John Ervin: WIDE STANCES AND THIN COVERAGE

I never thought I’d see the day I’d come to the defense of not one, but two Republicans, and one of them a key member of the Bush Administration. But the events of the past two weeks - specifically, the overwhelming news coverage of one, and virtual non-coverage of the other - have led me to make this uncharacteristic gesture. Now, by “defense” I do not mean to say that I hold even a particle of respect for former Attorney General Albert Gonzales or soon-to-be-former (but maybe not-so-former) Idaho Senator Larry Craig. In Gonzales’ case, he very much deserves to have his “good name” dragged that the “mud” his boss whined about the day he resigned, and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law for his role in the illegal firing of eight US attorneys. And as far as Craig is concerned, he is a four-star hypocrite who personifies how hopelessly flimsy the “family values” platform of the Republican Party is, thanks to his having been caught with his pants down, as it were, when charged last June with disorderly conduct in a Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport men’s room.

However, as much as I rejoice at seeing the, uh, dressing down of yet another member of this assembly - whose pols have been more than happy to run homophobic campaigns merely in order to gain traction their main voting blocks, and who have worked against the economic and other interests of those backward citizens while convincing them they held “higher values” than the Democrats - the crime for which Craig has been buried up to his neck in mud is even more trivial than that for which the party’s old arch-nemesis, Bill Clinton, was nearly unseated. Certainly it is compared to those recently made against two other members of the G.O.P.: Louisiana Senator David Vitter, the only politician so far to have been charged with hiring at least one girl provided by that rather disappointing DC Madam, but who, unlike Craig, has not been called by his party to resign because a Democrat would take his seat should he step down (and, just as important, that girl was not a guy); and Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who is under investigation for his relationship with an oil exec who bribed Alaska legislators, and who continues to serve in office thanks to the fact that his trousers were zipped during his dirty dealings.

But the conservative political establishment is not alone in making a Brokeback Mountain out of Craig’s legal mole hill. The news media’s wall-to-wall coverage (to which, I fully admit, I am now contributing - but I’m makin’ a point here!) of Craig’s, uh, pickle has been just as overheated. This is particularly evident in their endless replaying of the audio tape the arresting officer made of his and the Senator’s Abbott and Costello routine in the john, as well as the media’s many background checks on Larry’s Own Private Idaho, both in that state’s tiny pockets of homosexual life and the outside world’s broader gay boulevards. All of this, in the end, took much needed attention away from fuller analysis and coverage of Alberto Gonzales’ resignation, his shameful career as Attorney General and, before that, his equally unfortunate tenure as White House Counsel.

I must confess, when Bush’s first Attorney General, John Ashcroft, resigned, I breathed a sigh of relief, for I could not imagine anybody being more of an embarrassment to that office. It still sends chills down my spine to remember Ashcroft’s own predilection for peeping on the private lives of Americans, particularly on the reading lists of library patrons, as well as his association with the racist Council of Conservative Citizens, his support of Judge Roy Moore’s installation of a Ten Commandments monument on the central rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court, and his grand scheme to pump religion into every scholastic and governmental institution of this country. Then there were those weird publicity stunts straight of Sinclair Lewis, including his covering up the bare breasts of two statues in the Department of Justice, and the singing of “Let the Eagle Soar” at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, as captured in Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9-11.” This latter incident reflected his involvement in The Singing Senators, that quartet of conservative Senatorial divas that actually sold copies of their one recorded album (and sang live with the Oak Ridge Boys!). As much of the world has been reminded, one member of this most un-fab four was none other than Larry Craig, whose extracurricular adventures would have no doubt made the openly antigay Ashcroft go to eleven on his internal amplifier.

Now, when the more secular and seemingly more polished Gonzales took the post, I harbored no illusions that he would be much of an improvement, as he was already infamous for his attempts to deny basic tenets of the Geneva Convention, which he referred to as being “quaint”, to terror suspects. Nonetheless, it seemed as if he would bring more actual legal experience to the job, and clearly did not exude the religious fanaticism of his predecessor (at least, those robes were finally taken of the statues). On top of this was his admirable rise from extreme poverty to graduation from Harvard Law School, and the undeniable fact that he was the highest ranking Hispanic Cabinet member in history.

But, just as today’s methamphetamine scourge has made the crack epidemic of the ‘80’s and 90’s look like the pot hysteria of the ‘60’s, so Gonzales has made John Ashcroft look like Janet Reno. This was especially evident in the well-known incident revealed earlier this year by former acting Attorney General James B. Comey, in which Gonzales, during his tenure as White House Counsel, and then-Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card, attempted to get Ashcroft to reauthorize the warrantless domestic eavesdropping program while he was lying on a hospital bed, recovering from the removal of his gallbladder. This truly vulture-like act luckily failed, so when “Gonzo” did step into “Ash’s” shoes, he used the already overreaching USA Patriot Act to pursue Bush and Cheney’s vision of having every phone conversation and e-mail transmittal available to them at their fingertips, and helped to make the Administration’s already fiendish approach to suspect interrogation even more Medieval.

In fact, Gonzales became so hopped up on the idea of eliminating the rights of those deemed enemy combatants that he shocked some members of the Republican party, when he called for the debunking of habeas corpus, through which individuals can seek relief from what they regard as unlawful detention. It would not be hyperbolic to say that the various assaults he led against personal liberties were so incredible that the issue that finally ended his career, the firing of those U.S. attorneys for not aggressively pursuing Democratic Congressional candidates on trumped-up accusations of voter fraud, seemed, well, “quaint” by comparison. Nonetheless, that particular blemish is serious enough to justify his going to trial and his stepping down from an office he turned out to be woefully ill-prepared for. It curdles the blood to recall that at one time this ghoul, who cared more about pleasing his best buddy, George, than serving the law, was being prepped by that ol’ buddy for a nomination to the Supreme Court. Then again, we already have Scalia and Thomas and Roberts and Alito ...

