"Jiminy God!" [View All]

[CatWoman]

Suzanne Craig's eyes reddened and filled with tears as she listened. After her husband's denial, she said, "I'm incensed that you would even consider such a piece of trash as a credible source."

To which Craig added, "Jiminy God!"

Before moving on to the next question, Craig turned to his wife and said, "Sorry, Hon."



That is from today’s Idaho Statesman, describing a scene in May when the paper played for Larry Craig and his wife a tape of an interview with a 40-year-old man who claimed to have had sex with Craig in Washington, D.C.’s Union Station.

The paper actually spent five months investigating “rumors about Craig dating to his college days,” and wrapped up its inquiry in May, without reporting anything. Without this week’s Minnesota restroom revelations, the Statesman’s story might never have run.

And when I pictured Suzanne Craig listening to that tape, I briefly wondered if the story ever should have run, and if the paper had crossed a line in, essentially, tracking down every person Craig may or may not have had sex with in his life.

But it is fair, of course, mainly because of the scope and severity of Craig’s hypocrisy. He opposes allowing gays to serve in the military, extending civil rights protections to gays in the workplace, or even allowing them to enter into civil unions. Needless to say, he supported an election year effort to amend the Constitution in 2004 to prohibit gay marriage. And beyond his simple floor votes, he’s missed no opportunity to position himself as the voice of “traditional” values, trumpeting endorsements from anti-gay groups that traffic in the ugliest of stereotypes and even basing his presidential endorsement this year – of Mitt Romney – on “family values.”

Larry Craig, who has been dogged by whispers about his sexuality since at least 1982, was asking for it. (And if it was his idea to bring his wife along for his Statesman interview in an effort to shame the paper out of asking embarrassing questions, well, that’s his own fault too.)

But this episode does raise the broader question of when it’s OK to out a public official. Craig’s case is easy, but most are probably more nuanced.

http://www.observer.com/2007/jiminy-god