Fear the Penis

This was written in October, 2006, when the Mark Foley hitting on male congressional pages broke.

It is being reposted in August, 2008. Right after the John Edwards sex scandal came out.
Readers should feel free to mentally substitute Edwards for Foley. It works in most places.

When doing so they should note that The Way of the World, by Ron Suskind came out the same week.
In his book Suskind revealed:
How the White House undermined a British intelligence operation that 2,000 operatives had been working on for a year. Because George Bush wanted a publicity event before the 2006 elections.
How, in 2003, the Republican congress undermined a law that controlled the production of weapons grade uranium that could be used for the sort of “suitcase nuke” that we fear so much.
How we had two sources in Iraq that told us that Saddam did not have WMD or programs to produce them. One of the sources was their foreign minister. The other was the head of intelligence.
That the US kept the information from the first source secret from the British to make sure that they entered the war with us.
That the Iraqi intelligence chief explained why Saddam didn’t want the world to know he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. He was afraid of the countries around him, particularly Iran. And he was afraid of his own population.
That after the war, and after no WMD had been found, that “the White House” ordered George Tenet to have the CIA forge a letter and have the former Iraqi intelligence director sign it, that said Iraq had substantive contacts with Al Qaeda, which was not true, and they had secret shipments (uranium??!!!) from Niger.
In 2003, after Iran aided the US in the war against the Taliban, they approached the US, prepared to negotiate all the important issues between them. The Bush Administration just snubbed them.
After the invasion of Iraq, US intelligence officers found Saddam’s Baghdad Security Plan. It called for Iraqi forces to let the Americans in, then go underground to start an insurgency. The Bush administration suppressed the information and would not let the word “insurgency” be used in planning meetings or in public.

Suskind is the guy who revealed in his previous book that the NSA was wiretapping without warrants. His is among the most credible of journalists. His sources are on the record, including the head of British Intelligence. So he got a lot of air time with this new book.
But not a single major news organization ran with the stories themselves.

Instead they filled the air with tales of outrage, shock, analysis, reiteration and regurgitation of what John Edwards had done with his penis!
They asked such probing questions as “What is it about men in power that they think they can use their penis outside of his wife’s vagina?”
“How can a man be trusted if he uses his penis in an unauthorized manner?”
“Didn’t he know the truth would come out?”
Then they shredded his public acknowledgement and apology. He had done it all wrong! He had made it worse! Each phrase was parsed to prove that his groveling was actually inappropriate! Even Jon Stuart joined in the stomping session.

But the real crimes, that lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths and all sorts of horrors, just weren’t worth that much energy.
Which leads us to two possible conclusions.
One is that the National Enquirer is a lot easier to read than a whole book.
The other is that what we really have to fear, above all else, is an unzipped penis.

Here’s the original story.
Different penis.
Different set of serious issues and crimes.
Same scenario:

Thank God for Mark Foley.
It proves that the American people still care about something.
It happens to be penises. But still.

They care about who talks about them, who plays with them, who covers them up, who uncovers them, who covers up the uncovering of them.
Even Jon Stewart put the big penis cover-up ahead of the fact that this government just passed a law that says that George Bush can say, "Hey you, you're an enemy combatant, "and once he says that they can whisk you away.
This is literally true. It's like that joke in the first grade.
“Make me a milkshake.”
“Poof: You're a milkshake.”
If George Bush says: “you're an enemy combatant.”
Poof! You are one.
And then they can take you to Guantanamo, do not pass go, do not call your attorney, do not see a judge, do not hear the charges against you, go straight to the cage they want to put you in. The cage comes with lights that stay on 24 hours a day and wake-up calls every fifteen minutes so you never get to sleep and special exercise programs where you stand for hours in 'stress' positions, upward screaming cat, squatting tortured turtle, and other light abuses that used to be quaintly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

Today's joke:

Q: What do Americans do after they commit war crimes?
A: They pass a law that says they can't be prosecuted for committing war crimes.

If you don't find that funny, if you actually think that's serious, then ask how come nobody else takes it seriously.
How come CNN doesn't care, NBC, the NY Times? How come the Democratic leadership doesn't care?
How did that that bill - that contains all those provisions and more - get passed without a filibuster? Without a fuss?

Thank God for Mark Foley. An old congressman hitting on teenage boys, that's real news.
I was watching CNN yesterday afternoon. It was All Penis, All the Time.
Here's a quote, from one of their reporters, "One question always rises to the top: 'who knew what, and when did they know it?'"
That's true, but only when it has to do with a penis.
Last week Bob Woodward's new book came out. One of the things he revealed was an additional meeting between the head of the CIA and Condoleeza Rice, back in July 2001, in which they tried to shock her, shake her up, to do something about terrorism.
That meeting is important for several reasons.
The fact that she didn't do anything about it led to the deaths of at least 3,000 people. Call me me crazy, call me irresponsible, but that seems more important than an old queen hitting on young teens.
That meeting was kept secret from the 9/11 Commission, congress and the American people. There's no security reason for it to be secret. Only a political one. Proof, once again, that 9/11 happened because the Bush Administration was asleep at the wheel.
When the book came out, Rice denied the meeting had happened. She flat out lied about it.
Documents proved it took place.
I didn't see CNN, or anybody else, hounding the White House about Condoleeza Rice's cover up and her lies.

"One question always rises to the top: who knew what and when did they know it?"

Yeah, when the warnings are about the use of a penis. But not when the warnings are about a terrorist attack on New York.
The Rice lie and cover-up is not insignificant. It's not ancient history. Because the whole point of Woodward's book is that it's still going on. The real experts are still warning the Bush administration that their policies - and lack of policies - are deadly disasters. Costing lives, costing money, creating enemies, with no chance of success. The president is still putting his fingers in his ears and not hearing them. His spokespeople are continuing to pretend the information doesn't exist and lying, by omission and commission, to congress and the American people.
Even if we concede that obscene instant messages are a greater danger to the Republic than a military quagmire that we entered into based on deliberate lies, the danger from Mark Foley is done. The danger from additional congressman trolling for young stuff, if there are any, is easily met. (A War on Congress, does have a certain appeal and would be vastly cheaper than the War on Terror).
But the war in Iraq, and the war in Afghanistan, go on and on and on, like toxic Energizer Bunnies killing and maiming, laying waste to the landscape and breeding virulent new strains of violent jihadists.

A few years ago, there was a play- still around - called the Vagina Monologues.
American politics, at the same time, turned into the Penis Monologues.
Anything else, in between penises, is just marking time. Fail to get bin Laden, who cares? Discover proof that the administration made up stories so they could have their war in Iraq, no big deal, not even news, according to the NY Times. Best estimate is that US bombs and artillery killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians, it would be rude to mention it. Then there's all that money that disappeared. Paul Bremer blew through twenty billion (yes, billion) dollars that was supposed to be held in trust for the Iraqi people and there's no records and nothing to show for it. After that was gone, the occupation authorities blew through another twenty billion that was supposed to go for the reconstruction of Iraq. Let's not ask where the money went - no major media outlet has.
If you're in the cable news business, you're happy. This is the first really good penis since Bill's.
If you're anti-Republican, there's another bit of good news. The Republican's are slipping. It took Dennis Hastert a full week before he remembered to blame Bill Clinton.
Let me close with this. Advice to the youth of our country.
Dear youth; if you have dreams of going into politics, you should be fearless. Do not fear committing war crimes. Do not fear lying about terrorist warnings. Do not fear losing billions of dollars or reconstructions that never happen. But if you have a penis - whether you're a man or a woman - leave your penis at home, before you venture forth to do battle in the field of America's political wars.