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Bosworth
Magazine Archives
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Humphrey
Bogart, Dead Actor, Comments on Public Restroom Fornication
I don’t think we’re in Minneapolis anymore,
Dorothy, but if we are, I’ll hold it in till I get to
Phoenix.
Recent news of Sen. Larry Craig’s public restroom fornication
scandal has traveled like a shockwave from the bottom of my whiskey
filled gut to the tips of my stone cold toes. The Idaho Senator,
according to reports, was arrested after he solicited sex in the
men’s room at the Minneapolis airport.
He originally pleaded guilty to a reduced charge but withdrew his
guilty plea in late September. He also announced his intention to
resign from office but has toyed with the idea of trying to resurrect a
political career that’s all but gone down the toilet, no pun
intended.
Sue me, but I can’t help feeling a bit of nostalgia for an
era where a senator’s sexual politics were separate from his
actual politics. In my day, private actions were just that. Private. We
didn’t want to know what happened in people’s
bedrooms and had a pretty good idea what they did in the
bathroom…
For Christ’s sake, in this day and age, they’d have
to rename all my old movies. I made “The Petrified
Tourist,” not “The Wangified Tourist.”
I starred in “The Maltese Falcon” … not
“The Man-Tease Fornication.”
“Casblanca” won an Oscar … not
“Casa-Boinka.”
I starred in “Beat the Devil” … not
“Beat Off the Devil” …
“The Treasure of Sierra Madre” … not
“The Pleasure of Tiara Padre.”
Not to mention “The African Queen.” (You could
pretty much keep that title, if you changed around a few of the
characters.)
Yesterday was a different age. You could smack a girl’s rump
in the workplace without getting sued, and drinking on the job got you
nominated for an Academy Award. Words like “dame”
and “skirt” were at least mildly acceptable. On the
other hand, we had our share of poverty, and racism … and
homophobia.
In short, we had our problems. Our age’s gold was gilded, and
our gays were gelded. Maybe the problem isn’t that things
have changed, it’s that they haven’t changed
enough. When you stigmatize something to the point that a person
can’t admit who he is because of his politics, it’s
not much of surprise when his proclivities show up in the restroom.
Now’s the time to learn a lesson. If we don’t see
the Craig incident as a wake up call, we’re going to regret
it … maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but
soon … and for the rest of our lives. |
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