Nothing on Sen. Craig?

Until this story broke, I had no idea there was a secret hand gesture that meant you wanted to engage in lewd activity in a men's restroom. Furthermore, I find it funny that there is no way in hell that Craig would accidentally make such a gesture as it involves running your fingers along the bottom of the stall partition.

As long as you have the kind of repression that eats away at the right wing fundamentalist crowd you're going to have hypocritical political figures like Craig. It's totally the elephant in the room, and I've been reading about some of the mainstream coverage of this issue and it sounds mostly along the lines of defensive frat boys who are all a little woozy after a kegger and have to out-macho each other to regain their composure.

Edited to add this link: http://mediamatters.org/items/200708290003?f=h_top

No one is safe...



NO ONE!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/...ipt/index.html

"Best" parts:

DK: Do you wish to talk to us at this time?

LC: I do

DK: Okay Urn, I just wanna start off with a your side of the story, okay. So, a

LC: So I go into the bathroom here as I normally do, I'm a commuter too here.

DK: Okay.

LC: I sit down, urn, to go to the bathroom and ah, you said our feet bumped. I believe they did, ah, because I reached down and scooted over and urn, the next thing I knew, under the bathroom divider comes a card that says Police. Now, urn, (sigh) that's about as far as I can take it, I don't know of anything else. Ah, your foot came toward mine, mine came towards yours, was that natural? I don't know. Did we bump? Yes. I think we did. You said so. I don't disagree with that.

DK: Okay. I don't want to get into a pissing match here.

LC: We're not going to.

DK: Good. Urn,

LC: I don't, ah, I am not gay, I don't do these kinds of things and...

DK: It doesn't matter, I don't care about sexual preference or anything like that. Here's your stuff back sir. Urn, I don't care about sexual preference.

LC: I know you don't. You're out to enforce the law.

DK: Right.

LC: But you shouldn't be out to entrap people either.

DK: This isn't entrapment.

LC: All right.

DK: Urn, you you're skipping some parts here, but what what about your hand?

LC What about it? I reached down, my foot like this. There was a piece of paper on the floor, I picked it up

DK: Okay.

LC: What about my hand?

DK: Well, you're not being truthful with me, I'm kinda disappointed in you Senator. I'm real disappointed in you right now. Okay. I'm not, just so you know, just like everybody, 1,1,1, treat with dignity, I try to pull them away from the situation

LC: 1,1

DK: and not embarrass them.

LC: I appreciate that.

DK: And I

LC: You did that after the stall.

DK: I will say every person I've had so far has told me the truth. We've been respectful to each other and then they've gone on their way. And I've never had to bring anybody to jail because everybody's been truthful to me.

LC: I don't want you to take me to jail and I think.

DK: I'm not gonna take you to jail as long as your cooperative but I'm not gonna lie. We...

LC: Did my hand come below the divider? Yes. It did.

DK: Okay, sir. We deal with people that lie to us everyday.

LC: I'm sure you do.

DK: I'm sure you do to sir.

LC: And gentleman so do I.

DK: I'm sure you do. We deal with a lot of people that are very bad people. You're not a bad person.

LC: No, I don't think I am.

DK: Okay, so what I'm telling you, I don't want to be lied to.

LC: Okay.

****************

DK: Were you (inaudible) out here while you were waiting? I could see your eyes. I saw you playing with your fingers and then look up. Play with your fingers and then look up.

LC: Did I glance at your stall? I was glancing at a stall right beside yours waiting for a fella to empty it. I saw him stand up and therefore I thought it was going to empty.

DK: How long do you think you stood outside the stalls?

LC: Oh a minute or two at the most.

DK: Okay. And when you went in the stalls, then what?

LC: Sat down.

DK: Okay. Did you do anything with your feet?

LC: Positioned them, I don't know. I don't know at the time. I'm a fairly wide guy.

DK: I understand.

LC: I had to spread my legs.

DK: Okay.

LC: When I lower my pants so they won't slide.

DK: Okay.

LC: Did I slide them too close to yours? Did I, I looked down once, your foot was close to mine.

