Won’t wear clean second-hand clothes? You may be racist. And how that has something to do with Senator Craig.
I read with interest this latest study by some Canadians about how ‘interpersonal disgust’ (as opposed to ‘core disgust’) indicates that you may hold some right-wing authoritarian beliefs.
While I don’t put much stock in statistics about psychology and human behaviour, I find these studies fascinating (and great conversation starters), more so since these may very well be theories one might’ve cooked up sitting at the can with nothing good to read. It’s marvellous what a little alone time can do.
It all ties up, doesn’t it? Most people I know who won’t wear clean second-hand clothes or walk into Value Village are a tad racist (as opposed to raging haute-coutured Nazis) because really, what valid reason is there to despise good fashion you can buy at a fraction of the original price? Absolutely none whatsoever.
In a weird tangent, this brings to mind today’s news about Idaho Senator Larry Craig recanting his guilty plea on charges of misdemeanour stemming from complaints of lewd conduct in a men’s room at the Minneapolis airport.
As I listened to what he allegedly did in the men’s room (the Senator apparently responded to an undercover cop’s foot-tapping under the toilet stalls which was apparently homosexual code for wanting to have sex) via news reports and an interview with the reporter who broke the story, I could not help but wonder: Had the senator and his wife been caught having sex in that bathroom, would they have been subjected to the same ridicule and shame? Would the papers be so adamant at crucifying the man?
I think not. Doesn’t have the same zing to it, does it?
Yes, I get it. I get that he’s been extremely anti-gay, ultra conservative, and to have duped his public into believeing he’s straight-laced and goody-goody when he’s been having hot gay sex in public toilets, well shame on him. But as I understand it, the man has been in public service since the 80s. And that he’s been re-elected three times, which means he’s done his job pretty well. Plus we’re not his wife and family. So apart from putting on a squeaky clean image, just what kind of earth-shattering professional betrayal has the man committed to deserve this kind of bloodthirsty upheaval?
Is it because it’s just so…disgusting? Eww, we’ve elected a dirty gay man. And is he wearing skeevy seconds? Double eww!
Seriously, this preoccupation with government officials and/or celebrities and their covert gay sex lives has got to stop. And you know what? You gay people are partly to blame. What is it with all the sex? Any time homosexual makes headlines, it’s someone famous or important being humiliatingly outted for doing something naughty with someone somewhere. If the gay community is ever to gain some dignity in the next 50 years, it’s to stop helping newspapers write stories about just how much sex you guys are having, where you’re having it, and with whom.
ps. Here’s some good toilet reading for a change: Reason and the Yuck Factor.
pss. Guess what? Today (Aug 30) KUOW’s The Conversation talked about what’s fair game when it comes to a politician’s private life. I’d wanted to call in but was too chicken to. Some very good points were raised, in that while most people believe that a politician’s private life should remain private, the moment he crosses the line and does something illegal, he crosses the line from private to public. This is hypocrisy and double standards aside. You can listen to KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio online.
Posted in Imperfect World
August 29th, 2007 at 5:54 am
So a white supremacist consignment store is a bad investment in more ways than one?
I think schadenfreude is behind the publicity of falls of men like Senator Craig and Ted Haggard. People who work to build the hate machines elicit little pity when their own machine consumes them.
There’s just something about seeing the “morally high-minded” eat their own without a glimmer of remorse or contemplation that seems to prove all our assumptions.
It also may not be fair to assume that Senator Craig is a good senator because of a long political record. In American politics, longevity does not always equate quality.
Your comments on America’s fascination with homosexual sex lives make me think of a weird Today show segment where Matt Lauer is interviewing John Cusack about the movie “Must Love Dogs.” (There’s a link on this page: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8645142).
Lauer starts the interview with “How hot is Diane Lane?” and then proceeds to suggest every man would jump at the chance to star with her in a romantic comedy.
Cusack mentions a) that Lane is married and he wants not to offend her husband and b) that certain men might not jump at that chance. Lauer asks “Weird men?” Cusack then says something like “Some men don’t swing that way.”
In this case, I think Lauer’s rampantly hetrosexually-oriented interview is not only boorish and alienating to much of his morning show’s primarily female audience, but it also shows the other underlying problem of America’s public ideas on sexuality: a complete assumption of homogeneous national sexual identity despite ample evidence otherwise.
Schadenfreude indeed.
I think it’s the same everywhere in the world, which is why the gay community will still be marginalised for a long time. Homosexual sex seems hard enough for a lot of people to accept, much less government leaders caught having illegal homosexual extra-marital sex. What gets my goat are the gay individuals who helped the reporter break this story. This is not some intern who was made to have sex with a congressman for his career, or alleged paedophilia. It’s just grown up gay men waiting in the shadows for a chance to out someone famous. “Hullo? A senator is having gay sex with me! Hullo?!!” And without fail, we bite!
August 29th, 2007 at 11:01 am
It’s less of an issue of him having alleged homosexual tendencies than being a full-on hypocrite. There have been a decent number of openly-gay elected government officials with hardly any fuss. If Senator Craig had been open about his tendencies more than 20 years ago when the rumours first started (and then going on to vote against a plethora of gay rights issues), he wouldn’t be in this situation that he is now. It’s too bad, because from what I’ve heard he was a popular senator among his constituents.
But hey, if you choose to bring about legislation that restricts a communities’ rights depending on their sexual preference (which the Senator has had a voting record of), then you should fully expect your sexual preference to be in the spotlight if it’s not of the kind that you espouse.
Just like a certain Malaysian politician that is now speaking against the sowing of racial hatred to gain political support when he’s pretty well-known for wanting to bathe a keris in the blood of a certain race. Sure, I thought he was a racist before, but now I’m enraged because he’s now also a blatant hypocrite.
BTW, I don’t quite understand which gay individuals should be at fault for this kerfuffle. None of the reports of his previous kiss-and-tells were taken seriously by the media, and it took a political newspaper (with no LGBT agenda) for this issue to come to light.
That is true, Andrew. I’d thought he was just another senator toeing the Republican hard line against gay rights.
I was listening to an interview with the reporter from the Statesmen who broke the story and he said that he had approached the senator based on an interview with one of those individuals (on tape). So they DID take it seriously, it just wasnt enough to go on.
August 29th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Thank goodness Yahoo ads put “Discovered: Ancient Sex Magick Secrets” on your post. I thought those had been lost to the ages!
What are you waiting for? Click ‘em and start makin’ me some money!