We have here recovered the most dangerous piece of lechery that ever was known in the commonwealth. – William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (III, iii)
I’m sure most of you have heard of this by now, but maybe you don’t realize just how much of a non-story it is. So I’ll present it as told by CNN Saturday, then restate it in plain English and share a few comments from others.
A group of Secret Service agents and officers sent to Colombia ahead of President Barack Obama were relieved of duty and returned home amid allegations of misconduct that involved prostitution…they [allegedly] brought back several prostitutes to the Hotel Caribe in Cartagena…None of the agents or officers being investigated was part of the president’s personal protective detail and Obama isn’t based at the hotel…Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee…told CNN that the [agents] brought prostitutes back to their rooms Wednesday night and “one of the women did not leave the room in the morning.” A hotel manager tried to get in the room, and eventually the woman emerged and said “they owed her money”…At least one of the women brought to the hotel talked with police, and complaints were filed with the U.S. Embassy…”There are no allegations of any crime being committed,” [King said]…”It violates the Secret Service code of conduct”…Ronald Kessler, a former Washington Post reporter who has written a book about the Secret Service, called the incident “clearly the biggest scandal in Secret Service history”…
Now, here’s the translated version: “Partying g-men hired hookers, but one refused to pay what he owed for extra time and got in an argument over it. Then several busybodies who are more discreet when hiring their hookers freaked out.” Period. End of story. C’mon, y’all, this isn’t news, much less a “scandal” unless you consider buyer’s remorse scandalous. I’ve been hired by a number of agents from the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, Homeland Security, the TSA and probably half a dozen other alphabet-soup agencies, not to mention their managers and the congressmen who supervise them. I’m sure every one of my escort readers can say the same thing. Agents also drink liquor, order room service, watch movies, buy souvenirs, and use hotel toilets. Whoopie. Prostitution isn’t even illegal in Colombia, so if not for these asinine rules requiring virile, high-testosterone grown men to behave like nuns nobody would even have heard of this story because the dude wouldn’t have panicked and called attention to himself; he’d have just paid her and she would’ve left. The end.
It looks to me like aforementioned journalist, Ronald Kessler, may be the primary driver of the hysteria; he’s the one who broke the story to the Washington Post, and here’s what Reason had to say about him and his manufactured panic on Sunday:
…The scandal broke…after police were called over some spirited…haggling about a $47 fee between a local hooker and an agent…a dispute that ends with a police report being filed and sent to the U.S. embassy pretty clearly meets the definition of unprofessional behavior that is unbecoming of the department’s…that besmirches the good reputation of an agency that…that puts in jeopardy the sterling reputation of… Oh, all right: It’s completely in keeping with the history of the DHS, which has in the past few years generated scandals involving contracting scams, bribery, attempted statutory rape and even diploma fraud. Ronald Kessler, tireless author of books about government agencies, tells CBS This Morning the scandal threatens the very fabric of our nation:
Kessler called this latest incident in Colombia “a very shocking scandal.” He…called it “just unbelievable” and a “tremendous embarrassment to the U.S.” He said that the Secret Service personnel’s liaising with prostitutes could expose them blackmail to acquire access to secure areas. “They could have led to an assassination. And if you have an assassination, you nullify democracy. That’s how important the Secret Service is.”
Great use of the irritating verb “liaising” there. But that blackmail stuff seems like a stretch. The value-add of prostitution is that it replaces the tiresome negotiations, performance and cajoling of a hookup with a business transaction that is relatively straightforward. At 47 bucks, it’s a good bet Agent Tightwad was getting a better deal financially than he would have gotten from a sexual liaison purchased with dinner and movie, drinks, dancing, flowers, feigned interest in small talk, and so on…The scandal here — and the only reason the rest of us have now had to hear all about it — is that the agent didn’t want to pay the woman…what she was asking for.
Another Reason article on Monday was even better:
…Americans still make an awfully big ruckus about two consenting adults doing what comes naturally, and one paying the other for what just transpired. Maybe, just maybe, we could stop pretending that exchanging money for sex is such a terrible thing…employers have a right to set certain parameters of behavior for employees who are on the job…But why is commercial sex — a perfectly legal offering in Cartagena, Colombia — so scandalous?…[The agents] may have violated their employers’ rules, but they hadn’t broken any laws in Colombia. Just what were they to be blackmailed with?…is anybody really going to put the president’s life in danger to avoid, at most, divorce court? That’s why the Christian Science Monitor responded…by noting, “[i]n today’s relatively permissive society, it may be hard to believe that a limited peccadillo could lead to treason decades hence.” Likewise, former Secret Service agent Dan Emmet dismisses blackmail concerns as “espionage novel stuff.”
