Wake up and smell the sex! It’s late Spring on the Potomac, and once again that unmistakable odeur erotique is in the air. So let’s dance around the Maypole, Brothers and Sisters, Lovers and Sinners: It’s time for Hookergate: Part II!
Those of us who enjoy the incriminating aroma of illicit sex between powerful political animals and well-heeled, high-priced call-girls might recall the sizzling bouquet of Hookergate: Part I, when about a year ago in this same Springy season, currently incarcerated Republican Congressman and former House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Randall “The Duke” Cunningham, as well as former CIA Director Porter Goss and his aptly named protégé Kyle “Dusty” Foggo of Foggy Bottom, all got caught with their proverbial pants down and their wieners frying on the barbie of the defense contractor-financed Poker ‘n’ Prostitutes parties at the notorious old Watergate Hotel.
Every good sexcapade deserves a sequel, and so this Spring, we roll out another randy Republican Randall Scandal. This episode stars United States Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias, the 65-year-old married former CEO of Eli Lily (when its stock rose 440% thanks to Prozac sales). Last Friday, Randall II resigned, shortly after confirming to ABC’s Brian Ross that he had indeed patronized the Pamela Martin escort service, owned by the notorious “DC Madame,” a.k.a. Miz Julia, a.k.a., Deborah Jean Palfrey, former law student and entrepreneur. Palfrey describes her company as “a high-end adult fantasy firm which offered legal sexual and erotic services across the spectrum of adult sexual behavior.” The Feds say it was a call-girl service that dispatched college-educated hotties to Beltway clients paying some $300 per hour.
Of course, some Repugs are happy that, after the gay humiliations of Congressman Mark Foley, the Reverend Ted Haggard and rumors of Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert’s multiple White House sleepovers, this scandal involves some adult women. Nevertheless, opponents of the Bush regime should also rejoice to see such prototypical hypocrites and warmongers go down in the scarlet flames of a call-girl scandal.
Before I get into the juicy bits, let me just say that I believe prostitution should be decriminalized. I think people should have a right to have sex for love, sex for fun, sex for dinner and a movie, sex for a part in a movie, sex for yachts and opals (my personal faves) or sex for cash on the table, if all parties consent to the deal. I believe that this is such a sacred inalienable right that it should not simply be “legalized,” implying that the government could change their minds and make it illegal again. It should be decriminalized so that there is no more criminalization of selling sex than there is of selling food. Maybe you need a license or a permit to sell certain kinds of food in certain places, and the same could go for selling sex. But there’s nothing criminal about opening up a restaurant, nor should there be about opening a brothel.
I also believe that people engaged in all of the above activities deserve privacy and confidentiality, especially in the harsh, intolerant climate of modern society. However, when our elected representatives and public servants use billions of dollars in the taxpayers’ money to pay war profiteers to badly equip a rotten war, who then, as a “thank you,” provide them with call girls at poker games, such as seems to have occurred in Hookergate I, all bets are off. These johns need to be exposed, not because they pay for sex, but because they spend our tax money on war, then get sex as a kickback.
Cheesy Sex
Now we come to Hookergate II: Again, I would never “out” individual hookers or johns. However, since a couple of the guys on Miz Julia’s List have already been revealed by Palfrey, ABC News and, in the case of Tobias, the john himself, I feel these characters are fair game for discussion. So, when ABC’s Ross called Tobias to ask him why his number was on Palfrey’s phone records, the Deputy Secretary explained that he had called Pamela Martin “to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage.”
Of course, Randy … Was that Swedish or Shiatzu? Do you really think we believe you had these $300 an hour “gals” come over to rub your shoulders? What, without a “happy ending”?
Tobias went on to say there had been “no sex.” That’s possible (and supports Palfrey’s contention), certainly if you go by the Clintonian definition of “no sex” which could include anything but penis-in-vagina intercourse, leaving a potpourri of manual, oral and even anal delights you could enjoy with Miz Julia’s “masseuses.” And isn’t fellatio really just a throat massage of your aching joint anyway? Prostate massages are also very popular these days.
Then Tobias told Ross that he was done with the Pamela Martin “gals” anyway, and recently had been using another service “with Central American gals” (all with Green Cards, right Randy?). He further explained that arranging for the “gals” to come to the “condo” was “like ordering pizza.”
