Crime.org - God Hates Scammers - c/o MikeMann.com

Summer in the mid-Atlantic means trips to the Delaware shore, with all the saltwater taffy and skee-ball the Holy Prepuce can eat. And no afternoon at Rehoboth Beach would be complete without the quaint commercialism of the billboard boats and airplane banners hawking the latest Grotto Pizza two-for-one or $1.75 Nattys Ladies’ Nite in Ocean City.

Recent beach-goers may have been scratching their heads, however, at the unusual message currently saturating the floating and airborne media:

Crime.org
God Hates Scammers
c/o MikeMann.com

Who is the mysterious, eponymous Mike Mann, to whose online care the Almighty has entrusted this message of condemnation? And who are the “scammers” meriting the awesome domain name “Crime.org,” not to mention all this expensive promotion? Two questions; two mad, mad rabbit holes.

Mike Mann is evidently someone whose marriage did not go well, and whose divorce went worse. Other problematic relationships in Mr. Mann’s life appear to involve his father, stepmother, sister, brother-in-law, ex-girlfriends, Rabbi, divorce lawyers, psychiatrists, childhood acquaintances, and homeowners’ association members.

You might assume that a high-value domain name like Crime.org would belong to a nationwide crime prevention or victims’ rights organization. But there you would be wrong. As it turns out, Crime.org is the private mouthpiece of Mr. Mann, and it is a tour de force of crazy.

“If you love America and her freedoms you came to the right place,” visitors learn upon arrival. In the 5800+ words that follow, visitors also learn Mr. Mann’s opinions on the various people and organizations that have “scammed” him over the years, as well as his thoughts on child rearing, “phony mystics,” the First Amendment, and most of all the Montgomery County, Maryland, family court system, which according to Mr. Mann constitutes “a horror movie of a vicious, insanely greedy, malpracticing, white, suburban, ignorant group of completely self-absorbed elitist self-entitled phony professionals ceaselessly attacking someone else’s wallet and family to proudly proclaim their lying group narrative and stolen cash.”

5800 words are only the beginning, because at various points throughout his screed Mr. Mann includes hyperlinks to Google Docs files featuring additional, self-contained sub-screeds.

Mr. Mann’s ex-wife, we are told, is a “serial homewrecker” as well as

vindictive, hormonal, jealous, greedy, psychopathic, idiotic, violent, [a] bona-fide rage-o-holic: (And just maybe factually in the closet, menopausal, drunk, [a] compulsive pathological liar, [a] huge blabbermouth, unemployable, ineducable, unconscionable, unintelligible, filthy, overindulged, overfed, overcompensated, self-entitled, coddled, dramatic, pretentious, undisciplined, completely unaccountable, wasteful,—and [someone who] sleeps with MARRIED men with unsuspecting wives……in Tennessee.)

That the Manns’ divorce was less than amicable can be verified externally. A bit of internet sleuthing leads one to the Maryland Judiciary’s public docket for the Manns’ case, containing some 260 entries within which the word “contempt” appears 30 times, the word “incarceration” appears 5 times, and the words “Motion To Enjoin and Restrain Plaintiff from Engaging in Threatening, Harassing and Disrespectful Behavior Towards [his daughter’s] Court Appointed Therapist” appear twice.

Oddly, a more cogent recitation of Mr. Mann’s side of the divorce story, authored by one “Tiffany Reynolds,” appears on the website of the Adyayan Trust, an Indian NGO with no obvious connection to Mike Mann. Crime.org appears not to be Mr. Mann’s first attempt to air his divorce-related grievances online. Still indexed on Google, although sadly defunct, are www.save[the Manns’ teenage daughter, whose name I will not repeat here].com, and www.[Mrs. Mann’s full name, which I also will not repeat here]IsEvil.com.

Other revelations on Crime.org: a Dewey Beach masseuse and the proprietor of a Maryland dance studio (presumably both Mr. Mann’s ex-girlfriends) are, in fact, whores; the Rabbi and Cantor at a prominent Washington, D.C. synagogue are likely pedophiles; Mormons get a bad name but are actually very little trouble and high performers; and Mr. Mann’s former divorce attorneys are “like the Washington Generals basketball team lining up to take it from behind from the Harlem Globetrotters.”

Despite his lifelong abuse at the hands of family members, clergy, government, and members of the learned professions, spot number one on Mr. Mann’s shit list is reserved for a certain Mr. B, a board member of the North Indian Beach Community Association. (As above, because Crime.org will no doubt appear as Exhibit One in a number of soon-to-be-filed defamation suits, I shall not repeat full names here.)

Mr. Mann’s 10,616-word Google Docs diatribe against Mr. B. and the “puppet government” NIBCA is difficult to follow, but the upshot seems to be that various people want to stop various other people from building new houses, driving vehicles on the beach, and opening or closing roads. Mr. B’s position in these matters is contrary to the position of Mike Mann, and for this transgression he is outed on Crime.org as “[p]ervert [Mr. B] . . . sexual predator [Mr. B.] who dominated many workspaces and illegally unconsentually sexually assaulted, and permanently traumatized many young professionals in unsuspecting Rehoboth Beach businesses on many occasions over a long period.”

What I find most delightful about Crime.org is the disconnect between the effects Mike Mann presumably imagines it will have on readers and the actual reaction it is likely to elicit from any sane, WiFi-equipped beach-goer curious enough to bite. You can just imagine Mr. Mann watching from the boardwalk as the summer’s first billboard floated by, gleefully mouthing “yes! Yes! YES! Now it can be told! Now revenge is mine!”

What’s so delicious is his evident lack of insight that, far from settling scores and shaming the “scammers,” Crime.org succeeds only in making Mike Mann look like a lunatic. A lunatic with a media budget, mind you, and assets to settle an upcoming barrage of lawsuits, but a lunatic all the same.

I shall end this post the way Mike Mann ends everything he writes on the Internet: I will never stop cussing, screaming and documenting the truth, it’s the first amendment, if you don’t like it go live in China or Saudi Arabia.

Tampering

Welcome to the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University! Thank you for attending this ‎year’s Senior Executives in State and Local Government intensive summer program. As you know, the program is ‎based around real-life case studies of government officials like yourselves exercising their problem solving and ‎decision making skills. ‎

So let’s jump right in with a little quiz to get a feel for the skills you and your colleagues may already bring to the ‎table. Our quiz is based on a case study of Jack B. Johnson, former Prince George’s County, Maryland County ‎Executive, and his wife, Councilmember Leslie Johnson.
‎
‎Background: You are County Executive in a large suburban county bordering on Washington, D.C. You ‎have just accepted $15,000 in cash from a real estate developer, when two FBI agents burst into the room with a ‎search warrant and seize the money. You get into your County vehicle, activate the emergency lights, and start ‎driving toward home. Your wife calls your cell phone and tells you that FBI agents are banging on the door of your ‎house. ‎

‎Problem: In your house is a $100,000 check from the same developer and a boatload of cash.‎

‎Question One: Circle the correct answer. You should / should not have the following telephone conversation:‎

‎Your Wife:‎ Oh, is it the box with the liquor?‎

‎You:‎ Yeah, and, it... Yeah, and look in another box. You'll see a check in there. Yeah, that's right.‎

‎Your Wife:‎ Yes, there's a check in there.‎

‎You:‎ Okay. Tear it up. That's the only thing you have to do. Now go down... You..., you got the money?‎

‎Your Wife: ‎Yeah, wait a minute. I got the cash. Do you have that cash down in the basement still too?‎

‎You:‎ Yes.‎

‎Your Wife: ‎Okay, I gotta move that too. Where do you want me to move it?‎

‎You:‎ Put it in... Put it in your um, put it in your bra and walk out or something with it. I don't know what to ‎do with it. Um...‎

‎Your Wife:‎ Whatta you want me to do with the check?‎ You hear 'em banging?‎

‎You:‎ Tear up the check and..., um..., and, and um..., and... , and um, tear it up. Just..., just tear it up.‎

‎Your Wife:‎ They're saying FBI Jack.‎

‎You:‎‎ Yeah, I know... , I know. That's why I'm telling you. [Developer A] set me up.‎