The fact is, Americans are really weird about sex. We may patronize strip clubs to the tune of $3.1 billion per year, and we may support an adult film industry worth $13 billion, but many of us still cherish a national image of righteous frigidity. Raising a national fuss because a few public employees chose sex over reading good books in their off-hours is an American pastime. There’s a better way, though. Maybe…we could just learn to shrug our shoulders…prostitution is a legal business in Cartagena. It’s legal, though heavily regulated, in the state of Nevada. Sex work existed under a similar regime in New Zealand until 2003, when it was decriminalized…and allowed to function in largely free-market conditions. A 2008 government report (PDF) on the results of the legal change concluded that “the vast majority of people involved in the sex industry are better off.” A 2010 Toronto Star article found that most New Zealand sex workers very much liked the deregulated regime, and that they were now far more willing and able to protect their rights through the legal system than before. All of which is to say that treating the sex trade as normal and not freaking out over money for sex would be a good thing…
Of course, this sort of attitude is what we expect from libertarians, the staunchest allies of sex worker rights activists (though many of those activists are too wrapped up in silly PC radicalism to notice it). But this time, they’re not the only ones saying it; in the past few days I’ve seen a number of articles from writers in various regions of the political landscape saying very similar things. The yawning over this tempest in a teapot is so audible, in fact, that yesterday ABC News felt compelled to attempt to stir it up more with allegations of actual security violations:
The U.S. Secret Service agents accused of misconduct in a Cartagena, Colombia, brothel revealed their identities by bragging about their connection to President Obama, according to an exclusive report by ABC News:
Partying at the “Pley Club” Wednesday night, eleven members of the president’s advance team allegedly bragged “we work for Obama” and “we’re here to protect him.” The officials spent the night throwing back expensive whiskey and enlisting the services of the club’s prostitutes, according to a bouncer at the club and a police source.
ABC reports that the agents received services from the “highest category” prostitutes and became combative when the bill arrived. The police were called when the club could not contain the dispute…
So now they’ve changed the alleged venue from a hotel to a brothel. And you know what? I’m still yawning.
One Year Ago Today
“Creeping Rot” reports on the spread of the “Swedish Model” cancer to France.
I think the idea of “agents” paying for it (and worse, haggling) may have shattered too many macho illusions there!
i remember how much the berlusconi sex scandals in italy made me lauph.everyone was so shocked,womens rights advocates protested, because the prime minister is a misogynistic pig who exploits underaged girls.of course the truth is that what berlusconi did wrong is the fact that he wasnt discreet like the others and everyone who called ruby exploited was clearly an idiot.but those shocked faces because of the p.ms behavior as f its sth unique and outrageous for a politician still make me lauph.
At least no one is claiming that the prostitutes were under-aged victims of a trafficking ring.
Here’s a big shocker- Men in all sorts of jobs visit hookers. Judges, doctors, preachers, ship’s captains. All ages, all looks, all cultures and nationalities.
The big lesson here is always pay your hooker.
There’s a sardonic article in today’s Guardian about how to party; it mentions in passing that the guy eventually paid the $47.
Kessler sounds like someone trying to persuade himself of something he doesn’t really believe. He has a fairly minor story and he’s trying to milk it as though it were the next Watergate and he’ll get to be portrayed by Robert Redford in the movie. If this scandal involved agents buying cigarettes or alcohol or something, no one would give a damn.
As I recall, there was, at some point, a statement from an agent that he didn’t know his date was a hooker. While I’ve never seen a working girl, I’m guessing that you guys negotiate price up front precisely to avoid the whole, “You’re a hooker?! I didn’t know that!” cheapskate dodge/attempted rape.
“I didn’t know she was a whore” is the oldest, lamest excuse in the book. Only halfway whores negotiate the price afterward and pretend not to be pros; real working hookers always state their prices up front, and if these girls were escorts as it seems they probably didn’t “negotiate”, but rather just stated their prices. It’s hard to tell from what we were told, but I suspect the extra $47 was probably for going overtime and Agent Cheapskate was arguing that they didn’t start right away or some other typical excuse guys use when trying to get something for nothing.
