiss concert and the music playing is unbridled sanctimony.

Okay, let’s do a little experiment: I now want the reader to think of the most blatant time that he or she has taken a little walk on the wild side, the time that you would have been most appalled for your mother to have walked into the room.

Got it fixed in your mind? No, no, no, I don’t want to hear about it. Neither does anyone else.

No, really – No “I was just a kid,” no “I was a sinner but now I’m found,” just remember what you did.

Were you burned at the stake?

If not, will you please go get the firewood and get on with it?

We’re waiting.

The whole agents-in-Columbia “scandal” [a scandal is when somebody else gets caught doing something that you didn’t get caught doing] is just another verse in the old tune, “You’re Bad, So I’m Superior.” Slobbering all over the TV and panting at the wickedness is a dandy way for the beer-swilling, couch-reclining, 9 - 5, don’t-move-a-muscle-to-help-other-people folks can feel all warm and fuzzy about their moral mastery over the uppity snobs who inevitably “get what’s coming to them.”

Oh, my. I’m endorsing immorality. Well, not really. In my mythical administration, the “boys” would have a trip to the woodshed and become the permanent-until-they’ve-suffered-enough midnight & all-holidays crew.

But to fire them? That might be a sop to moralistic myopia, but it’s WRONG and it’s STUPID. Oh, and it’s gutless. When will we ever have leaders with the guts to say, “Hey, guys, I’m not going to do the wrong thing just to look good for CNN and Fox”?

Can we accept that it’s the human race and not the Vulcan Federation?


Addendum: One of the Congressional luminaries leading the charge - and forecasting a need to fly to Colombia and "investigate" - is Rep. Peter King of New York. Never heard of him? He's traveled often to Ireland to publicly support the Provisional Irish Republican Army and friends in the misunderstood Sinn Fein. At least those guys don't hang out with hookers, they just kill people. Unbelievable.

Seems to me that I remember something about casting the first stone. I need to look that up.

R

1 comment:

Jim N said...

What a terrific blog! Right-on target! Though it's doubtful that the "respectable folk" will get it, even if they bother to read it. We know who the so-called paragons of virtue are: always seen in public with the "right" kind of people; always being sure not to get caught when doing something "shady"; always tending toward shrewd chuckles of self-satisfaction when others fall into disgrace.

As a friend of one who is a Secret Service Agent, I am disgusted at the sensationalism of this non-story. My friend is as conscientious and genuinely caring a professional you will find anywhere, precisely the man I would want at my side, if there were ever the need.

Gawd, talk about insantiy!