‎Your Wife:‎ You want me to put it down the toilet?‎

‎You:‎ Yes.‎

‎Your Wife:‎ You want me to flush it?‎

‎You:‎‎ Yeah, flush that.‎

‎[The sound of a toilet flushing in background.]‎

‎Your Wife:‎ All right. Now whatta you want me to do?‎

‎You:‎‎ Go downstairs and get...‎

‎Your Wife:‎ I'm tellin' 'em I'm not dressed.‎

‎You:‎‎ Yeah, tell 'em you're not dressed. You will be dressed in five minutes then you open...‎

‎Your Wife:‎ Okay, and I have the cash.‎

‎You:‎‎ Okay. Leave that little cash. That's okay. That's a little bit... , a little cash. Put it in your underwear.‎

‎Your Wife:‎ I have it in my bra. And what about...‎

‎You:‎‎ Huh?‎

‎Your Wife: ‎... that other cash though?‎

‎You:‎‎ Um, [unintelligible].‎

‎Your Wife:‎ You gotta tell me what to do with it Jack.‎

‎You:‎ Leslie.‎

‎Your Wife:‎ What do you want me to do with this money? They are banging?‎

‎You:‎‎ Put... , put... , put...‎

‎Your Wife:‎ What do you want me to do with it?‎

‎You: ‎‎... put it... , put it in your panties and walk out of the house.‎

‎Your Wife:‎ No, but I mean all this cash Jack.‎

‎You:‎ Put it...‎

‎Your Wife:‎ I got the one from down...‎

‎You:‎‎ Put it in your panties Leslie.‎

‎Your Wife:‎ Oh my God. Okay.‎

‎You:‎‎ Yeah, stuff it in your panties. Yeah, tell 'em you were in the bathroom. Right? I'll be home in a minute ‎too. Okay. And then just... , and then just open the door and sit down. Okay?‎

‎[Upon entering the home, FBI agents search your wife’s person and ‎recover $79,600 ‎in United States currency from her underwear and bra.]‎

‎Question Two: Fill in the blank. County Executive Johnson pled guilty this afternoon to extortion, ‎conspiracy, and tampering with ___________.‎

‎Question Three: Fill in the blank. When FBI agents are investigating you for official corruption and have a ‎warrant to search your house, there’s a good chance they have also tapped your __________.‎

Gilbert Gottfried and the Discourse on Disaster

A Portrait of Gilbert Gottfried with a Dead Aflac Duck
on His Head by Dan Lacey (www.faithmouse.com). 
Used with permission of the artist.

As the world confronts escalating conflict and looming nuclear disaster, the Holy Prepuce has been ruminating on a more consequential matter: the Gilbert Gottfried sacking.

Why, exactly, did “tweeting” a series of earthquake / tsunami jokes get Gottfried summarily canned as the voice of AFLAC? Gottfried, after all, famously broke the ice at a post-9-11 Friar’s Club roast by recounting “The Aristocrats,” the classic improvised litany of incest, scatophilia, and a rotating menu of other horribles. So it’s not as if AFLAC was allergic to controversial material.

I suspect that Gottfried ran up against an unwritten rule of comedy: disaster jokes are not allowed to have identifiable authors.

The re-telling of disaster jokes is permissible because they are both ubiquitous and anonymous. Anyone of my generation could tell you, for example, how we knew Christa McAuliffe had dandruff, what “NASA” stands for, and why there were no showers on the Challenger. Elliot Orring’s “Jokes and the Discourse on Disaster” (1987) collects fourteen such examples, and I found no more than a handful unfamiliar twenty-five years after the Challenger explosion. Some were undoubtedly adapted from prior maritime or aviation accidents; several I have since heard re-purposed for Princess Diana or 9-11. Folklorists collect this material: Bill Ellis’s “A Model for Collecting and Interpreting World Trade Center Disaster Jokes” (October 5, 2001) identifies twelve discreet “cycles” addressing a range of events including the Kennedy assassination, the Jonestown suicides, and the Lockerbie PanAm 103 bombing.

The universality of these jokes allows us to rationalize their creation as an instinctive defense mechanism with a plausible genesis in evolutionary psychology. The impulse to detach from tragedy through humor serves as a counterbalance to our empathy and attachment, traits essential to social animals but paralyzing if unchecked in times of crisis. Laugh today about yesterday’s sabre-tooth tiger attack and you pull yourself together to hunt mastodon, eat, and live to pass along your genes.

When these jokes seem to rise from the zeitgeist, the telling itself can become the primary gag, the observational meta-joke that human beings are sick bastards who find this funny. It works because we’re all in this together: I’ve heard this one, you’ve heard that one, someone like us must have come up with this; everyone’s responsible so no one is.

But when Gottfried tweets Japan jokes as a professional comedian, there’s him and there’s us. We have no ownership, no liability as the kind of people who think this stuff up. He’s the sick bastard who finds this funny, we’re decent folk who need to take a stand against this trash.

I also think Gottfried is a victim of the Comedian On Twitter syndrome. Social media’s low-cost marketing comes at a price for comedians: fans expect free, instant funny. And so the temptation is to brain-dump ideas that might otherwise never see the light of day.

Looking through Gottfried’s tweets, and putting aside any question of taste, most of them are poorly constructed and don’t really work as jokes. A few would be salvageable with editing. One or two seem to stand on their own:

I asked a girl in Japan to have sex with me. She said “okay, but you'll have to sleep in the wet spot.”

This would be a decent mid-set gag, a supplemental laugh on an established subject. It trades on a mixing of taboos: sex and disaster, but in an understated, minimally-graphic fashion. It turns on clever incongruities of type, number, and scale. And it’s a rather sweet homage to its “sleep in the wet spot” precursor jokes, those Sexual Revolution-era meditations on negotiating casual sex and its aftermath in that brave new gender-equal world.

Here is the best of the lot:

I was talking to my Japanese real estate agent. I said “is there a school in this area.” She said “not now, but just wait."

The central equivocation is actually a stroke of genius: the ambiguity in meaning is possible only in the apocalyptic conditions of this specific moment. Delivering the punchline in the agent’s voice furthers the uncertainty: Does she intend the meaning we perceive? If so, does she take Gottfried’s question so literally as to assume a flotsam schoolhouse would meet his needs? What is her attitude toward the catastrophe if she is breezily offering its consequences as a selling point?

The fundamentals are also solid: a classic setup-line-punchline, with a strong core incongruity between mundane and extraordinary elements. I award bonus points for the dependence on visual imagination, generating dual meaning through reliance on imagery highly specific to the present moment when footage of the deluge is seared into our collective consciousness.

Indeed, the imagery invoked softens the joke by substituting masonry for human flesh. Elliot Orring points out that a defining feature of the Challenger disaster was the “shield[ing]” of “the view of that human disaster miles above the earth . . . by flame and the opaque wall of the shuttle cabin,” whereas “beyond these speakable images of flame and falling debris lay the imaginable but unspeakable images of horrific trauma and mutilation.” Many Challenger jokes operated, Orring argues, by “forc[ing] us to confront what lies behind the speakable media images that are created or manipulated for our consumption.”

The disaster in Japan was not so antiseptic: cameras covered every angle of the destruction, making blanket censorship of death impossible. Gottfried’s text in some fashion works the reverse of a Challenger joke. Instead of laying bare an obscured mayhem, it renders the devastation more palatable by focusing on a cartoonish inanimate object, without speculation as to what could lie inside.

Pre-Twitter, Gottfried might have crossed out five of his ideas, tried the rest at a small club on a Tuesday night, and wound up with the “school” bit as the one piece of usable material. It’s an excellent joke, standing alone, whose merits may render the subject matter forgivable. But by surrounding this pearl with an unvarnished barrage of lesser attempts, Gottfried came across as desperate for laughs, and his use of the subject exploitative.

I’m a tough crowd.

Adam Wheeler, Conceptual Artist

Why can't prosecutors understand that indicted "Harvard Faker" Adam Wheeler is in reality a conceptual artist of the highest caliber? Ignorant accusations painting Wheeler as a simple fraudster who conned his way into Harvard malign his genius burlesque on the follies of elite academe.