Maggie did you see the comments the woman made to the NY Post?
She was dismayed, she said, that the news reports have described her as a prostitute as though she walked the streets picking up just anyone.
“It’s the same, but it’s different,” she said, indicating that she is much more selective about her clients and charges much more than a streetwalker. “It’s like when you buy a fine rum or a BlackBerry or an iPhone. They have a different price.”
You have higher rank,” she said. “An escort is someone who a man can take out to dinner. She can dress nicely, wear nice makeup, speak and act like a lady. That’s me.”
^I am sure you already know what is completely wrong in that statement she made. Its a shame women like her are so politically correct. Another “I’m not a hooker…hooker gets paid by the hour” type of people. Complete denial.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/world/americas/colombian-escort-speaks-about-secret-service-scandal.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
And the Secret Service agent is a complete fool for all of this. I know it has been said already but I really do not get how difficult it was to just pay the woman. Women like that who are basically halfway whores who talk about how they are “offended” by being called prostitutes in the news and how they are an escort and act like the two are any different, are normally the first ones to go running their mouth about events that happened in order to get a large payoff.
I mean how stupid can you be? This idiotic secret service agent brought down the other guys with him because of his stupid ass decision to allow the woman to instigate the situation. If any of them(including himself) were married to wives who knew nothing about their activities and did not have an open relationship with their husband, then he is an even bigger idiot.
When will these young girls ever learn to take the money up front? I have heard this story so many times. UP FRONT. Doing otherwise inevitably brings disaster.
That is also true. Things like this usually happen when women like her play head games with the guy. And even though MOST LIKELY that 800 fee that the woman charged the guy was nowhere near her normal charge…..it was still a huge mistake to not just pay her.
And Maggie do you think education has to play any role with why these young girls don’t take the money up front and not play head games?
I honestly don’t know. In the US they sometimes do it in the mistaken belief that it somehow protects them from arrest, but in a country where it’s legal? I can’t attribute it to anything but pure foolishness or naivety.
“You’re a hooker?! Damn, and here I thought I was a gigolo.”
[…] details of our Secret Service agents partying with some legal Columbian hookers. As expected, Maggie McNeill has a good round-up of both the pearl-clutching hysteria in the media and the more reasoned […]
My only comment is the idiot should be fired because he refused to pay and then started a ruckus about it which brought the cops and the public attention. I’d say the same thing if the fight was over the bar tab. He simply doesn’t have the common sense you need if you are going to be carrying a gun around the President.
Agreed; the Reason article says basically the same thing. But firing someone for incompetence isn’t the same thing as making a huge brouhaha and trying to turn this into another Profumo Affair. This isn’t a spy novel, the hookers weren’t working for Bin Laden’s clone and agents hire whores literally all the time.
Exactly – that’s what me and my coworkers are all wondering about. Why didn’t the dude just pay the bill? Even if she was ripping him off – it was less than $200 and certainly not worth all flopping and twitching that is going on now.
BUT I SUSPECT that what we have going on here is a case of “White House Entitlement Syndrome” – it affected many people attached to the White House. “Hey I work for the White House – I just tell the cops that I work for the White House and they drop their inquiry into this chick’s demands.”
Nope.
I’ll “try” to keep this brief (but I don’t know how) …
I was assigned to a subdivision of the White House Military Office (WHMO) from ’92 to ’95 (Last 6 months of H.W. Bush – first 2.5 years of Clinton – I actually voted for Clinton).
One of my “collateral” duties was to occasionally reach out to the military services and screen servicemembers for duty at the White House.
POINT 1: If you want to hire the best people for an organization – DO NOT attach unnecessary MORAL requirements to the position.
Let’s say we planned to do a “recruiting trip” to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. About a month prior – I had an Army and a Navy gal look at the records of all the soldiers at Ft. Sill who held the MOS’s (job specialties) we were looking for. They’d come up with around 150 records of candidates who LOOKED like they might have potential.
Then, we’d take a team out to Ft. Sill – and order all of those soldiers “pre-selected” to report to the base theater, or an auditorium or sometimes a chapel. We’d have 150 people on the first day and our intention would be to recruit every single soldier who could pass the rigid White House security requirements. Most, we threw out on the first day after they filled out the screening form. Then would come the security interviews – and the security guys made that as terrifying to the individual as they could in order to get the real truth out of them and get them to admit things they wouldn’t ordinarily admit. By the end of the week – out the 150 that I started with – I might go “home” to D.C. carrying the records of FIVE recruits who managed to pass the requirements. Everyone else – FAILED.