The case that has brought down Craig, on the other hand, could be considered quaint, at least in the sense that it is like something from the days of J. Edgar Hoover (and, man, I’ll give anything to see a photo of that cranky old queen in drag!). Admittedly, Craig did file his guilty plea to the Minneapolis courts almost two months after the incident. More significantly, he is a classic “do-what-what-I-say-not-what-I-do” conservative closet case, who most likely was so zealous in his defense of marriage, and in his desire to drive out the five or six openly gay people in his state, because he was resisting the lassos that were pulling him that-a way. But hypocrisy is not a crime, and had that “commode cop” not responded to Craig’s foot-flirting, its likely the honorable Senator would have looked for love in other wrong places. Admittedly, it is fun to hear him continually tell the media that he is not gay and to insist that what the officer regarded as a come-hither gesture with his feet was merely the “wide stance” he needed to make when squatting upon the biff. But, considering that police forces are stretched thin as it is and there are more serious crimes that need attending to, especially in the city that has justifiably earned its nick name of Murderapolis, it seems ridiculous to waste those resources on hauling in dirty old men who are only interested in finding consenting adults to share continental breakfasts with.

Of course, the main reason the Craig affair so quickly overshadowed analysis of the long-overdue resignation of the highest-ranking member of the most hated Presidential administration since that of Ulysses S. Grant is the same as that that helped make Rupert Murdoch the most powerful media tycoon since William Randolph Hearst. Sex, even sex involving a sixty-two year old grandfather, sells, and yours truly will fully admit to soaking up the coverage of the past history of this right-wing libertine. In fact, there is some serious stuff that can be attributed to this man, for in 1982, when he was a member of the House, he was accused of having enjoyed cocaine and pursued liaisons with male teen pages. Those allegations were dismissed, and Craig was not implicated in the larger Congressional page scandal that occurred the following year. But his pursuit of antigay policies in his public life, and his entering into his very first marriage - a mere year after this sex-and-drug scandal, and with a woman who was regarded by many as a “beard” to shield her husband against further charges of being what he continues to deny being - are every bit as intriguing as the sordid details of the double lives of Pastor Ted Haggard and Representative Mark Foley.

At the same time, its impossible to open up a newspaper or, especially. to turn on the television, and see continuing analysis of such a brief incident without wondering if Larry is ready to go man-chasing and club-hopping with Paris, Nicole, Lindsay and other members of the “bad girl” elite. This is especially so in light of the fact that, on the tube, it has resulted in probably more footage of toilets than at any other time in the history of television (I think I see a new reality show just around the corner). Though I fail to see the romance in people making love connections in forbiddingly lit, coldly tiled surroundings with horrible stenches - and I believe anyone who spies on their neighbor as they are doing their business ought to have his or her head examined, or face restructured - as long as the actual shootin’ match is held elsewhere, I don’t see where a “crime” has been committed. And, let’s get real, how can even Craig’s spying, invasive as it was, through the crack of his stall on his undercover angel compare to Gonzales’ spearheading Bush and Cheney’s far more perverse need to peer into all of our cracks via warantless wire taps and online surveillance? More importantly, the “all-Craig-all-the-time” media circus is allowing Gonzales, and recent resignee Karl Rove, to lick their wounds in the privacy of their ranches, unencumbered by the reporters who should be hounding them day and night till they finally drop to their knees and confess their sins ... or, at least, till they finally go to trial. Its enough to make me miss the daily reports of the fundraising scandals, campaign appearances and wacky misstatements of those 2008 Presidential candidates we’re all thoroughly sick of.

In closing, then, I’ll simply say that my defense of Larry Craig’s innocence against the allegations of evil lavatory intent, and my defense of Alberto Gonzales’ right to have his name dragged through the mud, and, oh, yes, to receive the fair trial he would deny terror suspects, are as close as I’m ever going to get to casting sympathy upon Republican politicians and their appointees (the exception being severe illness, with Dick Cheney being the exception to that exception). There was a time, once, when I determined that I, being a lifelong Democrat, would vote Republican if the candidate in my party was especially corrupt, inept or dangerous - former Representatives James Traficant and Gary Condit, and the amazingly resilient William “Cold Cash” Jefferson, being redolent examples. But, the way I look at it now - thanks to so many more GOP members’ tendency to get caught up in financial and legal underhandedness (the sex stuff, by and large, not of concern to me unless it involves the Kinder), their consistent support of policies that not only benefit the rich at the expense of the poor but that covertly discriminate against women and people of color, their vicious and borderline illegal campaigns for office, and, especially, their continued groveling before the Bush Administration and support of the Iraq war - I now would not even consider pulling the lever for even the most unblemished Republican. Instead, I would either vote for a candidate in a third party or, if the outside candidates look no better, commit an act that I have long railed at others for doing, and stay home. Rest assured, as far as the 2008 election and the mostly impressive roster of Democratic candidates are concerned (though, as they continue raising money, I hope they aren’t dumb enough to get “Hsu’ed” again ), the chances of my sitting out our next big voting day are as likely as my being arrested for having a “wide stance” in a men’s room, or hiring Alberto Gonzales to act as my attorney.