Various forms of bullshit: 2 examples
Even an ass of steel cannot shield me from all the crap that comes down the pike each and every day. Don’t get me wrong. Most of life is sunshine and wonder but OMG!!
When I forsake the Steed of Tin and step down into real life, much of my working day is spent chasing down nonsense and trying to change it (and I get paid for it). So this is kind of a busmans’s holiday here.
1. The Senator Craig Affair.
Ok, not really an affair or even as much as an assignation. Setting aside for a moment that the guy was probably not straight with his family (ie. a sleazy lying backdoor weasel) and also that just the fact that he is a senator stacks the odds in favour of him being a dick, he got his very unjust desserts as the result of a sting. Or maybe his wife knew all about his predilictions and he was a conscientious politician (I don’t know, that’s a whole nother country to me). It’s irrelevant because what happened to him was wrong in so many ways.
Laura MacDonald explains in the NYT article America’s Toe Tapping Menace how the toe tapping code which allegedly outed the stallstalker was developed precisely so that not only would only consenting adults make it through the many steps but that it also allowed for gracious withdrawal at any time. Not really what you would want if you were intent on importuning someone. In other words, the policeman could only have gotten solicited if he had already done the same. In fact, these same signals were developed as well because gays were vulnerable to being beaten for any overt expressions of interest (unlike men who foist themselves on women).
And here you have to ask yourself, why is it that this sort of arrest is countenanced when if the two would have been of opposite sexes it would have been sordid at worst. I have to thank Cafe Philos for raising my awareness of this particular point. The discussion on that blog asked why we don’t arrest men for harrassing women when we arrest men for harrassing men. And though it sounds like a good thing to be throwing troglodytes into paddywagons what we really want to do is stop the arrests altogether and realize that these interactions as long as they remain nonviolent don’t belong in the bailiwick of the police state. As our own late brilliant Pierre Elliott Trudeau said back in 1967 before he was Prime Minister and still the Minister of Justice, arguing successfully for decriminalising gay sex in private “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation..what’s done in private between adults doesn’t concern the Criminal Code.”
That’s the rant but please go to Christopher Hitchen’s recent article So Many Men’s Rooms, So Little Time on slate.com for a very amusing (isn’t he always, even when exasperating) take in the same general area.
2. The Road Not Taken or and Interchange to Die For
In my home town, Edmonton, we have a planning issue here right now that is making my head explode. A traffic interchange that was budgeted for 130 million a few years ago has been reevaluated at 260 million. Debate has ended in a project endorsement. Supposedly this interchange will reduce the strain on traffic which has occurred due to a commercial development that is only a few years old. This development consisted of a few square miles of mostly large stores and parking lots; its a hug mall but you have to drive from store to store.
The problem I have with this is 1. my taxes will pay for people to get to (or around) shopping that they could have done closer to home 2. it will facilitate the use of gasoline 3. it perpetuates a dying system and delays solutions to the underlying problems 4.. it funnels money away from quality of life projects. Number 3 is the big one.
When was the last time you went to visit or move to a city because it had a great traffic interchange? I think of London where they have actively discouraged traffic by narrowing roads, introducing tolls etc which has resulted in greater foot traffic, more use of the public transit, and in general a possibility of transitioning away from an automobile and gasoline culture.
We have a problem in this city of getting people to use transit. Its still faster and easier to get around this city by car (because we keep building wider and better roads and because parking is fairly easy) so why take the bus. They keep raising the cost of taking the bus and essentially unless you do the overall cost analysis its cheaper to drive.
I just can’t believe that people who get paid to think for the city do such a bad and shortsighted job of it and then dress it up as planning for the future. (Jane Jacobs is turning in her grave; she’s probably been in constant spin since being interred).
As far as Craig goes… I think its a great point that we spend time arresting men for consensual sexual interactions and do little about men who come on to women with out consent. But the bedroom argument may not gel with a public restroom. But I think its all a much ado about nothing in the sense we Americans are way to uptight about sex and sexuality. Although I think its offensive that all he seems to say is “I’m not gay!”, no real focus on maybe it isn’t an appropriate place to get it on in a public restroom. But sure Craig’s not gay. We all know Mr. Garrison said the same thing
As far as your interchange, its the evil work of politicians and business interests more so than planners, but planners are the one’s greasing the wheels of the “growth machine”. Vote em all out of office! Start there.
Comment by ginzu98 — September 7, 2007 @ 12:07 am
I agree with much of what you say about Craig. But the remaining issue for me is public vs. private space.
