Cool for Scandal

So unless you've been living under a rock--or, I don't know, stuck in some sort of a closet--you know that, earlier this week, Jason Collins, late of the Washington Wizards, became the first athlete in a major American team sport to come out as gay while still active--well, while still active as a player; I imagine plenty of the other athletes who have come out are still actively gay.  Collins certainly deserves credit for breaking what may be the last major civil-rights barrier in professional sports (although I can't help but notice a continued dearth of Jewish long-jumpers),  But cynics point out that Collins is, at best, a marginal player in the twilight of his career.  As a free agent, Collins is not guaranteed ever to play again unless he suits the needs of an NBA general manager.  If anything, his announcement may have helped his chances of being signed by a new team. You know  Commissioner David Stern would dearly love to see Collins on the hardcourt (snicker) next season, lest the NBA--deservedly or not--face accusations of homophobia.

How times have changed.  An NBA player reveals that he is gay and not only does he not jeopardize his career, he may well have prolonged it.  In today's Times, even while columnist Frank Bruni laments the double-standard that condemns women as sluts even while celebrating men for sexual conquests, a front-page article discusses how numerous scandal-plagued men, including libidinous subjects Eliot Spitzer and David Petraeus, have found that the road to redemption leads through the groves of academe.  It seems non-normative sexual behavior may just be the stepping stone to greater triumphs.

All of which is to say that I, the Solipsist, would hereby like to declare myself a clam fetishist.  And if you stop reading my blog--indeed, if you don't each immediately coerce at least five more people to read it--you are intolerant bastards and should be ashamed of yourselves.  I thank you for your continued support.

Worse than the Cover-up

It has become a truth universally acknowledged that the cover-up is always worse than the crime.  This theory reached its apotheosis during the Lewinsky scandal.  While President Clinton's behavior with his overeager White House intern was, at best, inappropriate, it hardly reached the level of a crime, Lewinsky being a willing participant of legal age.  Had the President merely 'fessed up, he would have suffered some embarrassment, but the country would have been spared the drawn out spectacle of the impeachment and its concomitant paralysis of our entire system of governance.  To be sure, overzealous partisanship on the part of the Repuiblican-controlled Congress played no small part in the circus, but let's be generous and say that both parties behaved sub-optimally, and, again, President Clinton could have nipped the whole thing in the bud.

The cover-up was truly worse than the crime.

I thought of this today as I read a letter to the editor in today's paper, commenting on the latest revelations in the Penn State child abuse scandal.  Last week, a report condemned Penn State officials, including the late legendary coach Joe Paterno, for their inaction in response to Jerry Sandusky's actions.  Today's letter-writer asks, "Why do our political leaders, our business leaders and the heads of so many other important organizations and institutions never learn that the cover-up of a scandalous, illegal or immoral activity is almost always worse for those involved than the actual events being covered up?"

I submit that, in tbis particular case, we can safely conclude that the cover-up was not worse than the crime.

In the Line of Fire

Speaking of the whole Secret Service-Colombitute scandal, what exactly is the big deal?  I mean, sure, Secret Service agents--highly-trained bodyguards for the leader of the free world--acting like horny fratboys on spring break is probably not an image that the agency wants to promote.  At the same time, though, from what I've seen so far, the participants were off-duty and engaging in what is, at least in that part of Colombia, a legal activity.  The truly scandalous part of this story is that it only came to light because one agent was too cheap to spring for the nightly rate.  And if his protective detail can't afford to pay for hookers--well, that's really more Obama's fault than anything else, no?