For evidence of Wheeler's true purpose, one need look no further than the pastiche e-mail sent to his fellow transfer students upon their arrival at Harvard:

My own, brief, assessment of my character is that I am sententious, crypto-tendentious, slightly pedantic with a streak of contrarianism, a fascination with any pedagogical approach to Shakespeare, and a decent sense of humor . . . . [I view sports as] . . . a neighborhood faux-pas of epic proportions. . . . [At MIT], I was, to put it poorly, suckled upon the teat of disdain. That being said (fortified by a reflexive snort), I was inspired thereby to apply to Harvard, where the humanities, in short, are not, simpliciter, a source of opprobrium.

Who except a newly-arrived transfer student, overwhelmed at her good fortune to be accepted at a school where people actually talk like that, would not recognize this as the tongue-in-cheek drivel of a satirist impostor?

A con man seeking a Harvard degree might have started as Wheeler did, posing as a frustrated MIT comp lit major seeking a transfer up Mass Ave. But from there on, the paradigm fits Wheeler's oeuvre not a bit. In a virtuoso display of commitment to character, Wheeler immersed himself in the rôle of a comically incompetent hustler, planting a series of over-the-top "blunders" in service of two conceptual theses:

1. The ego validation of a wunderkind-at-my-institution is so intoxicating that elite scholars will swallow the most outrageous fabrications in support of that narrative;

2. The scholarly output of elite academe is for the most part complete bullshit.

Where a con man would have upgraded his pedigree to include some regional prep school outside the usual Harvard orbit, Wheeler brazenly selected Phillips Andover, where the college counselors are on Harvard Admissions' speed-dial. A con man would have forged not-quite-perfect SAT reports and transcripts; Wheeler awarded himself a perfect 1600 and straight As. The latter detail was particularly well-selected: MIT freshmen do not receive letter grades in their first semester.

Like Wheeler, a con man might have forged references from MIT professors--but a con man would have signed them with the names of actual MIT faculty. Wheeler signed the names of professors at Bowdoin College, the school that suspended him in 2007 for academic dishonesty. A con man claiming to attend MIT would have shown up to be interviewed in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Wheeler requested a local interview at Bowdoin. When the interviewer inquired what an MIT freshman was doing in Brunswick, Maine during the academic year, Wheeler explained that he was assisting a Bowdoin professor with a book.

Once into Harvard, an institution from which one can easily graduate without once coming under adult scrutiny, a con man would spend the next three years laying low. If not quite up to the academic task, he would plagiarize or otherwise cheat to the least extent necessary to achieve passing marks. Another Wall Street analyst would be minted, with no one the wiser.

Wheeler's project required a different approach. As the climax of his performance, Wheeler applied for a Rhodes Scholarship, the most prestigious in the English-speaking world. True to form, Wheeler forged recommendations from Harvard professors, forged a Harvard transcript showing perfect grades, and--a master stroke--submitted a resume largely cribbed from chaired professor James R. Russell.

If the resume in Wheeler's Rhodes application is anything like the one he submitted for an internship at The New Republic, it boasts of Wheeler's mastery of French, Old English, Classical Armenian, and Old Persian. It also details his six invited lectures, including "From Parthia to Robin Hood: The Armenian Version of the Epic of the Blind Man’s Son (Köroghlu)" and "The Body in the Garden: The Metapoetics of Husbandry from More to Marvell." The resume promises two forthcoming books, including Mappings, Unmappings, and Remappings, abstracted as follows:

Critical work that has attempted to explain the experience of geographical and textual space in modern writing has focused predominantly on the map as an analytical tool of orientation that makes formal writing structures legible. My dissertation, however, articulates a positive and generative potential in the experience of getting lost. Disorientation, then, allows us to come to terms with the difficulty of modernist literature from the ground level--to view these works not as an abstraction seen from the "God’s eye" perspective that is implicit in most maps, nor a teleological outcome of the Enlightenment seen from retrospect. By restoring the experience of disorientation, I argue that getting lost becomes a radical discourse that reflects back to us how we orient ourselves--what we pay attention to as we move through physical space and how we construe meaning as we move through a text from page to page.

This is obviously complete nonsense. But no less obvious is Wheeler's artistic message in submitting it: it is exactly the sort of nonsense liable to garner a scholarship from a fawning Rhodes committee.

As was no doubt Wheeler's design, the Rhodes application proved a bridge too far. The inevitable investigation revealed not only his antics in gaining admission to Harvard, but a plagiarized Junior thesis for which Wheeler had been awarded the Hoopes Prize for outstanding scholarship. Rather than face disciplinary proceedings, Wheeler withdrew from Harvard.

But in an audacious epilogue, Wheeler began his transfer routine anew, applying to both Yale and Brown. In a letter of recommendation from Harvard's McLean Hospital, Wheeler praised his work in an internship for which he had in fact been rejected after submitting a falsified application. To his principal letter of recommendation, Wheeler signed the name of the very Harvard dean who had confronted Wheeler with his Rhodes fabrications.

Alas, my profession is one of philistines, and instead of lionizing Wheeler's artistic contributions, the Middlesex County District Attorney's Office charged him with four counts of larceny, eight counts of identity fraud, seven counts of falsifying an endorsement or approval, and one count of "pretending to hold a degree."

I call on Massachusetts' esteemed judiciary to put an end to this assault on the First Amendment. Free Adam Wheeler!

An Open Letter to danah boyd (an Ethnographer Who Does Not Capitalize Her Name)

Dear Dr. boyd:

Congratulations on achieving position #1 in the "Social Media Ethnographers" tab of every reporter's Rolodex. As April's Facebook F8 conference approached, I predicted an electronic avalanche of danah boyd, and the media did not disappoint. Your ubiquity is confirmed to me not only by Google News search but also, no doubt dearer to your heart, by re-posted snippets of your wisdom bubbling through my Facebook "stream."

Now, if I may, a small anecdote:

I once attended the recital of an Arnold, Missouri dance school, and discovered that one of the older girls had listed herself in the program as simply "Essence." Essence was in several numbers, and for each one the billing read something like, "Mary Jane Jaworski, Erin O'Sullivan, Joanne Simmons, Essence." And I have to say, Essence was a pretty good dancer. But instead of thinking "how nice for this girl that she dances so well," all I could think was "you do not get to call yourself 'Essence' in the recital program of an Arnold, Missouri dance school."

Essence came vividly back to mind some twenty years later, as I encountered the following sentence in an October, 2009 CNN.com article:

Ethnographer danah boyd, who does not capitalize her name, said she watched the class divide emerge while conducting research of American teens' use of social networks in 2006.

Any insights I might have been developing on the subject of the article (socioeconomic stratification in social media use) flew through the windshield as my attention screeched to an abrupt "wait, what?" A quick reversing, then, again: "Ethnographer danah boyd, who does not capitalize her name." It was now time for me to Google you, because anyone who "does not capitalize her name" to the point of instructing a CNN reporter that she "does not capitalize her name" must surely maintain a personal website on which she she explains why.

And you do. Visitors can learn that you legally changed your name to "danah michele boyd" as the result of a "mental tangent" in which you pondered:

What's in a name? What's its worth? Why is it so valuable that it is to be capitalized? Down this path, i started thinking about names as descriptors versus separate entities. Isn't a name simply another unique adjective for me? A label? I am not my name; my name is simply another descriptor of me. Should i weight that descriptor as anything more valuable than the other adjectives used to describe me?

Well, danah, to begin with: no, your name is not "simply another unique adjective" for you. As it happens, names are not adjectives at all. They are proper nouns, which we capitalize in English probably to reflect the special attention that humans like to pay to other humans, the places they live, the groups they form, and the unique objects they create. Surely an ethnographer of social media knows that.

What interests me more is that your "mental tangent" was an outgrowth of an earlier decision to stop capitalizing the pronoun "I":

I was always bothered by the fact that the first person singular pronoun is capitalized in english -- i always thought it was quite self-righteous. . . . Ever since i was a kid, i was told that the world does not revolve around me, yet our written culture is telling me something entirely different. . . . i gave up on giving it such a special level of importance -- it is referring to me, right? I thought an attempt at minimalizing the individualization could start at home.

