Here's the problem with Senator Larry Craig's bathroom boner badinage with Detective Karsnia: it isn't what Craig said during the cringe-inducing exchange, it's what he didn't say.

If it had been me taking a wide stance, I'd have said something along the lines of:

"Are you fucking kidding me? You arrested me for bumping your shoe? Seriously? Because I don't remember when we passed that law. How the hell am I supposed to know that's some kind of gay sex signal? I bump your shoe and pick up some paper off the floor and suddenly I'm getting hassled by cops? Ooookay. You're obviously nuts, so I'm going to lawyer up now."

The mistake Craig made was to assume too much. Straight guys -- or for that matter gay guys who don't give blowjobs in bathrooms, which I have to believe would be the vast majority -- have no idea that a wide stance is a form of sexual contact. The way to handle it with the cop would have been to play dumb, not innocent. The what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about defense would have worked better than the kind of silly denial-of-details tack.

As Detective Karsnia says at one point, no wonder the country's going down the tube. Or was it down on the tube? What is this country coming to when a United States Senator can't lie convincingly?

This entry was posted by Michael Reynolds, on Thursday, August 30, 2007. You can leave your response.