Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Is Lingering Nothing? Is Tapping Toe to Toe?

The blogosphere is having a conniption fit this morning over Senator Larry (“Wide Stance”) Craig and his bust in an airport men’s room. The best and most useful thing I’ve seen so far is Glen Greenwald’s piece on how the wingnuts have turned on a dime on this one—ferocious against any questions about Craig’s, ahem, “lifestyle” before the election, out for his scalp today (link). And I have to admit I believe that every time a hypocrite is outed, an angel gets its wings.

But read the charge sheet, and you certainly wonder what, if anything, this guy was really guilty of. As TPM says (link):

Leering stares, foot tapping, a lingering presence. Are any of those, even taken together, what most reasonable people would call criminal? Is it because they happened in a bathroom? God knows they happen every night in bars and other public spaces, among gays and straights.

Must the Cop was reading Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale:

Is whispering nothing?
Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses?
Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
Of laughing with a sigh?--a note infallible
Of breaking honesty--horsing foot on foot?
Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes
Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only,
That would unseen be wicked? is this nothing?
Why, then the world and all that's in't is nothing;
The covering sky is nothing; Bohemia nothing;
My wife is nothing; nor nothing have these nothings,
If this be nothing.

--but if so, he ought to read the rest of the play where we learn that Leontes was calamatously wrong.

Fn.: Okay, okay, I also read on the blog that Craig felt he couldn’t risk a trial because it would have outed his previous gay life style—works for me. I’m also persuaded that the wingers are willing to forgive Sen. David (“DC Madam”) Vitter of Louisiana while trashing Craig because Louisiana has a Democratic governor (link).

Update: What Matt said (link).

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