In order to test the sincerity of your belief that "the world does not revolve around" you, I suggest an experiment. First spend ½ hour or so poking around CNN.com. Then report back as to how many other names appearing on that site require explanatory parentheticals in order for editor, reader, and reporter to clarify that pretension, rather than slovenly proofreading, is at work.

Here is the list of people who get to spell their names without capitalization:

1. Celebrity poets of the 20th Century

2. Lesbian Vegetarian Canadian country music stars

3. Postmodern chroniclers of the Black female experience in America

Oh, I'm sorry... it looks like "ethnographers of social media" is not on the list.

Yours Sincerely,
Holy Prepuce

Wisconsin County Celebrates Send-a-Sex-Ed-Teacher-to-Jail Week

Just when you thought the forces opposing sensible sex education couldn't stoop any lower, the self-described evangelical District Attorney of Juneau County, Wisconsin sends this letter to county school board members and district administrators. In his correspondence, DA Scott Southworth offers his "review" of Wisconsin's new sex education guidelines. And what friendly advice does the good District Attorney offer? Only that teachers who follow the guidelines might just wind up in the pokey courtesy of, well, Scott Southworth:

[I]f a teacher instructs any student aged 16 or younger how to utilize contraceptives under circumstances where the teacher knows the child is engaging in sexual activity with another child--or even where the "natural and probable consequences" of the teacher's instruction is to cause that child to engage in sexual intercourse with a child--that teacher can be charged [with contributing to the delinquency of a child.] The teacher need not be deliberately encourage the illegal behavior: he or she only need be aware that his or her instruction is "practically certain" to cause the child to engage in the illegal act. Moreover, the teacher could be charged with this crime even if the child does not actually engage in the criminal behavior. Depending on the nature of the child's behavior, the teacher could face either misdemeanor or felony charges with maximum punishments ranging from 9 months of jail to up to six years of prison.

If it weren't so despicable, Southworth's transparent threat would be amusing. Later in the letter he warns that the new guidelines "may expose your district to civil litigation." This is so not only because parents will sue for the "sexual assault, unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, emotional trauma, etc." that will inevitably result from learning how to use contraceptives, but also because "the ACLU of Wisconsin has previously made it clear that it wants to monitor sex education programming in Wisconsin Schools."

Beautifully, it is Southworth himself whose conduct has most likely bought the taxpayers of Juneau County an ACLU-funded lawsuit. Ordinarily, one can't sue to prohibit a future prosecution. You need to demonstrate a substantial likelihood that you personally will be targeted, and most people can't show that. But when a teacher shows up with a letter in hand from the DA saying "if you follow the new state law I will put you in jail," I think she's going to get her day in court.

Porn, Hookers, and Section 213 of the Internal Revenue Code

To: Holy Prepuce! Readers
From: Holy Prepuce
Re: Deductibility of Your Prostitution and Pornography Expenses Under Section 213 of the Internal Revenue Code

Question Presented

You have asked me to advise you as to whether your prostitution and pornography expenditures can be claimed as medical expense deductions pursuant to Section 213 of the Internal Revenue Code, assuming they exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross incomes.

Brief Answer

No. The United States Tax Court views such expenditures as "personal expenses not intended to treat any medical condition." Furthermore, IRS regulations prohibit deduction of fees for "illegal operations or treatment." Claiming such deductions may also result in assessment of an accuracy-related penalty.

Analysis

A recent decision of the United States Tax Court, Halby v. Commissioner, T.C. Mem. 2009-204 (Sept. 14, 2009), is squarely on point. The facts, as recounted in the opinion, are as follows:

Petitioner [William G. Halby] is a lawyer admitted to practice in New York State. Petitioner resided in New York at the time he filed his petition.

During 2004 and 2005 petitioner frequented prostitutes in New York. Petitioner did not visit these prostitutes as part of a course of therapy prescribed by his doctor, nor did petitioner ask his doctor to prescribe any sort of sex therapy. Petitioner kept track of these visits in a journal. The journal included the date, the name of the “service provider,” and the amount. Petitioner did not discuss these visits with his doctors afterwards to determine their impact on his health.

During 2004 and 2005 petitioner purchased pornography and books and magazines on sex therapy. Petitioner also recorded the dates and amounts of the purchases in his journal.

The IRS subsequently disallowed certain medical expense deductions claimed on Halby's 2004 and 2005 income tax returns:

The $73,934 disallowed by respondent [IRS] for 2004 included:(1) $2,368 for medical books, magazines, videos, and pornographic material; (2) $65,934 for prostitutes; and (3) $5,632 in bank and finance charges incurred in connection with loans used to pay for the claimed medical expenses. . . . The $47,024 disallowed for 2005 included: (1) $5,005 for books, magazines, videos, and pornographic materials; and (2) $42,152 for prostitutes.

Halby filed a petition in the Tax Court, challenging the IRS's determinations.

The IRS argued that Halby was "not entitled to deduct amounts paid to prostitutes because such payments were illegal and petitioner has not provided substantiation as required by section 1.213-1(h), Income Tax Regs." Section 1.213-1(h) requires that taxpayers substantiate medical expense deductions by listing for each expense the payee name, payee address, date, and amount. Upon IRS request, the taxpayer must also produce an itemized invoice, identifying the patient, type of service rendered, and specific purpose thereof.

The IRS further argued that Halby was "not entitled to a deduction for amounts paid for books on sex therapy and pornographic material because those amounts were incurred for petitioner’s general welfare."

Halby "d[id] not argue that section 213 and the regulations thereunder allow a deduction for these costs." Rather, he

point[ed] to book and magazine articles about the positive health effects of sex therapy and argue[d] that [the court] should allow him a deduction despite the illegality of his conduct or the fact that petitioner’s doctor did not prescribe this treatment.

At the outset of its holding, the Tax Court noted that "[t]ax deductions are a matter of legislative grace, and a taxpayer has the burden of proving that he is entitled to the deductions claimed." Finding that Halby had not met this burden, the Tax Court ruled in favor of the IRS, reasoning as follows:

Section 1.213-1(e)(1)(ii), Income Tax Regs., provides that a taxpayer is not entitled to a deduction for any illegal operation or treatment. Petitioner’s payments to various prostitutes were personal expenses not prescribed by a doctor and not intended to treat a medical condition. Petitioner is not entitled to deductions for these amounts.

Petitioner is likewise not entitled to deductions for amounts paid for books and magazines on sex therapy and pornography. The purchases were not for the treatment of a medical condition but were instead personal items. Sec. 1.213-1(e)(1)(ii), Income Tax Regs.

The Tax Court further ruled that Halby was liable for an accuracy-related penalty, because he

did not have reasonable cause or a reasonable basis for claiming the deductions at issue. Petitioner has been an attorney for 40 years and specialized in tax law. Petitioner should have known that his visits to prostitutes in New York were illegal and that section 213, the regulations thereunder, and caselaw do not support his claimed deductions.

Halby has since told Forbes Magazine that he plans to appeal, "focusing on what he said was an argument he made in legal briefs but which the judges didn't discuss: The U.S. Constitution contains a right of privacy that protects consensual sex whether paid or not." He also told Forbes that the "pornographic materials . . . now fill[] 'shelf after shelf in my apartment.'"

Conclusion

Readers, your proposed course of conduct is unsupported by the Internal Revenue Code or IRS regulations. Although I understand that your prostitution and pornography expenses this year are likely to be considerable, I strongly advise that you do not claim them as deductions on your 2009 individual income tax returns.

Please let me know if I can be of further assistance on this matter.

H.P.

Easter Monday

The Holy Prepuce would like to make clear that, should he ever be nailed to an object, he does not want the anniversary celebrated as "Good" anything.

This year, as every year, Christians around the world celebrated Good Friday with reenactments of the Biblical Crucifixion. And, again as every year, residents of Bulacan Province in the Philippines took things just that one step further by actually nailing each other to crosses. The ritual is a perennial journalistic standby: it's easy to schedule coverage, it's always photogenic, and typically there's some hook. Last year's hook was the government health advisory warning penitents to receive tetanus vaccinations, to ensure that they self-flagellate only with "well-maintained" whips, and to disinfect their four-inch nails prior to hammering them through each others' hands and feet. More comprehensive health warnings, such as "don't nail yourself to crosses, you crazy bastards," apparently went unspoken. This year's angle was the revelation that Jewish Australian comedian John Safran was discovered among the penitents, being crucified under an assumed name.