And – those five soldiers I recruited? They weren’t the best technically at their jobs – they were just boy and girl scouts. It was heartbreaking to turn down people who looked AWESOME as far as their military record – but admitted to an extramarital affair, or group sex, or a homosexual experience (some of this was before “DADT”) – even a onetime occurrence would disqualify them for the job. And there were many other things to. A single DUI … bad credit … a bad debt … more than 4 parking or speeding tickets … any involvement with police … drug usage.
I usually DID NOT get the best people – just the “best behaved” ones.
This was depressing to me – because I was one of those “recruited” in this fashion and, I had thought it was because I was an awesome Sailor – but really, I learned that it was more because I was a “boy scout”. By the way – my only vice was “whoring” – and surprisingly no one ever asked me if I’d hired one. I would have needed a “continuation sheet” to list them all! But they didn’t ask me that – though I do remember the question … “Have you ever been ARRESTED for soliciting a prostitute?” … NO, I hadn’t.
I’m sad to see the USSS Counter Assault Team caught up in this because they were the COOLEST guys I knew in the Secret Service. They are normally former enlisted Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors, and Marines.
And … what I fear the most – is that this manufactured distraction will actually place the President’s safety in jeopardy. There is going to be one long bloody backlash at the USSS now – and ALL AGENTS will be hit by it. This will cause an agency-wide distraction, unnecessarily – when there shouldn’t be one. God forbid – it MAY EVEN result in a witch hunt that ends up netting EVEN MORE agents who have, at some time in their life – hired a prostitute.
And … I didn’t fuckin “tie up” my point here …
Look – like I said – recruiting boy and girl scouts will get you the best behaved people – not the BEST people. If the USSS goes down this road – then it means we’ll have a bunch of “clean” USSS agents who are absolute angels but not mean enough or tough enough to adequately address the safety of the POTUS.
DHT – it’s a naughty, naughty hormone in men but I LOVE it. It makes us aggressive and focused and I’d say the best USSS agents have it in spades. Problem is – DHT also makes us pretty horny muthaf***s and that means we like sex a lot.
I suspect the reason they hire “scouts” is for this very reason: scouts are less likely to make the evening news.
If they fired every federal employee who had ever hired a hooker, there would be virtually no male employees left from the president all the way down to park rangers.
You say that like it’s a bad thing. 😉
It’s deeper than just “hookers” … when I was there, there was a ban on any extramarital affairs – or even the appearance of one. I had one guy who worked for me “shipped” (fired) because he was caught kissing another woman (not his wife). They even polygraphed and verified that he hadn’t had sex with the other woman. He still got shipped.
One of the best techs that worked for me was a female Sailor who was single. She had an affair with a married guy at the agency. Someone ratted them out – and they were ordered to security – who interviewed and polygraphed them. The girl had balls, she tried her hardest to deceive the polygraph by denying the affair. The guy? Hell, when they called him in he sang like a canary before they even threatened him with the poly.
They shipped him for adultery and her for attempting to lie to investigators about it.
The polygraph’s main power is over those who are intimidated by it; calm and skilled liars can pass the test. Worse still, a honest person who is nervous can fail the test.
No employer should be allowed to discriminate against people for their sex lives unless s/he is hiring people to have sex. This kind of privacy needs to be made an inalienable right, from which not even the military is exempt.
That said, stiffing a provider is something else again. I don’t call that rape, but it’s aggravated theft and should get one fired from any position of trust (preferably with some due process first, to prevent the innocent being framed).
Incidentally, I looked at wikipedia’s article on “Honeypot” traps used to get people to betray their country. Not one involved a prostitute or an agent pretending to be one. They all involved professional agents passing themselves off as amorous amateurs. Our authorities seem to be fine with using sex to get state secrets even if they are aghast at the idea of using it to make a living.
Men traveling on business hire prostitutes and escorts?
I’m shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED.
If I understand my history, it used to be that agencies would provide their own vetted girls to avoid security issues of the men going out and getting into sticky situations?
Here’s my own fictional take on that sort of arrangement.
Two aspects of this story have caught my attention.
First, I am stunned that any public servant accompanying a senior US official, much less the President, to an overseas summit, would behave so recklessly.
