Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Equivalence, fake and otherwise.


One of the more annoying habits of the residents of Lower Wankerville is their insistence on drawing an equivalence between the most hysterically incomparable situations, and doing it with a positively straight face. Consider, if you will, the recent episode involving GOP Senator Larry Craig, a married man with a long record of gay-bashing votes, nonetheless caught trolling a public airport bathroom and blatantly soliciting the person in the next stall for a little man-on-man action.

Wankers were, of course, quick with the only comeback they know: "But ... but ... but ... Bill Clinton!!" And why not? After all, on the one hand, you have a married man who has a disappointing but consensual, heterosexual affair, in private, with someone of legal age that he knows while, on the other hand, you have a public homophobe looking to score some quick (and illegal) gay sex in an airport bathroom with a complete stranger. Sure, I don't see any difference. Do you see any difference? Hell, Mitt doesn't see any difference:

Romney declined to endorse a call for Craig's resignation, saying he did not have enough information. But he went on to compare the situation to Bill Clinton's White House infidelities and former Rep. Mark Foley's emails with Capitol Hill pages.

(As you can see, Mitt is quick with the bogus equivalence when he equates Clinton with a hard-right GOP representative who was caught dead to rights hustling young boys by Internet. But, hey, who's keeping track of the details, right?)

And for maximum entertainment value, you can't top the spectacle of some wankers actually portraying the Clinton episode as being somehow more appalling than Craig's bathroom antics:

Why, yes, Craig "tapped his foot." Oh, and he also slid it over to nudge the foot of the man in the next stall, then proceeded to run his hand underneath the stall partition, not once, not twice, but three times. It might have been amusing to add that part to the cartoon above but, hey, details like that only get in the way of a good smear job, know what I mean?

Then there's the magnificently tortured attempt at equivalence you can find here:

A couple of weeks ago, the left was up in arms because undercover cops had been used at the Montebello Summit to allegedly incite protesters to violent action.

Now, the left seems to be applauding the use of an undercover cop to entrap a would-be participant in gay sex.

Under what circumstances is undercover police work acceptable? Is it only if it involves Republicans (or conservatives)?

Ah, quite right -- we on the Left have no problem with undercover officers quietly staking out bathrooms trying to catch trolling perps, but we're outraged -- absolutely outraged -- by masked law enforcement officers wielding rocks and trying to incite violence at a peaceful protest. My word, but what hypocrites we Leftards be! You should be ashamed! Yes, you!

On the other hand, though, after making a living promoting one example of bogus, painfully-contrived equivalence after another, the very same residents of Wankerville will turn around and, presented with two virtually identical situations, now take the position that they are, of course, totally, totally different and how dare we presume to draw such an unfair comparison? You know, like here.

It's still fresh news, but it might be worth watching how many of Canada's wingnuts, having pilloried the Liberals only a couple years back, will have nothing but praise for the identical strategy by their Dear Leader since, well, that's different.

And, yes, the above is exactly why you can't talk to these people. Because, quite simply, they're nuts. And, at times, that's the only appropriate comeback you need to make.

HEH. INDEED.


14 comments:

thwap said...

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2007/09/03/tomo/

Adam C said...

I have little sympathy for Craig, but I honestly can't see how he should have to resign. As far as I can tell, he's guilty of the crime of asking someone if they wanted to have sex. Unless they dropped possible charges of harassment in exchange for his plea, I'd say that he's - ironically - a victim of the homophobia he helped to foster.

This makes him easy to laugh at. But if it were someone else who's career was being ruined for intending to commit a very minor if embarrassing criminal act, I'd be a little upset.

Unknown said...

It sounds like the cop in the bathroom wasn't trying to provoke good ol' Larry to have sex with him -- it was Larry trying to provoke the cop. That's the first difference.

But I could agree with the wingnuts if they were saying that the two situations were the same in that the cops shouldn't have been there trying to provoke illegal acts, period. I don't think cops should go undercover to interfere with adults seeking consensual sex any more than they should go undercover to try to get them to throw rocks.

The wingnuts are really missing the main point: that Larry Craig is an evil, lying, hypocritical asshole who preaches a pious gospel of "Don't do as I do, do as I say, and by god I'm going to self-righteously make your life hell for doing what I do myself."

THAT'S what the wingnuts don't want people to recognize.

Now I'm terribly curious how many of these self-righteous wingnut bloggers sneak out into the local park for a little man-on-man nookie before returning to blog about how persecuted Larry Craig is, and how nasty gay people are.