Every now and again, I like to do some original reporting for this blog, so I asked the one person I know in the Philippines what she thought about the practice. Her comments suggest that middle class Manilans have approximately the same relationship to Bulakenyo crucifixion as most Americans have to Appalachian Pentecostal snake handling: it's deeply weird, it's faintly embarrassing that people in other countries know about it, and they've only ever seen it on TV.

My source, who prefers not to be named out of fear at what she described as a reflexive tendency toward "butthurt" against public criticism of Filipino cultural institutions, went on to say the following:

[M]y only opinion on the matter, with my limited knowledge on the subject, is "Holy SHIT that's gotta hurt." I mean, they use real nails and shit. (I always change the channel.) But for a more insightful opinion for your piece, I'll actually quote my Dad, who had some interesting comments when they showed it on TV: these people go through all of that excruciating physical pain every year, then they go home and beat their wives and children, gamble, drink, steal, and engage in all sorts of debauchery.

They're probably in it for the attention they get from the townspeople, like, "Wow, you're so brave and self-sacrificing." I think it takes the concept of the act of confession, in Catholicism, and then magnifies it hundredfold, so these people think that if they just commit to this torture once every year, it makes up for the less godly things they do the other 364 days, in God's eyes.

In other news on the Easter-related themes of corporeal punishment, resurrection, and redemption, I would direct your attention to:

• This article on Alabama judge Herman Thomas, indicted for (among other things) allegedly checking male inmates out of jail, taking them to a specially-furnished storage room near his chambers, and "forcing [them] to expose their buttocks to 'paddling and/or whipping.'"


• The reference, in this article, to the "National Organization for Victims of Juvenile Lifers." The NOVJL website does not disclose the source of its funding, but one suspects that like many "victims' rights" groups, NOVJL is a front organisation for the Corrections Corporation of America or the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. (Both lobby aggressively against bad-for-their-business reductions in incarceration.) But seriously, what kind of an asshole joins a group specifically founded to advocate continued sentencing of 13-year-olds to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole?


• This article on a Maryland plea bargain, under which all charges will be dropped in case of the victim's resurrection. Said a spokeswoman for the Baltimore State's Attorney's Office: "This would need to be a Jesus-like resurrection. It cannot be a reincarnation in another object or animal."

Lay On, McGruff

McGruff the Crime Dog, monomaniacal biter of crime and criminals alike, was sucker-punched in the face on Saturday before an audience of horrified children in our nation's capitol.

As a retired costumed character (three summers as Bugs Bunny at Six Flags, if you must know), the Holy Prepuce is familiar with occupational hazards of that job. Along with heat stroke and hyperventilation, having the crap beaten out of me was a risk knowingly assumed each time I cinched up the "bib" and chin strap.

Assault on costumed characters is a universal phenomenon. Perhaps the perpetrators act out of simple revulsion at excessive cheerfulness, but I suspect the motivations are more complex. Surely there is an element of transferred rage: at parents who encouraged the belief, humiliating in retrospect, that costumed characters are "real"; at life and time themselves, which stole away forever the fantastical world of early childhood. The awful realization--that the internationally famous anthropomorphic animals who visit the local amusement park especially to hug you are actually just sweaty college kids--could drive anyone to disillusioned violence.

For my own part, I accepted the blows as penance for the prostitution I was committing. Here was Bugs Bunny--whose antics embody the triumph-by-wits of the Greatest Generation's ethnic lower middle class--transmogrified into a mute child-hugger. The middle-schoolers pummeling my gut may not have understood the deeper significance of their vigilantism, but in my own self-flagellatory way I hoped they one day would.

Such pre-teen boys (usually in groups) are the dominant perpetrators of these assaults, and the attack on McGruff would not have been newsworthy had the culprits fit that demographic. But in a delightful turn of events, McGruff's clock was in fact cleaned by on-duty WMATA bus driver Shawn Brim, 38. According to a police report, Brim "climbed out of the bus, adjusted both sideview mirrors and then slugged McGruff in the face with his closed fist . . . . McGruff staggered, children screamed and the crime dog's attacker jumped back into the bus and drove off . . . [as a] call of an assault on a police officer went out over the police radio."

Brim was later charged with simple assault on McGruff's human occupant, D.C. Police Officer Tyrone Hardy. The decision to charge simple assault, rather than assault on a police officer, raises an interesting legal question: to commit "APO" in most jurisdictions, the defendant must know that the victim is a police officer. Does socking McGruff the Crime Dog count? The person inhabiting McGruff turned out to be a real-life police officer, but the role could as easily be played by a civilian. Except where the victim is a plainclothes officer, the knowledge element of APO is usually open-and-shut because of the police uniform. Would McGruff's oversize blues count? The government's restraint in charging Brim means we'll never know--at least not until the next McGruff beat-down.

As it happens, the past few days have not seen a distinguished showing for public transit operators. The National Transportation Safety Board announced that throughout a September 12, 2009 California commuter rail trip that ended in 25 fatalities, engineer Richard Sanchez had been text messaging an unidentified teenage boy, sending his final message only 22 seconds before colliding with a freight train. (As is de rigueur in passenger rail investigations, the train's conductor tested positive for marijuana.) Sanchez's texts revealed that the boy had ridden in an engine cab four days earlier, and that Sanchez planned to let the boy drive the train later that day: "I'm REALLY looking forward to getting you in the cab and showing you how to run a locomotive . . . I'm gonna do all the radiotalkin' ... ur gonna run the locomotive & I'm gonna tell u how to do it."

Had Sanchez survived the collision, he might have become the only adult ever busted for electronically suggesting that a minor "run [his] locomotive" while talking about an actual locomotive.

On the Origin of Vaccine-Autism Fundamentalism, by Means of Unnatural Credulity -or- the Preservation of Ill-Favored Ideas in the Struggle for Reason

Last Thursday, a special federal court ruled in three test cases that the petitioners' autism did not result from the measles mumps rubella (MMR) vaccine. Finding that the petitioners' families had been "misled by physicians who are guilty . . . of gross medical misjudgment," the court denied compensation and decried the evidence for a vaccine-autism link as "bad science conducted to support litigation rather than to advance medical and scientific understanding.''

The decision's release on Charles Darwin's 200th birthday was fortuitous, the "vax/aut" crowd having not a little in common with the fundamentalists who so despise the father of evolutionary biology. Like fundamentalists, vax/aut proponents have become so invested in the truth of their particular idea that they ignore, rationalize, or attack as fraudulent any evidence to the contrary. Evidence in favor of their idea is distorted and endlessly repeated, and gaps in the evidence for alternative ideas are treated as further proof.

I suspect that fundamentalists' ire for Darwin goes beyond evolution, and stems as much from the approach to knowledge for which he stands. Setting out on the Beagle, Darwin held an idea common among 19th century Anglicans: that modern plants and animals descend from nearly identical ancestors created by God at the beginning of the world. But when Darwin's observations in the Galápagos suggested an alternative hypothesis, one that better fit the newly available evidence, he abandoned the old idea. This methodology for approaching ideas--evaluating them for explanatory success and then refining or discarding them in light of new facts--poses an existential threat to the entire project of fundamentalism.

The genesis of the vax/aut hypothesis was not in itself irrational. Certain forms of autism tend to manifest around the age at which most children receive MMR. And mercury, an ingredient in the vaccine preservative thimerosal, is known to cause neurological damage in vastly larger quantities.

But subsequent analysis has revealed the conclusions drawn from timing of onset to represent a simple post hoc fallacy. The incidence of autism turns out to be the same among children receiving vaccines with and without thimerosal, or receiving no vaccinations at all. And here is where the vax/aut enthusiasts show their fundamentalist stripes. Like the contrarians who insist the moon landing was faked and Snapple is sterilizing African-Americans, vax/aut types are unmoved by the evidence.

