The Crazy Man in the Closet Has a Chainsaw

Poor Larry Craig.

And I mean that. Can you imagine leading such a deeply closeted life that you look for sex in public washrooms, proposition Capitol Hill pages (as was alleged in the 1980s, see video at link), and do it all while married with children? There are people who live such lives.

The odd thing is, it's not clear to me what horrific law he broke. Sure Senator Craig appears to have been propositioning a man for sex in a public bathroom, which is dirty, disgusting and (in light of his marriage) immoral, but he was doing it in such a way that if he was propositioning me, I do not think I would even know it was being done. A tapping foot in the stall next door? I would assume someone was listening to an iPod or perhaps had constipation, nothing more.

According to a fellow I talked to yesterday at the local coffee house, however, there are whole Internet sites devoted to letting deeply closeted men know which bathrooms to meet at, and what signals to send.

Who knew?

More importantly, who cares?

It strikes me that Larry Craig is being blasted for signaling dogs with a dog whistle. Sure he may have been signaling his desire for unclean, anonymous, homosexual sex. But he was signaling in a way that only people who are interested in unclean, anonymous, homosexual sex could hear and understand.

Let me hasten to say that I am no friend of Larry Craig's. In fact, I think he is a horrible Member of Congress; one of the worst we have ever had.

But I am not against Larry Craig because he is a pathetic, deeply closeted, self-loathing, hypocrite. I tend to pity such people.

I am against Larry Craig because he is a pillager of our National Forests.

But don't take my word for it. Idaho's own Lewiston Tribune once labeled Craig "timber's errand boy."

As chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Forest Subcommittee, Larry Craig worked to elevate logging above any other use of our national forests -- above hunting, above wildlife habitat, above recreation, and above water quality.

Larry Craig's subcommittee staff director was Mark Rey, who was the former executive director of the American Forest and Paper Association. It was Larry Craig who engineered Mark Rey into a job as Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment -- a bit like putting a termite in charge of the church beams.

Meanwhile, Craig has also gone out of his way to wreck the salmon fishery at the urging of the National Hydropower Association, and he supports gutting the Endangered Species Act as well.

So pardon me, if I do not jump on the bandwagon to beat Larry Craig over the head because he's gay. You see, I already broke my baseball bat over his head because he has always been hell-bent on selling out our national birthright in order to put a little more loose change into the pockets of New York City Fat Cats and timber barons.

Screwing a man? Hell, he has been screwing the entire nation for years.

And not just you and I, but our children and grandchildren to come.

The bottom line is this: If Larry Craig wants to go "Brokeback Mountain," I could care less so long as places like Brokeback Mountain (i.e. the wild public lands of the American West) remain unviolated long after he is gone.

Let's string him up for the right thing, eh? Then we can slap the horse out from under him, shoot the swinging corpse, and bury the body deep.

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