I remember, when I first met a lot of gay friends, how many of them told me their first homosexual experiences were in fundamentalist or evangelical churches. Now, when I hear fundies storm against the "evil homosekshus," I laugh my head off. Most of them have no clue. And the rest of them are doing it in the pews.

CC said...

adam:

Ironically, it's not the Left who's out for Craig's head on a staff at the gates of the city, it's the conservatives, who absolutely cannot abide a faggot in their midst.

And it's not the crime itself, it's the howling hypocrisy surrounding it which has turned him into an absolute laughingstock. In fact, if you read the news, the Dems are openly hoping that Craig doesn't resign; they'd love to run against him in the next election and make his bathroom trolling a campaign issue.

Don't blame the Dems for this one -- it's the GOP that's terrified of Craig dragging the party even deeper into the muck, and they're the ones who want him gone. (See one of my other recent posts on this very topic.)

Adam C said...

it's the GOP that's terrified of Craig dragging the party even deeper into the muck, and they're the ones who want him gone

Oh, I'm aware of this; and it is quite funny, in a slightly sad sort of way. Oliver North is a hero, Nixon a martyr, Giuliani a presidential candidate, but gay sex? Get him out of there!

The Seer said...

What is the difference between propositioning a woman walking home from work or school in an inner city neighborhood and propositioning a stanger is an airport men's room?

Ti-Guy said...

There's a world of difference if you're planning on having the sex right there in the public washroom. That's the kind of sex Craig is accused of wanting to have. If he propositioned someone in a bar and then took him home or to a hotel, or something, that's different.

Having sex in a public area is against the law, and I agree with that. Little children have to use those bathrooms (unless there's a family bathroom nearby) and it's not appropriate.

Unknown said...

Well, generally it's the sex in the public washroom that is frowned upon. There's hardly any differencce at all if the hypothetical situation you pose involves sex in a public place as well. But there's a big ddifference between "wanna' have sex at my place?" and "wanna' have sex right here in public?". One is legal, the other is not.

For Craig in particular, as everyone has said, the main difference is that he's vocally and publically opposed "perversion" and "teh scawy gays" as a main part off his career.

Unknown said...

Yes, if he was asking for sex right there in the public place, then yes, it shouldn't have happened. I was thinking of consensual sex where the bathroom was just the meeting place.

So yeah, that makes Craig worse than your usual john.

The Seer said...

Okay, ask the woman who lives in that neighborhood what she thinks about getting propositioned every other time she walks home after a dark.

thwap said...

Public Washrooms became a site for gay sex when homosexuality was illegal.

No gay bars, no propositioning in straight bars, nothing at home if the men had wives of convenience, ... public washrooms (along with public parks which were more dangerous) were the only available places for meetings with a modicum of privacy.

Now, I suppose they might have an illicit cache for some, and, for pathetic closet-cases like Craig, they're still vital.

I don't think anyone wants to be propositioned or to see widespread sex in public washrooms, but I think Craig was entrapped. Too bad it's pathetic shitheads like him who made his own behaviour illegal.

The Seer said...

To make out a defense of entrapment, a defendant in most American states must show that the police recruited the commision of a crime by a person otherwise unwilling to commit the crime.

At the edges, the police can do no more than afford a person wanting to commit a crime the opportunity to commit the crime.

If the officer's testimony can be believed, the officer afforded Larry Earl Craig no more than the oppotunity to commit the crime he entered the restroom with intent to commit. Legally, in my opinion, Larry was not "entrapped."

Rev.Paperboy said...

Too bad it's pathetic shitheads like him who made his own behaviour illegal.

and there in a nutshell, we have the reason the left is pissed at Craig. It's the hypocrisy that drive us nuts.

the Dems don't care if he's gay, they care because he broke the law that his own public intolerance made necessary.

The Republicans on the other hand, are afraid they might catch teh Gayness from him via shaking hands and polluting their precious bodily fluids or some such horseshit.

While it might screw up his homelife, the smartest thing Craig could do professionally right now would be to cross the floor to the Democrats, kiss Barney Frank on the lips in front of the Capitol on national tv and just come clean. Admit he has led a double life and apologize that his own vote and actions as a legislator forced him and thousands of others to do the same and promise to fix it by sponsoring a gay rights bill. I think most Americans in both the red and blues states care a lot less about who their politicians are having sex with and more about whether they are hypocritical lying sacks of shit.

Ti-Guy said...

I mean, if we take everything at face value, Craig must really get off on that kind of sex. I find it hard to believe that someone with power or money can't arrange trysts in some other way...or are "escort services" illegal in some states?