A Republican must have reached a sorry condition when his plight
elicits sympathy from Alec Baldwin.
“I feel sorry for Larry Craig. Truly,” Baldwin wrote in a two-paragraph commentary at
HuffingtonPost.com on Saturday, the same day the Idaho Republican
announced that he would retire from the Senate.
Craig has been behind some of the most intolerant and
anti-gay legislation that a US Senator could put his mark on. Now
the very condition that drives countless gay men and women into the
closet, the bathroom stall or the hospital may have claimed Sen.
Craig himself…
No one can honestly say what Craig did or did not do….In the
new, jacked-up reality of airport ‘security,’ maybe those cops in
Minneapolis jumped the stall. But if Craig has the chance,
especially now that his Republican colleagues have cut his throat,
maybe he will experience a change of heart and realize that to be
gay, whether he is or not, ought not be a shameful thing, let alone
a crime, for anyone.
What is interesting in Baldwin’s argument is the transfer of
agency, rendering a U.S. senator a helpless victim of unnamed
others. According to Baldwin, Craig is a victim of intolerance, or
of overzealous police or — best of all — of Republicans who “cut
his throat.”
Moreover, Baldwin changes the subject entirely, from the
concrete facts of Craig’s disorderly conduct arrest to the abstract
question of whether homosexuality should “be a shameful thing, let
alone a crime.” But sexual preference is not being criminalized;
homosexuality is not a crime in Minnesota. “Jacked-up” or not,
airport police have better things to do than arrest people on
suspicion of homosexuality.
Let’s hear from the arresting officer, Sgt. David Karsnia: “The
Airport Police Department had received civilian complaints and has
made numerous arrests regarding sexual activity in the public
restroom.”
“Civilian complaints” — that is, law-abiding taxpayers had
visited the restroom, expecting to use the facility for its
intended and lawful purpose, only to discover other people using it
for other purposes. Were the complaining citizens all intolerant
bigots, crusading to criminalize homosexuality? Or did they just
want to use the restroom without being harassed or disturbed?
The Associated Press examined police reports in 41 arrests made
during the course of a four-month police effort launched in
response to these citizen complaints at the Minneapolis airport.
Arrestees ranged from airport employees to corporate executives,
and many of those arrested engaged in actions that Sgt. Karsnia
called “a signal often used by persons communicating a desire to
engage in sexual conduct.”
Such actions — including reaching his hand under the stall
divider and sliding his foot over to touch the foot of the
policeman in the adjacent stall — were what led to Craig’s arrest
and his subsequent guilty plea to a disorderly conduct charge.
Notice, however, Baldwin’s agnosticism on the undisputed facts
of the case: “No one can honestly say what Craig did or did not
do.” No one? Really? Does Baldwin mean to impugn the
honesty of the arresting officer?
IT IS, OF COURSE, POSSIBLE that Sgt. Karsnia misinterpreted Craig’s
actions. Yet who is a more competent authority on what the
“signals” are in the matter of airport restroom sex than a police
officer who has spent weeks assigned to the onerous duty of
preventing such activity? (In fact, after Craig’s arrest became
public knowledge, several gay writers verified Sgt. Karsnia’s
account of the toe-tapping toilet-tryst code.)
Even if Baldwin wishes to dispute Sgt. Karsnia’s interpretive
expertise, why must Baldwin implicitly accuse the officer of lying
by asserting that “no one can honestly say” what happened in that
airport restroom?
With his all-encompassing “no one can honestly say,” Baldwin
issues an open invitation to a destination far beyond the
non-judgmental tolerance that has become such common intellectual
terrain in 21st-century America. Baldwin invites the reader to join
him on a journey to a place where there are no facts, no
certainties, no concrete reality to disturb the liberal’s utopian
dream. To assert otherwise — to say that there are knowable facts
— is to be “intolerant.”
Baldwin’s fact-free utopia bears a certain (and perhaps
non-coincidental) resemblance to the Hollywood dream factory where
Baldwin obtained the fame that, at least in his own mind, makes him
a valuable political commentator. In his fantasy world, Baldwin is
free to ponder counterfactual scenarios — “maybe those
cops…jumped the stall”! — and to imagine an alternative universe
in which powerful politicians are helpless victims of vicious
throat-cutting Republicans who have made homosexuality itself a
crime.
The Land of No Facts exists, of course, only in the liberal’s
imagination, so the journey there doesn’t require any actual travel
— and thus no contact with the messy reality of airport restrooms.
Like a stranger’s hand reaching beneath the stall divider, Alec
Baldwin’s disorderly thoughts are an unsolicited intrusion into the
lives of Americans who have no choice but to live in the real
world.