DK Yes.

LC Did we bump? Ah, you said so, I don't recall that, but apparently we were close.

DK Yeah, well your foot did touch mine, on my side of the stall.

LC: All right.

****************

DK: Okay. And then with the hand. Urn, how many times did you put your hand under the stall?

LC: I don't recall. I remember reaching down once. There was a piece of toilet paper back behind me and picking it up.

DK: Okay. Was your was your palm down or up when you were doing that?

LC: I don't recall.

DK: Okay. I recall your palm being up. Okay.

LC: All right.

DK: When you pick up a piece of paper off the ground, your palm would be down, when you pick something up.

LC: Yeah, probably would be. I recall picking the paper up.

****************

DK: I am trained in this and I know what I am doing. And I say you put your hand under there and you're going to sit there and...

LC: I admit I put my hand down.

DK: You put your hand and rubbed it on the bottom of the stall with your left hand.

LC: No. Wait a moment.

DK: And I, I'm not dumb, you can say I don't recall...

LC: If I had turned sideways, that was the only way I could get my left hand over there.

DK: it's not that hard for me to reach. (inaudible) it's not that hard. I see it happen everyday out here now.

LC: (inaudible) you do. All right.

DK: I just, I just, I guess, I guess I'm gonna say I'm just disappointed in you sir. I'm just really am. I expect this from the guy that we get out of the hood. I mean, people vote for you.

LC: Yes, they do. (inaudible)

DK: unbelievable, unbelievable.

LC: I'm a respectable person and I don't do these kinds of...

DK: And (inaudible) respect right now though

****************

LC: I reached down with my right hand like this to pick up a piece of paper.

DK: Was your gold ring on your right hand at anytime today.

LC: Of course not, try to get it off, look at it.

DK: Okay. Then it was your left hand, I saw it with my own eyes.

LC: All right, you saw something that didn't happen.

DK: Embarrassing, embarrassing. No wonder why we're going down the tubes. Anything to add?

NN: Uh, no

DK: Embarrassing. Date is 6/11/07 at 1236 interview is done.

No wonder why we're going down the tubes.

Thank you, Detective Karsnia.

I don't know. What is there to say? It's pretty clear he was trolling for commuter ass in an airport bathroom. It's also likely this was not his first time doing this sort of thing. Throw this guy in the same Hypocrite Corner with Ted Haggard. Is it conduct unbecoming a Senator that should result in Craig being tossed from the Senate? I'll leave it to the Ethics Committee to deal with that. But I certainly wouldn't vote for a guy whose private behavior stands in direct contradiction of the positions he advocates in public.

And... he's toast.

I'm just so amazed no one (in mainstream media) has been making George Michael jokes.

Bill Clinton is a nasty, bad, naughty boy
Nope. Not gay at all.

I love that clip. Bill Maher singled out Chris Matthew's dumbstruck look afterwards on his show Friday night.

Matthew's is an idiot but damn if that look didn't say it all.

If he claims it was a set up and didn't do anything. Then why plead guilty? Damage to your rep? Bullshit, if you were seriously not looking for man ass in that John and the cops busted you and you were a US Senator. You'd say not guilty and be out refuting such claims.

That clip made my day.
Amazing.

My blogroll just provided me with this alternate take on the matter.

I heard an NPR commentator say something similar last week and, while I've had a good giggle about former Senator Craig, I do agree with the above. This is as much an example of the continued, pronounced discomfort with homosexuality in our culture as it is another example of the gross hypocrisy of the Republican Party.

The ironic one to me was that just before this, there was a senator who'd used that DC prostitution ring, and admitted it, and no one was out censuring him.

Of course, one take on it was that, regardless of orientation, hitting up strangers in public restrooms for casual sex is pretty gross. And, of course, the fact that he's married and engaging in what is probably less-than-safe sex outside of that relationship.

There was a really good take on it, I thought, with one guest commentator on NPR. He was talking about how instead of saying that 'sexuality should be private' and 'no one should know anybody else's sexuality' that it should be equally public - that homosexuals have just as much right to wear a wedding ring, hold hands in public, etc, etc.