It's not that vax/aut believers aren't sympathetic--many are parents of autistic children and understandably yearn for any explanation of the otherwise inexplicable devastation wrought upon their families. Often they have been seduced by cure-peddling quacks and book-hawking celebrities.

But the vax/aut faithful provide red meat to the "anti-vax" movement: parents who refuse to vaccinate their children and think you shouldn't either. The obscenity of this movement's attack on perhaps the greatest public health achievement in history is stupefying. A campaign to reinstitute open sewers or ban refrigeration could scarcely threaten greater violence to the general well-being.

Tragically, anti-vaxers may be validating Darwin as we speak. More than survival or even reproduction, the traits most favored by natural selection are those that ensure an organism's offspring survive to reproduce. If credulity is a heritable trait, forgoing vaccination is an excellent way to boost the odds your children won't pass it on.

Gay Teen Monster Truck Driving Curfews

The Holy Prepuce never expected to use "irony" and "monster trucks" in the same sentence, but how's this? Following January 19th's fatal accident at the Tacoma, Washington Monster Jam, rival monster truck promoter George Eisenhart dismissed safety concerns about his upcoming Motor Sports Monster Truck & Thrill Show, telling Madison, Wisconsin's WKOW "This is our 16th year, and I wish I had a big piece of wood to knock on right now, but we have not had an incident besides a gal slipping in the aisle at another location." Days later, Eisenhart was crushed to death by a monster truck.

While I'm busy making light of vehicular tragedies, I have to say that although Allstate's Parent-Teen Driving Contract may be an excellent idea, I wonder how an organization whose business depends on the sensible use of statistics could attempt to pass off the following:


Assuming that the average teen is awake no more than 18 hours per day, warning that half of all fatal accidents happen in a 9-hour period is equivalent to grousing that 40% of workplace absenteeism occurs on Mondays and Fridays. And when we factor in that most teens spend a good part of their other 9 waking hours in school, we are led to the inescapable conclusion that 3PM to Midnight is a remarkably safe time to drive. The obvious solution is immediate repeal of teen driving curfews nationwide, so that teens can take care of essential business at night and stay off the road during the 8AM bloodbath.

If an insurance company can't manage the non-risible use of statistics, there is little hope for the rest of us. I am reminded of my college's gay & lesbian student association, which--I swear to God--ran simultaneous poster campaigns proclaiming "One in Ten People Is Gay" and "Two-Thirds of Child Molesters Are Straight."

Friend of the Court, Heiress of the Almighty Eternal Creator

Throughout the campaigns for and against California's execrable Proposition Eight, faithful HP! reader FearlessLeader compiled the crème of supporters' virulent, idiotic, and unintentionally hilarious statements on her blog Fundamentally Flawed. There was little I could add. But now that the briefing is underway in the California Supreme Court challenge, I must bring your attention to this amicus curiae submission filed by one "D.Q. Mariette Do-Nguyen, Heiress of the Almighty Eternal Creator."

Although not an attorney, Ms. Do-Nguyen has done a respectable job of formatting her brief in accordance with typical appellate practice. The Brief begins with the required statement of amicus' interest in the matter: Ms. Do-Nguyen explains that she is "[a]cting on behalf of the Almighty Eternal Creator, who is holding sole ownership to His creations, all planets, including the earth and everything above, below and on it, myself as His heiress...."

Do-Nguyen then provides a Statement of Facts, which informs the court that

Through elections and appointments, Global government leaders and officials are selected by the Almighty Eternal Creator to serve the people.... Without any exception, all human souls are created by the Almighty Eternal Creator! All souls arrive at the time of conception. The power of human souls works through male sperm and female eggs to form human physical bodies!... Earth is a copy of Heaven and this means all things must exist in the spiritual realm before coming down to earth, such as the three branches of global government: the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. These three branches must have rules and regulations that must pass by an executive of the Almighty Creator’s laws.

The Statement of Facts goes on to explain that the A.E.C. forbids gay marriage because he has "ordered human souls to be fertile and multiply, fill the earth with human natural bodies!" (For similar reasons, the A.E.C. also takes a dim view of in vitro fertilization and abortion.)

Do-Nguyen transitions to an Argument, in which she explains that the courts of California do not have the authority to reverse the A.E.C.'s ban on gay marriage. She illustrates her contention with the following example:

Example: If an individual attempts to assassinate the State of California's Governor or the United States President, and the person got caught, surely the person would be charged with attempted murder of the State of California's Governor or the President of the United States, and jurors would sentence him to prison without parole or to capital punishment in accordance with established laws.

At this point, Do-Nguyen departs from orthodox formatting to include a section entitled "Consequences After Each and All Actions." Here she explains the genesis of her decision to submit an Amicus brief:

After a night full of dreams, before dawn of November 11, 2008, before I woke up in the morning, the Almighty Eternal Creator ordered me, saying, "You explain to them the consequences that follow each and all actions. Once they understand, they will listen!"... [T]he Almighty Eternal Creator instructed me to explain the consequences in writing and file with the California Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court, as well as the United States Federal court regarding certain individuals and government agencies for each and all actions. He seriously emphasized that world government leaders and high-ranking officials are like religious leaders and officials, and they must assist each other to comply with the Laws of the Almighty Eternal Creator/sole Owner of the earth and human race.

In particular, Ms. Do-Nguyen appears to be concerned with "the consequences" of "people exercising their free-will rights for wrong purposes." These incorrect exercises of free will include not only homosexuality and abortion, but also the war in Iraq, Eliot Spitzer's interstate transportation of a prostitute, the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, the U.S. Supreme Court's establishment clause jurisprudence, and an ongoing plot by George Bush and the CIA to "rob monies from innocent people after intercepting the telex transfer."

The negative "consequences" of these actions include the present financial crisis, Bill Clinton's coronary artery bypass surgery, an unspecified illness suffered by Sandra Day O'Connor, and global warming.

Do-Nguyen returns to traditional format with a Conclusion, in which she urges the Justices to uphold Proposition Eight, thereby rendering their souls eligible to "receive an energy supply directly from the Creator." (By contrast, striking down the Proposition would result in receipt of "an energy supply 'indirectly' from God, through a destructive channel known as the Devil or Satan.")

When she is finished, Do-Nguyen further complies with the rules by attaching a Certificate of Service listing all parties and their attorneys, and affirming that she has mailed a true copy of her brief to each. She also includes the following language, which I intend to incorporate into all my future Certificates of Service:

I declare that I am, and was at the time of the service hereinafter mentioned, at least 18 years of age and not a party of the above-entitled action. I am an heiress to the Almighty Eternal Creator, and I am fully God and fully human. My natural business mailing address is 9450 Mira Mesa Blvd. B417. San Diego CA 92126.

Aggravated Menace 2 Second Life Society

Holy Prepuce! seems to have taken a sober turn of late, which was never my intention. Just as I was preparing to subject the readership to more of the same (in this case a response to Linda Hirschman's Slate op-ed on reclaiming the morality of abortion in the Democratic platform), the Internets coughed up this thing of beauty.

The arrest of 33-year-old Kimberly Jernigan for attempted kidnapping, burglary, and "aggravated menacing" brought my original conception of Holy Prepuce! back to light. And that conception was to provide an outlet by which you, the reader, could gain insight into the astonishing range of expression given by fellow citizens to what Justice O'Connor once described as "the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."

Jernigan's recent journey into the mystery of existence began when she met a 52 year old Delaware man in the virtual universe of Second Life. This being Second Life, naturally the gentleman did not manifest himself in middle aged, mid-Atlantic human form, but rather as a lion. Based on my limited exposure to Second Life, day-to-day existence consists principally of participants selling each other virtual jewelry, then furiously bonking on "SexGen beds" during global warming seminars at virtual ski lodges. So it should come as no surprise that Jernigan and her leonine acquaintance soon commenced a romantic--and sexual--online relationship.