Wake up and smell the sex! It smells likeDomino’s? Would you like extra cheese with your sausage, Mr. Deputy Secretary?
Obviously, Secretary Tobias is just the kind of pathetic, clueless, rude crude dude that really needs to go to prostitutes, since nonprofessional women, including, probably, his own wife, won’t put up with his boorish attitude toward sex. And why should they? You really should pay a woman to tolerate that kind of talk, not to mention smile andmassage you. And yes, you should be able to pay for it legally. Because even jerks like Tobias need love, or at least a little sexual release (pizza sex?), and why shouldn’t they get it? That’s exactly what prostitutes are for, to lend (well, rent) a helping hand, mouth or other body part, for a mutually agreed-upon price.
However, Tobias is not just any ill-mannered john with a stiff joint in need of a little “massage.” The former Deputy Secretary of State is the quintessential Tartuffian hypocrite and, not just because he’s married. After all, how do we know he wasn’t ordering up “a couple of hot hookers no anchovies” with his wife’s blessing? She may well have been happy to have the old fart’s sexual needs taken care of by Pamela Martin’s gals while she went shopping, played piano and got her own “massages” from the pool boy.
Tobias’ hypocrisy is much more far-reaching and globally destructive than his personal “infidelity,” and it smells awfully like the stench of murderous mendacity that rises up from the man who appointed him and the whole stinking gang of thieves and thugs he represents. Before he was promoted to Deputy Secretary of State, Tobias was appointed as the first United States Global AIDS Coordinator by President George W. Bush on July 2, 2003 . Interestingly, this happened to be the same sunny summer afternoon that Cowboy George goaded insurgents threatening to attack American soldiers in Iraq to “bring them on.” Sexy, huh?
As America’s first AIDS Czar, Tobias faithfully promoted the Bush administration’s rigid, irrational “abstinence only” policies, pleasing Bush’s zealously anti-birth control Religious Right supporters. Soon he was promoted to Director of Foreign Assistance and administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, holding the rank of Deputy Secretary of State, reporting directly to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Before touring African countries for an AIDS program, Tobias said that his message was “not either ‘Be abstinent or here are condoms, take your pick.’ It is a message of ‘Be abstinent’Statistics show that condoms really have not been very effective.”
Guess that depends on the meaning of the word “very.” A 2003 Centers for Disease Control study showed that if a latex condom is used correctly every time you have sex, it is highly effective in providing protection against HIV. The evidence for this is clearest in studies of couples in which one person is infected with HIV and the other not. i.e. “discordant couples”. In a study of discordant couples in Europe, among 123 couples who reported consistent condom use, none of the uninfected partners became infected. In contrast, among the 122 couples who used condoms inconsistently, 12 of the uninfected partners became infected. Of course, the Bushies would probably discount this study since it was done in the “Old Europe.” So does that mean Tobias rode bareback with the pizza gals? Does it matter? Whether he was having pepperoni rubbed on his cajones or getting his sausage massaged, it’s clear that Tobias was not practicing what he preached.
Why should he have? He knew that the “abstinence only” message that he preached throughout his tenure as the Bushite AIDS Czar had been proven to be spectacularly ineffective. He probably also knew it was setting large portions of the human race back quite a few years. Withholding condoms and accurate sex information from people who badly need it has helped transmit hundreds, if not thousands of new cases of HIV/AIDS. Tobias might not have been as brutal a killer as his war criminal bosses, but his sanctimonious policies were and still are ruthless deathdealers.
How much more hypocritical can this Randall Scandal get? Well, Tobias also introduced a policy requiring all anti-AIDS grant recipients to take an anti-prostitution “loyalty oath,” swearing that they are firmly opposed to all hookers, call-girls, streetwalkers and really cute pizza gals with extra sauce. Tobias’ moralizing “do as I say, not as I do” policy has greatly hampered the work of the many NGOs that work in AIDS prevention and reproductive health and often provide sex education and health services to prostitutes. It’s not easy to venture into an African village or a South Asian slum with life-saving sex educational materials for working women, when everybody knows you have signed a pledge to oppose and eliminate prostitution in all its earthly forms.
