Vitter Fruit

Is he finished? Depends®.

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
7/19/07

I don’t usually devote much time to sex scandals when I write about politics, although I often think I should. The main reason I don’t is that in almost all circumstances, I have trouble taking them seriously. Any politician highly-placed enough for anyone to care who he sleeps with has amassed a certain amount of wealth and power, and men with such tend to get endless opportunities and more than ample temptation.

Nixon and Carter might be the only presidents in modern times who didn’t have mistresses, and neither turned out to be what you would call your stellar presidents. Even Rutherford B. Hayes, who was reputed to be gay, had at least one svelte young male secretary with no typing skills but who had the requisite fast hands.

I’d be more worried about politicians who are not out getting some on the side. Those tend to be emotionally crippled, religious nuts, or both. They lead lives above reproach, but start wars or found police states. And yes, I wonder if Putsch is getting any and hope for the sake of the country that he is, even if it’s only Barney. If it turns out that Laura is his only outlet, then America might just be doomed.

Sex scandals are often entertaining, and usually hilarious. The French have good lurid ones in which everyone feigns Gallic indifference then privately allows themself a slightly admiring smirk at whichever old goat was caught boffing the 25 year old blonde bombshell. American sex scandals tend to be less lurid, but make up for it with the mass choruses of moral outrage that emit from the perpetually morally outraged.

The Brits are the undisputed masters of the sex scandal. Those tend to be lurid, with stuffy old ministers found dressed in women’s clothes strangled in an excess of erotic self-asphyxiation, or in bed with one or more Russian spies, or it at least involves farm animals and small household appliances. Add the cluckings of the Proper British moral guardians (i.e., those who haven’t gotten caught yet) and the potential for sheer hilarity goes right through the roof.

During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, what I lived for, just doted on, was have some stuffy Republican dowager (those come in both sexes) snort about how awful it was that that immoral and licentious Mr. Clinton abused that sweet, innocent little girl, and her just an intern working her first job in Washington, all starry eyed and innocent.

No, really, I had more fun with that. I would explain that if they read the Starr report, then they would know that Monica was what was known around Beverly Hills High as a “slut-princess” (j. Americanus). It was a bit of an unfair characterization, because she was just doing the same thing all the guys on the football team were doing, and rummaging through the opposite sex, vying to bring home the biggest scalp. Monica knew that the POTUS was a pretty big scalp, and would earn her all kinds of points among her peers, and bragged going in that she was “going to earn her presidential knee pads.” At which point I would smile beatifically at the Republican, who was beginning to gasp and flutter a bit, and ask, “Do I need to draw you a diagram?” Somehow, the answer was always no. Funny how quickly these church ladies figured out what that phrase meant.

Then I would wind up, pointing out that Monica tripped Clinton up and beat him to the floor, and that if anything, SHE took advantage of HIM. What Clinton lacked was common sense; he was no villain. As for being morally weak, I’d notice that the only people who do a great job of resisting temptation are the ones who are never offered any temptation, and anyone who wants to cluck at Clinton should consider what they would do if someone hung a nice big wet juicy piece in front of them.
Sure, there are people who can’t stand me because of that attitude, but they usually aren’t worth knowing anyway. In the meantime, as long as he isn’t selling out the country, starting a war, or scaring the horses, I could care less if some politician is out getting his end wet.

Sex is interesting, and it becomes hilarious when there is hypocrisy involved. Now, you could say that politicians pretty much have to be hypocrites if they are to be successful and I won’t argue overmuch about that. But back a few decades ago, when the GOP decided they needed to appeal to the religious zanies, they pretty much cornered the market on the really stuffy, sanctimonious, and overbearingly moralistic hypocrites. And of course, those are the most fun to watch when they get caught with their pants down.

This brings us, not unexpectedly, to David Vitter. Now Vitter came up with a prime, grade “A” sex scandal. He had all the right ingredients. First, he was a sanctimonious hypocrite who, even as he was making his little trips over to the House of the Rising Sun, would thunder in the House (um, the other House, the one without all the cute young thangs in negligees, unless you count Harry Hyde) that Clinton was “morally unfit to be President.” Then there was the bit about the diapers. He had a diaper fetish. Far from the nastiest fetish one can imagine, but one that sparks public interest. The jokes about the poor NASA astronaut who slid off the deep end and drove 500 miles in a pair of diapers to chop off the head of her romantic rival had just died down when the Vitter story broke. Sex scandals involving diapers strike most people as funny in the way that exploding toilets strike Dave Barry as funny.

Vitter managed to handle it about as badly as a politician can. First he admitted it, THEN he denied it, then he angrily said it was nobody’s business. Then he dragged his poor wife (who is substantially larger than him) in, to have her stand there while he moped about being a sinner and how he was sorry and everything, and that just reminded everyone of how, during the Lewinsky thing, he had said that if he behaved as disgracefully as Clinton had, his wife would probably cut off his privates.

Really. And the woman is a moose, stands a good six inches taller than him. If you get invited to their house for barbeque anytime soon, don’t eat the hot dogs. You don’t know what’s in them. And now that people have been reminded of what he said back when he was a bastion of moral fortitude with a package of Depends® in his pocket, there are already suggestions floating around to mail his wife very sharp knives.

Larry Flynt jumped in, of course, and claims that he has the names of about 30 other politicians he would like to share with us. While not a graduate of Beverly Hills High School, Larry has his own variation of gathering scalps, and he’s notched a few in his time, including Vitter’s. Larry says he hasn’t decided whether to release all the names at once, or just let it drip, drip, drip, a phrase which, given the subject matter, is perhaps poorly considered.

In the meantime, as if Vitter hadn’t done enough to blow his career out of the water, the folks over at Arianna Huffington’s blog came up with the absolutely perfect nickname for him. Really, it’s the kind that sticks, and guarantees that nobody is going to look at him with a perfectly straight face ever again.

They call him “The Party Pooper.”

Really. That’ll wreck his career.

Things are a real mess in the world right now, especially with that arrogant jackass in the White House.

But thanks to guys like The Party Pooper, politics can still sometimes be fun!