Maybe my perspective is out of kilter from having spent a lifetime in DC, but the most naive waif in this town knows that as a matter of simple self-preservation and career survival, you do not behave in such a way as to bring potential negative publicity, disrepute, distraction, or opprobrium onto your principal, especially while on an overseas delegation. Period. End of story.
I don’t give a damn what the agents do at home and off duty. But on a foreign delegation you are never really off duty, and you know it. I don’t care if your fancy is booze, drugs, sex, or whatever. Shut up, keep it zipped up, hold it to two drinks or better none, and in general save indulging yourself for some time when you are not risking the mission of the principal to whom you are attached.
And you know, apart from motives of simple career self-interest–Maggie will laugh herself sick at me in a minute, but here it goes–I am corny enough to actually believe that public service is a privilege, not just another job. I believe it imposes at a minimum a duty to represent the United States as to reflect credit on your country overseas. Yeah, I know, what a gas, what a maroon I am.
Christ on burnt toast, these USSS officers were idiots and behaved like entitled brats.
Second, and really totally separate from the above, I swear to God there are times when I will never understand members of my own gender. If someone is willing to offer me so intimate a service, the hell if I am going to humiliate her afterward by staging some kind of power trip dispute over 60 godforsaken bucks. I mean, that’s not even the price of dinner in downtown DC. What would motivate thee two men to attempt to humiliate a person who had provided them such personal and intimate services, and in such a vile way? I really don’t get what it could possibly be but hating women, or one’s own choices, or probably both.
I know nothing about Johns in general. I can’t generalize about men in general. But these two Johns are scum in my book and a disgrace to humanity.
OK, so ten minutes after posting this I read a very different account of the actual dispute. It muddies the waters enough that I suspend point 2 pending further evidence. Point 1 stands.
When I worked at the White House – I never really considered myself “off duty” either and always conducted myself to the highest standards they expected – I exceeded those standards actually.
And – really, if they HAVE to fire USSS for hiring hookers – then they should just do it without the big “hoo-ha” that this is causing. This isn’t the first time a USSS agent has “hired” a hooker – it’s not even the first time one’s been caught. The situations were “handled” somehow in the past without being blown all out of proportion as this one has – and in the end, it’s a dangerous game to play because the USSS is responsible for the security of the life of the POTUS and they are now distracted unnecessarily.
This is only a “story” because of the salacious details surrounding it. We’re a nation of “busy body” voyeurs who have a fetish for knowing what everyone else is doing with their private parts. It’s crazy.
Well, I mean – I’m kind of a “voyeur” too because I like to hear exciting things about other people’s sex lives – but I don’t “judge” them – I cheer them on! 🙂
As I said in the text, it ain’t the first time SS has hired whores. I know whereof I speak from personal experience with certain personnel who worked for the previous tenant of Obama’s residence.
If they were with you on their own time, no business of mine and glad it worked out for you. If they were with you while on assignment to accompany their principal, they were twits who put their wants before their duties in my book. For me, it’s that simple–some jobs do not allow the luxury of pursuing personal engagements in the middle of duty. Nothing more, nothing less.
I have no idea, but I presume they were off-duty. And it certainly wasn’t in the presidential suite or anything.
That’s what you get when you recruit boy scouts instead of normal horny men.
You train them, give them a gun, tell them they are elite, special. Then they find themselves away from home in a foreign environment, where friends and family can’t see them, an suddenly, all that repressed sexual energy just pops its lid because they don’t have the experience necessary to deal with it.
I’ve seen it happen all my life. When I was in high school, I knew two boys who were novices and intending to become Brothers in the Catholic order that ran the place. Then in the second to last year, girls were introduced into the classes. Guess who turned out to be the biggest horn dogs? By graduation, both had renounced their calling.
I, on the other hand, was heavily criticised by the other boys for insisting on treating the girls just like everyone else and not donning my rather rusty armour.
As an occassional client of prostitutes in a country where it is legal, I almost fall off my chair laughing at this kind of stuff (“biggest scandal”). It’s completely barking mad.
I love the USA, but this kind of thing is just insane. What is the matter of there?
From the outside we see this outpouring of extreme pornography juxaposed against the most extreme prudery. It is bizarre.
There is a certain consistency between the prudes and what I call the sextremists; they both consider sex dirty. The former sees sex as degraded, while the latter is trying to make sex as dirty/nasty/extreme as possible.