All was well and good until the couple agreed to meet in the real world ("First Life"?) and the flesh-and-blood Jernigan proved not to the King of Beasts' taste. Not a woman who gives up easily, Jernigan hatched an ingenious plan: she would kidnap her ex-lover, teach him the error of his ways, and start a new life with him "out West." For reasons not made clear in news accounts, Jernigan's initial attempt to abduct her ex at gunpoint from his Pennsylvania workplace proved unsuccessful. Her second attempt, which involved posing as a local postal worker, also failed. (Media accounts differ as to whether Jernigan is legitimately employed as a postal worker in her native Durham, North Carolina.)

Events came to a head on August 21st, when the former beau returned home from work and was startled to find a laser sight illuminating his chest. By the time police arrived, Jernigan had fled, leaving behind a pair of handcuffs, a roll of duct tape, and an adorable Corgi mix named Gogi, whose snout Jernigan had unceremoniously duct-taped shut. Borrowing a page from Jack Ruby's playbook, Jernigan had apparently brought the dog to the scene of the crime, then improvised after she realized his barking might foil the plot.

An all-points bulletin went out for Jernigan's 2008 Kia Rio, which Maryland state troopers eventually spotted at I-95's Chesapeake House rest stop. A BB gun and laser-sight-equipped Taser were recovered from the vehicle, and Jernigan was arrested following the classic "brief struggle."

My delight at these events is of course marred by concern for Gogi, who had the misfortune to be caught up in humiliating circumstances far beyond his understanding. (Fortunately the Delaware SPCA reports that Gogi is none the worse for wear following his ordeal, and is no doubt available free to a good home.) But Jernigan's saga revisits many beloved Holy Prepuce! themes, of which I had lost sight during this recent political bent:

• Virtual worlds begetting real-world violence,
  
• Lunatic kidnapping plots,
• Questionable behavior in general, and
  
• Pornography as the inescapable endpoint of technological innovation.

On this last point, may I just add that while I applaud the technical achievement, whichever animator programed Second Life to allow human/lion sexual intercourse really needs a different hobby.

Eliot Spitzer Swallows

Okay, two things I want to say about Eliot Spitzer and the Emperors Club investigation:

First, it's not the prostitution that pisses me off. As long as the world contains human females, evolved to mate selectively, and human males, evolved to mate indiscriminately, money will change hands for nookie. Criminalizing the exchange just ensures that the industry will be run by criminals.

I wouldn't go to a prostitute myself; partly because I am married, which I interpret to preclude all extracurricular schtupping, whether fee-based or charitable, and partly because I don't find barely concealed contempt all that sexy. But I don't think it should be illegal, and if the same testosterone that fueled Spitzer's ambitious rise to power fuels multi-thousand-dollar sessions as "Client-9" at the Mayflower Hotel, that should concern no one but Mrs. Spitzer. It certainly should not concern the U.S. Attorney's Office.

But if it's going to be illegal, Spitzer ought to have had at least the decency to refrain from the very conduct for which he sent people to jail as New York's Attorney General. So as I say, it's not the prostitution, it's the hypocrisy that gets me exercised.

With that out of the way I want, second, to direct your attention to the criminal Complaint in the Emperors Club investigation. According to the Complaint, the website www.emperorsclubvip.com

ranked the prostitutes using a ranking system from one to seven diamonds, and charged hourly rates according to the assigned ranking. For example, according to the Website, the Emperors Club charged $1,000 per hour for a three-diamond prostitute, and $3,100 per hour for a seven-diamond prostitute.

The question that comes to mind is whether one could really articulate seven meaningfully distinct strata of prostitutes to justify such a granular rating system. Given a double-blind presentation, could a connoisseur accurately distinguish a four-diamond hooker from a five?

The Complaint goes on to inform us that emperorsclubvip.com

offered the Emperors Club's most valued clients "membership" in the "Icon Club," a status which allowed the clients to access restricted areas of the Website and permitted them to schedule appointments for illegal prostitution services with the most highly-ranked prostitutes whose fees started at $5,500 per hour.

So in fact there were at least eight Emperors Club prostitute ranks, and quite possibly more, given that the fees of the most highly-ranked prostitutes "started" at $5,500. This raises the same question as before, but, more fundamentally... fifty-five hundred dollars an hour?

Now, don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of sex. On the list of things I like, it's right up there with chocolate ice cream and amusement parks, and I dare say it even beats out the fantasy of owning my own Slurpee machine. But (ignoring for the moment my above disclaimer) there is no one-hour act, no matter how skillful, original, or debased, for which you could convince me to pay $5,500. Not to two women. Not even to identical twins.

What on earth could possibly justify such a fee, Eliot? Do these women have a second vagina or something? Jesus Christ, Alan Dershowitz doesn't charge that much.

High Stakes Softball at the FDOC • Brokeback Mountain ≠ Sodomite Recruiting Video

In a fit of nerdiness, the Holy Prepuce has added to the site a "random toke" feature. For those readers insufficiently puerile or pretentious to interpret H.P.'s direct allusion to drug culture and oblique reference to French obscenity, this means that if you click in the left-hand column where it says "[c]lick here for a random toke on the Prepuce," the site will redirect you at random to a prior Holy Prepuce post. (Feed and email subscribers will need to visit the website to make this work.)

But enough of the past -- what is tickling the Holy Prepuce right this minute? First, this article concerning "a startling list of alleged abuses and crimes" at the Florida Department of Corrections. The inmate abuse, kickbacks, and misuse of public funds are nothing remarkable for a state prison system. But worthy of note is FDOC's innovative personnel policy: the awarding of promotions based on home runs hit in the inter-departmental softball league! And how did department employees react to this policy? Why, just as anyone would adapt to an environment in which career advancement depends on slugging ability: steroids. Oh yes, and apparently each game was followed by an orgy.

Second, Heath Ledger's hasty addition to this year's "let's play John Williams music under a montage of everyone who's died since the last Oscars" reminds H.P. of the always-reliable Westboro Baptist Church, which picketed the actor's memorial services because of his role in Brokeback Mountain. According to WBC, Ledger's portrayal of a gay cowboy has rendered him a "fag enabler" and condemned him to an eternity of torment in Hell. (As this site has noted before, WBC believes Ledger will have a lot of company there, most recently the victims of the Northern Illinois University shootings, smitten by God because of a 2000 NIU "conference for fags . . . headed by some preacher who had a sex change operation.")

The thing that H.P. has never understood about the religious and other anti-gay opposition to Brokeback Mountain is this idea that the movie is some kind of recruiting commercial for gayness, ready to lead young Christian men astray. But if we take the film's plot as a sort of road map for the gay life that awaits young recruits, what is the take-home message? Basically that (warning: spoiler) your one carefree summer of mountaintop sex will be paid for with a lifetime of broken dreams, divorce, alienation, and either violent death or a middle age lived out in a ramshackle trailer, talking to your dead lover's cowboy shirt. This is an advertisement for the ways of Sodom?

Steroids / We ID Under 27

A.

I say screw it, let baseball players take all the steroids they want. Is juicing any more unnatural than forgoing all productive activity to spend four hours a day in a weight room and another eight practicing a game? Isn't that "cheating" compared to the 99% of human history in which athletes were amateurs who spent their days farming, smithing, or soldiering?

And if it's about setting examples for kids, do you really want your child's role model to be some jock who gave up any hope of an education for the one in ten thousand chance of making it to the big leagues? If you want to scare a kid straight, don’t show him some steroids-make-your-dick-fall-off public service announcement. Show him the 40-year-old shortstop on the AA team bus, screaming down his cell phone that this month's paycheck won't cover his child support either.

B.

Yesterday at the Seven-Eleven, while fumbling for my American Express (yes, I had the $1.01 in cash, but there are few things more satisfying than buying a Slurpee on credit and thinking "this is exactly why we have a subprime mortgage crisis,") I saw this familiar sign:


Now here's my question: if the Seven-Eleven clerk is so gifted that he can distinguish on sight a 26-year-old from a 27-year-old, can't he tell a 20-year-old from a 21-year-old? And if he can, why does he need to ask for ID? And why is he working at the Seven-Eleven, when he could make a killing down on the boardwalk hustling "Stump the Wizard"?

In-Transit Booty

Blogging about Senator Larry Craig presents many of the same difficulties as blogging about former Astronaut Lisa Nowak: how does one add value to the best thing that has ever happened? A conservative Senator who has consistently scored 100% on every anti-gay organization's voting scorecard gets busted in an airport men's room for toe-tapping out a gay sex solicitation to an undercover cop... where do you go from there?