To use your hetero example, what if a man and a woman were having sex in a public bathroom stall?
I once served on a jury regarding public indecency. Gays trysted at the western end of Golden Gate Park in SF; Hispanic families picnicked and played soccer on the soccer fields nearby, so kids would wander off and find 2 men in the act. This guy was arrested and wanted to make a big ‘civil rights’ issue out of it, so the city wasted time and money and 12 of us wasted 2 weeks on a jury.
After the trial, we found out the other guy had pled guilty and paid the fine.
The good senator would have done well to “get a room!” as the advice goes for anyone overly amorous in public.
Comment by ombudsben — September 7, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
I agree that it would be preferable if people had the sense to find a private place for these activities, straight or gay. In this particular arrangement, apparently it is set up so that no one can really see anything except the participants. Public vs private gets tricky once you involve the homeless. I once walked down an alley and saw two homeless having sex behind a store and I thought “right on”, a little good time in an often joyless existence; maybe I was even seeing love. They had no better place to go, children could certainly have happened upon them, and they would have been arrested. We have a rather serious public urination law here and naturally this comes some time after getting rid of all public facilities on city streets. So again where do people who can’t afford to be consumers go? All in all, I’d rather a few children are exposed to public displays of sex (for some that might even be a good thing) rather than get overly punitive. I know we cannot rely on common sense but if only; common sense on the part of the actors and the police.
Comment by aos — September 7, 2007 @ 2:49 pm
For politicos, sex of most kinds seems to be a terribly bad thing, in America especially it seems. God forbid that those who turn the art of deception and immoral conduct, and elevate it to an artform should be found in the unholy act of coitus.
So naturally, it shouldnt be visible for them, thus the rest of us should keep it hidden at all costs, the end.
Comment by david b — September 9, 2007 @ 5:53 am
I couldn’t agree with you more on the Senator Craig thing. I’m embarrassed… embarrassed that our cops can’t find anything better to do than try and trap people playing footsie. Europeans must think americans are the most ludicrous, priggish, sexually repressed freaks on the planet. I don’t like Senator Craig or what he stands for, but the situation was like a witch hunt. The merciless humiliation of an individual isn’t how I want the republicans defeated. Why do people feel the right to intrude upon other people’s personal lives?
Comment by amuirin — September 9, 2007 @ 12:27 pm
We netflixed “The Naked Public Servant” last night; John Hurt is wonderful as Quentin Crisp, who is also interviewed and seen both in the intro to the film (so you get a sense of the wit and perspective that made him famous) and in extras.
Crisp was out of the closet in London before WW2; not only does he get beat up, often, but even the gay community shuns him because he is so flamboyant. Great scene in a club with men dancing; he’s refused service and his membership card torn up — the reason is that if raided they can’t pretend to be straight, because he’s so openly queer.
Much more to the movie than this (especially the extra where he contrasts living in New York vs. London), but my point is that I have a lot of respect for a guy like Crisp for having the balls to be openly hetero back then (semi-pun intended).
Craig? A guy who stands for repression and, if anything, via gay rights and gay marriage, further persecution of gays? Sympathy for him now? Sorry, not so much.
Had he stood up like Barney Frank it might have been different.
Comment by ombudsben — September 11, 2007 @ 11:57 am
Quick correction: the name of the movie is The Naked Civil Servant
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073438/
and the “User comment” is very true: Way ahead of its time.
Comment by ombudsben — September 11, 2007 @ 12:03 pm
You know ombudsben I totally agree with you. I didn’t mean to express sympathy for the man but antipathy for the situation. As they say, even the guilty deserve representation. I am gleeful every time a publicly anti-gay crusader gets caught with their mouth full of more than spite but its just so sad that it all matters. If they think its so bad, they just shouldn’t do it unless its like the Woody Allen(?) joke about (forget how it really goes) sex not being worth it unless its dirty. With any luck, we’re seeing the last gasps of these moral peabrains.
Comment by aos — September 12, 2007 @ 6:12 pm
And ya know, in looking at this whole post again I agree with you about the cops. The police in the Twin Cities must have lots of awfully slow days to have nothing better to do than cruise stalls for, ah, cruisers.
Comment by OmbudsBen — September 14, 2007 @ 4:33 pm
[...] not let through my front door but there have been a couple of interesting views of this thing. I had previously defended the slithery Larry Craig on the entrapment aspect of things but I never quite put the boots to him [...]
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