The alternative viewpoint is that sex is a normal part of life.
I agree with Bandoblue. The problem is even if they were “off duty”, they were still “on call”. Any sensible person can tell you that when you are on call, it’s a bad idea to drink too much or even to drink at all. It’s also a bad idea to go looking for any women to bring back to your hotel room whether or not they are prostitutes or amatuers especially as you never know who may try to get information out of you as a USSS agent. It’s called practicing good operation security. There were times when I was a Soldier in the U.S. Army posted in South Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan and I was on call for security and couldn’t drink, and had to respond in a set amount of time or else I was in trouble. The Cold War is still in effect on the Korean peninsula and while we could drink when not on an on call security detail, we were forbidden when we were on a security detail even though we were off duty because we were on call. There is no drinking alcohol in Iraq and Afghanistan for military personell at all. I knew people who violated this of course, but most of them had the sense and luck not to get caught.
The U.S. military and U.S. “police agencies” be they federal, state, county, municipal or other ( I’m using the term loosely here) are all about their reputations first, foremost and always. A civilian in the USA or a foreign country can and often does screw the U.S. military people especially if the U.S. military person knowingly and stupidly put himself in that situation. There’s little the U.S. military person can do about it. You as the U.S. military person will be told that you are held to a higher standard and it’s your fault you are in trouble most of the time for not having a better plan and not keeping your wits about you. The USSS agents forgot that their policing powers were essentially nil in Colombia and that they could be screwed in a lot of ways in that country so they planned poorly and weren’t wise. U.S. military personell are told to cover their asses in foreign countries and are even told some ways to do this. Being in a foreign country can make a bad situation worse because it can turn into an international incident which this case did.
I remember watching Bill O’Reilly on Fox News say that these men should have known that there is a lot of news media watching the USSS agents at the very least and they should have been on their best behavior. I agree because the news media loves a scandal especially when it comes to prostitution even though there are better things for the public to be concerned about than who is having sex with whom. Retired U.S. Army Soldier Lt. Colonel Peters on O’Reilly’s show said that no real man hires prostitutes. You now see what is so wrong with our military leadership, and in my opinion, Peters is wrong. Fox News Journalist Brit Hume came on after Peters and stated that “boys will be boys” but that it didn’t matter if the women were prostitutes or not because it could all have the same effect on the operational security for protecting the President. Hume was right. These USSS agents should have had more discretion. I really feel sorry for the 10 military men who were with the USSS agents as I’ll bet the military men will be screwed even harder than the USSS agents even though the military men would have never been caught if one USSS agent didn’t have an altercation with a Colombian whore.
I guess Col. Peters figures that “real men” just get what they want via rape. What a scumbag.
Ouch! I doubt he thinks rape is acceptable, and he strikes me as someone who believes rape is worse than prostitution. He probably is foolish enough to believe that most women are coerced into prostitution. We know that the overwhelming majority of prostitutes are volunteers. Some prostitutes do it because this is their passion and they’re happy to be paid for it, while the overwhelming majority decide it is their best financial option to either survive or thrive.
He probably thinks that real men should get sex through marriage. I personally think this is a great idea, but the laws, the culture and enforcement of such have changed radically since 1965. As a result, i can not in good conscience advise any Western national, developed East Asian national or especially American man to marry these days. I wish them well if they do marry, advise them to honor their marriage in every way, and will help them if I can. The USA was more or less fair to both men and women in marriage prior to 1965 for 100 years or a little longer, but now is against men. Prior to the American Civil War(1861-65 for our foreign readers), divorce favored American men. I’m not saying that changes and reform weren’t necessary in 1965, but the baby was thrown out with the bath water so to speak. I know you have linked to The Spearhead at http://www.the-spearhead.com/ hosted by W.F. Price so if anyone needs to learn about this they have articles stretching back more than 2 years. I and other commenters over there have on rare occasions linked to you here in the past. I knew many men who had the opinion that ” real men should get married and marriage is good for men and society as well as if your marriage failed then it’s the man’s fault”, but I do not wish to imply this was Peter’s position as I simply don’t know.