This was and still is a murderous, benighted, disinformation program. So, let us rejoice that the hypocrite who operated it for the Bush Gang has hung himself out to dry, dance around his exposed Maypole and celebrate Spring!
Shock & Awe Me, Baby!
Of course, it’s too bad it isn’t George himself being discovered in flagrante delicto with former White House correspondent and gay hooker specializing in softball questions and hardball military fetishes, Jeff Gannon a.k.a. Jim Guckert who, for still unexplained reasons, received those multiple overnight White House passes. Now that would have legs …
But the story’s not over, scandal lovers; Miz Julia does have a few other political wieners to fry. She says she had 10,000 clients contained in lists which weigh in at “46 pounds of detailed and itemized phone records.” Washington attorney Montgomery Blair Sibley, who is representing her in a civil asset-forfeiture case that is now on hold because of the criminal indictment, is already trying to drag DC’s most public john and foot fetishist Dick Morris into the game.
Then there’s Mr. “Shock & Awe,” Harlan Ullman. Palfrey claims he was a “regular customer” of hers whom she plans to subpoena. Ullman says “these allegations do not dignify a response.”
It was back in March of 2003 when Bush was threatening to invade Iraq that I first heard Ullman’s theory of “Shock & Awe.” Back then, I called it “The Bukkake Bombing Crusade,” even though I had no idea that Harlan was patronizing Miz Julia’s gals. Ullman’s apocalyptic vision of an enormously destructive über-military attack is described in breathless, rather pornographic detail with an emphasis on fetishized dominance and submission, in his 1996 book “Shock & Awe,” featuring phrases on the use of “overwhelming decisive force,” “dominant maneuvers” and “spectacular displays of power” to “render the adversary impotent.”
Some consider Ullman to be a sort of 21st century Dr. Strangelove on crack, giddy that his theory was taken up by the Bushies as the plan to invade Iraq. But Ullman was not completely cracked. Like many military men, he did not support Bush’s invasion, seeing no proof of Saddam’s links to Al Qaeda nor any evidence that he had usable WMD. Alas, but the Bushies didn’t care what Ullman thought. They just liked his bitchin’, snappy-titled theory. It’s an old story: Be careful what you create, lest someone use it for its very worst possible purposes. The earnest scientists who built the A-bomb may not have foreseen President Truman actually dropping it on hundreds of thousands of civilian men, women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And Ullman may not have envisioned Bush II using his blueprint for massive destruction as a catchy promo for his bukkake-bombing crusade perpetrated upon a country that hadn’t even threatened us.
Ullman certainly didn’t seem to have envisioned being caught with his cruise missile showing. His response that Palfrey’s claim “doesn’t dignify a response” doesn’t exactly reassure us with “overwhelming decisive force.” Well, let’s give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it’ll turn out that he just invited the Pamela Martin ladies over to play Risk. Yeah, pizza, war games and massage in a condo without a condom. Whatever he actually did, he’s busted. And it is a kind of poetic justice. Ullman’s war porn prescription for explosive disaster is just what that diplomatically dickless Shrub of a man needed to discharge an American Apocalypse upon the Cradle of Civilization.
War is Porn for the Mainstream Media
Speaking of hooking, didn’t the media lapped up Bush’s War just like a fleet of Pamela Martin’s educated whores? It was nauseating to watch them all get down on their perma-pressed knees to suck dumbo Dubya’s military Big Stick in the heady days when the war was new and the “mission” seemed sorta-kinda “accomplished” despite those pesky insurgent attacks. It’s even more nauseating to watch the media continue to try to suck it even when Bush can’t get it up anymore. But they can’t stop. War is porn for journalists. War sells just like sex sells, only its more “serious” because in our sick society, killing in public is far more respectable than fucking in public.
And so, Ullman will proudly go on TV to discuss the monumentally destructive uses of “Shock & Awe.” But as for the DC Madame’s allegations–which might be embarrassing, but didn’t kill anyone–he “won’t dignify them with a response.” Well, not until he’s subpoenaed.
Dr. SUSAN BLOCK is a sex educator, cable TV host and author of The 10 Commandments of Pleasure. Visit her BRAND NEW BLOGGAMY & POST COMMENTS at http://www.drsusanblock.com/blog/blog.asp Send comments to liberties@blockbooks.com.