Well, naturally I can provide you with the cover image, above, from this week's Washington Hispanic, because the whole story really is even better in Spanish.

But to be serious for a moment, what I can say is this: if by some fluke it turns out that Craig is telling the truth: that he is completely innocent but pled guilty fearing the consequences of going to trial, I have little sympathy. For the past 30 years, law-and-order conservatives like Craig have been ratcheting up criminal penalties and enacting wholesale transfers of power from judges to prosecutors, to the point that the average "trial penalty" (the difference in sentencing outcome between those arrestees for a given offense who plead guilty and those convicted at trial) has reached, by some estimates, 600%. In joining the tens of thousands of Americans who enter strategic but false guilty pleas each year, Craig would be reaping only what he and his ilk have sown.

Now, that out of the way, I have four additional comments.

1. Any time you find yourself explaining to the police that you employ a "wide stance when going to the bathroom," you probably need to rethink many of the choices you have made in the last twenty-four hours.

2. If any portion of the "Passenger Security Charge" I pay for every flight segment is underwriting gay sex stings in airport men's rooms, I would like to request a refund. If people are really lining up to suck off Members of Congress underneath the stall dividers at MSP International, who am I to stop them?

3. This whole thing just confirms all the stereotypes about male versus female attitudes toward sex. Can you imagine a woman looking to have sexual relations with a complete stranger next to a toilet?

4. According to the police report, the restroom in which Craig was arrested is a frequent venue for sexual activity. Craig was between flights, which suggests that the facility in question was through security and thus available only to ticketed passengers. Does this mean that travelers in the know are purposely routing themselves through Minneapolis for in-transit booty? And at what cost to the economy?

Paring Down The Prepuce II / Fred Phelps Sings!

Astute readers may note that today is Friday. More astute readers may note that today's post is thus two days late on the every-Wednesday schedule that this blog has followed for most of its existence. This is by design, because I have decided to downshift Holy Prepuce! from a weekly to a whenever-I-damn-well-feel-like-it-and-no-whining-because-it's-free schedule.

This change will, of course, inconvenience those among you who visit the blog on the web each Wednesday for your weekly toke. Your dedication makes me happy with each mid-week spike on the usage stats, and I apologize. But I can promise that if you sign up for the email service, or subscribe to the site feed, updates will be yours as they happen.

Two factors have influenced this decision. First, I am starting a new job and so will have different demands on my time and the predictability thereof. Second, I have come to realize that arbitrary self-discipline is overrated; and it is sometimes OK to peel off the gimp mask and whisper the safeword.

Now then:

The mad, mad world of virulent anti-gay Christianism got a little more fun Wednesday, when a student at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University was arrested for cooking up a batch of homemade napalm in preparation for Falwell's funeral. Mark David Uhl allegedly planned to use the explosives against the Rev. Fred Phelps and his congregants from the Westboro Baptist Church.

Westboro Baptist, you may remember, is the organization that attends gay funerals toting banners with such charming slogans as "AIDS cures fags," and "Fags die, God laughs." The group also protests at productions of The Laramie Project, and maintains an online clock ticking off the days that Matthew Sheppard, the young gay man on whose murder the play is based, has been in Hell.

More recently, the church has taken to protesting at the funerals of U.S. service members killed in Iraq, on the theory that God smites soldiers out of hatred for America's tolerance of homosexuality. Of course, there can be little doubt that Phelps' vitriol stems from his own repressed homosexuality, since no human being in history outside of a Queer Studies department has spent as much time obsessing on the subject of gayness.

In any event, Westboro Baptist announced that it would protest at the funeral of Jerry Falwell. Now, you might think that Phelps would be a fan of Falwell, fellow travelers as they were on the anti-gay hate-mongering circuit. But there you would be wrong. According to Phelps, Falwell "split Hell wide open the instant he died" because he espoused "false doctrines like 'God loves everyone,'" and believed in free will. (Phelps is an old-school Calvinist and as such believes in strict predestination.) So, Westboro planned a protest, Falwell supporters planned a counter-protest, and Mark David Uhl planned to napalm the whole thing.

But all of this is old news for finger-on-the-pulse information mavens such as Holy Prepuce! readers. What may interest you more is something I discovered while browsing through Westboro Baptist's website, GodHatesAmerica.com. (Lest you think the church insular, it also maintains GodHatesCanada.com, and GodHatesSweden.com.) No, it's not their list of the recently-damned-to-Hell; although that is certainly informative, including as it does Coretta Scott King, Gerald Ford, and all 31 Virginia Tech shooting victims.

What caught my eye--and ear--is that Westboro Baptist has a choir. And you will be pleased to know that this august ensemble has made its recordings available on the Internet! So as a public service and for your listening enjoyment, I present Westboro Baptist's adaptations of several patriotic standards. (Clicking on a title will launch the corresponding .mp3 recording.)

Original	Westboro Baptist Version
God Bless America	God Hates America
Proud to Be an American	Ashamed to be an American
This Land is Our Land	This Land is Fag Land
America the Beautiful	Wicked Land of Sodomites
The United States Marine Corps Anthem	Semper Fi Semper Fags

Classic!

Holy Prepuce! Is 1, but So 2.0 / Concerns of Police Survivors

This week marks (more or less) the first anniversary of Holy Prepuce! I like to think that the blog has evolved over these months; that it has become less about Deaf pageant winners hit by trains, and more a forum in which my views on habeas corpus and remote control internet sex toys are equally at home. Whatever this space's raison d'être, I thank you, faithful readers, for being along on the ride.

In honor of the anniversary, I have upgraded the joint to take advantage of some Blogger 2.0 features. (Having been honored as Person of the Year for my contributions to Web 2.0, it seemed a fitting way to mark the occasion.)

In addition to making cosmetic changes, I have retrofitted previous posts with "topic" designations, and provided a handy sidebar roster of these categories. So if, for instance, you want to skip over everything to do with Religion or Culture and get right to the Smut, just click on the appropriate link and Smut you shall have.

Blogger 2.0 also generates a stand-alone comments feed, which is http://holyprepuce.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

If you add this feed to your home page or feed reader, you can follow the lively comments discourse as it goes down. You can also add the feed to Feedblitz, and receive the comments daily by email. (If you don't already receive Holy Prepuce! posts by Feedblitz, you can set that up by clicking on this link -- check out a preview here.)

As always, the main blog feed is http://holyprepuce.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default And of course you can still read the blog at http://holyprepuce.blogspot.com, but that is so Web 1.0.

As my blogging time has been devoted to these administrative concerns, my actual content this week will be limited to this slim slice of the Prepuce:

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund recently held a news conference to kick off its fundraising drive for the planned National Law Enforcement Museum. On hand for the press to play with was a planned exhibit, a device known euphemistically as a "use-of-force training simulator." This is basically a more sophisticated version of such arcade favorites as Hogan's Alley and Police Trainer 2.

The Washington Post described the simulator experience as follows:

You're a cop. You've been summoned to an alley behind a strip mall that's a known drug hangout. You hail a man and two women lounging by an old car.

The man, a beefy guy in a plaid work shirt, gets belligerent and starts toward you. One of the women grabs his arm to hold him back, and as you focus on them, the other woman slips a pistol from her pocket and opens fire.

Bang. You're dead.

Now, I enjoy a game of Virtuacop 3 as much as the next man, but wasn't this news conference put on by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund? Is is possible that contributors to the fund might have become such owing to a "bang, you're dead"-type scenario involving a close family member?

Indeed, the Post reports that

Also present was Jean Hill, president of Concerns of Police Survivors, which supports families and friends of slain police officers. Hill is the mother of Barry Hill, a 38-year-old Harris County, Tex., deputy sheriff, who was shot seven times and killed while trying to arrest a car thief Dec. 4, 2000.

I wonder how Ms. Hill felt about the demonstration?

Museum planners also used the news conference to announce that the project "will feature a table bearing a manikin on which a simulated post mortem will be projected from overhead cameras."

I'm guessing they did one of those on Barry Hill, too.