There's a flip-flopper if I've ever seen one.

I agree with a few posts above--it's amazing that this guy was out (no pun intended) in less than two weeks after this first came out, yet guys that have actually broken major laws are still in office with no pressure to resign, and they're not even worried about being re-elected. Ted Stevens isn't even worried about being shipped off to an old age home.

I laughed about this when the news hit last week - it's pretty funny to see a super-conservative Republican senator get caught being gay. But reading that interrogation up there I just realized how fucked up this is on a larger scale. The things that the interrogater was saying - it's like we have cops out there whose sole job it is to hang around and bust gay guys in bathrooms. While it's pretty nasty to randomly hook up with people in public bathrooms, the bust and the practices of this police dept are clearly fueled by homophobia.

You guys probably already realized this but I didn't until just now.

There's really nothing surprising about a virulently anti-gay politician being a closeted gay man. There's no reason rooted in logic to devote your life to denouncing homosexuality and denying homosexuals rights and marriage. The only reason I can comprehend to do it is because you're desperately trying to convince everyone that you are SO NOT GAY.

What I do find surprising is that this shit is even against the law. He tapped his shoe? To show that he was interested in sex (as opposed to all the other people who are ambivalent about sex)? What the fuck?

Yeah, that's pretty weird. I mean, the guy's incriminated himself by his actions afterward, but it's a little scary to think a gesture seemingly so ambiguous has such a specific implication. I mean, he could have been trying to request some toilet paper or attempting to score some crack. Also, the original charge was "lewd conduct." The thing with the shoe and the hand doesn't seem that lewd to me, unless it was followed by some suggestion that he wanted to have sex right there and then (or maybe that's implied in those signals, too?). Even if it is gay shorthand, couldn't it mean "want to go back to my place?", in which case, no public lewd conduct would have occurred?

Perhaps I'm not as up on my Minnesota state law or gay mating rituals as I need to be to understand this case fully.

The tapping of his shoe wasn't the illegal part, it was when he followed it up by reciting "theres no place like home" over, and over that took him past the Minnesota legal gayness threshold.

You're completely right. If he were not a hypocritical anti-gay gay republican, I'd probably be more inclined to sympathize with his side of the story versus the cop's. But Craig's politics are part of the reason why unspoken anti-gay hysteria is such a festering sore in America.

That said, I wouldn't want to be trawled in a public bathroom by anyone, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. And would probably tell a cop.

I wouldn't, either, but I'm not exactly sure how that works so I'm not sure I'd know it if it happened to me. I mean, if someone put their hand under the stall wall, I'd assume they were looking for paper and hand them a wad of it. Then again, I guess I'm quite happy to be, and remain, naive of such things.

I've learned more about bathroom stall etiquette this week through the news than I ever thought possible. I had no idea people went through this much complicated work to get a hummer in a men's room.

I would have thought the virulent anti-gay person being a closet homosexual would have entered the realm of bad cliche by now, but I guess not. And I can't understand his fake naivete about the law and pleading guilty when he's a, oh, UNITED STATES SENATOR. I'm feeling a lot of schadenfreude over the whole thing.

Three men in my office have been propositioned in recent months by an as-yet uknown male in our floor's men's room. I feel so unloved.

What I like is that he had several weeks between being given the paper on which he was charged with the misdemeanor, and his signing it as guilty. And on the paper it says that you acknowledge it's a guilty plea that means you're guilty and the plea can't be retracted. So apparently he's not only indecisive, but an illiterate senator.

I suggest you stop before you get arrested.

Are you near the Minneapolis airport?

Go here to find out!

Funny, I don't remember Lucas Davenport having to deal with that one.

I'm kinda late to the discussion, but...

I didn't get the feeling they're going out busting gay guys. From how I understood it, Craig did a series of signals that people "in the know" (so to say) recognize as an interest in homosexual prostitution. They seem harmless to people who don't know any better, but I guess that bathroom is a spot where homosexual prostitutes hang out which is why Craig went there (and why the cop was there).

I dunno, that's how it read to me from the very beginning.