What I find baffling as Krulac did a few articles before here is how anyone views hiring a prostitute for sex as worse than seducing a woman for “pump and dump one night stand sex” or friends with benefits(old school saying which is more rude and less politically correct: fuck buddy sex) even when both people truly know what the deal is. There tend to be emotional consequences(too often negative) for this. We haven’t even spoken of outright deception or lying yet which is even worse. When both the whore and john are being professional, it is some of the most honest sex around as well as some of the least emotionally draining. There usually is little to no emotional bonding between whore and john. Sure, having sex in a stable loving honest marriage is the best deal around and can cause the spouses to bond better with eachother, but not everyone is capable of this. A better man goes to a whore if he can rather than seduce a woman for “PUMP & DUMP SEX” in my opinion, and I have a feeling which I can’t prove that most Americans and other Westerners felt this way a century ago unlike now. A century ago in the USA and the rest of the West, 1)people thought marriage within the confines of marriage was best, 2) married and single men engaging in prostitution was socially & morally frowned upon but tolerated legally with little chance at these men being outed & shamed for their prostitution activities, and 3) seducing “amatuer” women for “pump and dump” sex was very wrong unlike today. What a crazy mixed up upside down in values and morality world we live in!!!
There are only two dependable ways for men to get sex from women: 1) Buy it; 2) Steal it. If he claims “real men” don’t do #1, he’s advocating either homosexuality or #2, and the word for that one is “rape”. The problem with morons like him is that they don’t consider the full implications of their words before they say them.
I 100% agree with your comment above. You put it more clearly and succinctly than I did. It is easier for most men to rape most woman than it is to get a woman to agree to professional or semi-professional prostitution because a prostitute always has the right to refuse and sometimes does refuse. Thank God most men do not have the emotional nor intellectual capacity to rape unlike what most neo-feminists tell you, and in fact (genuine)rape is much lower than what most of our neo-feminist brainwashed male and female American population believes. Even if men don’t rape and aren’t getting an adequate amount of sex, most will to one extent or another become surly to others. A few like George Sodini and U.S. Army Major Nidal Hassan as well as others will kill and murder. For the record, I think Sodini and Hassan had other problems as well which compounded eachother, and thank God there are few men like them. You are correct that Lieutenant-Colonel Peters didn’t think this through.
I forgot to add that sadly most Americans in my opinion think like Peters when it comes to prostitution which is sad.
No, there’s more than 2 ways. I’m proof of this and am not alone in that. Even if I were the only 1 I would still count. There’s non-whore women who don’t play games, etc., to lead men on and then won’t have sex. The same goes for disabled and/or otherwise handicapped men. There’s non-whore women who help them out also who are as dependable as whores.
Dependably. Maggie said ‘Dependably’. You all may be dependable for those you encounter, but it is not at all dependable that men could encounter you.
Sounds sensible, but they aren’t machines of political correctness. Expecting agents, soldiers, and politicians to spend their lives, since they’re devoting their lives to their careers, celibate and sober is insane. There’s a gap between the ideal and reality, which you either have to hide with hypocrisy or bridge with vetted hookers unless you want a bunch of nutjobs in those positions.
I can keep a grip on myself for the duration of a business trip. It does not take iron self-control.
I can also go my entire career long without posting a picture of myself ogling the woman I am working for and saying “I’m really checking her out.”
Good gravey, is common sense totally dead? Do we really think men are such weak things that they are just pushed around by their appetites, poor dears?
As I said to a reporter yesterday, the requirement to exclude outsiders from a secure facility is reasonable and if the agents broke it they should be disciplined. It’s the pretense that an outside hooker presents more of a threat than an outside deliveryman, maid or shoe-shine boy that is absurd.
Understood. Actually, though, to me, the security angle is a bit of a red herring. I don’t for an instant think security was compromised.
In my mind, we have two separate things going on.
One is a lot of pearl-clutching puritanism over sex, which is stupid.
The second is a straightforward issue of job performance. I don’t want the agents fired for having sex. I want them fired for not understanding the basic behavioral requirements of their work. Whether the ambient US cultural puritanism is stupid or not (I think it is) it is exactly the kind of reputational risk a Secret Service agent should know to avoid. Instead of avoiding it, they piled risk on risk until it exploded in their face. The real world fact is, they totally blew up the President’s ability to communicate anything at all during this summit. That’s unforgivable in their line of work.
That said, I can see that it is very hard to criticize the judgement of the agents (which I feel strongly about), without giving rhetorical shelter who would engage in pearl clutching and slut shaming. I realize that now matter how subtly I try to draw the distinction, most of my fellow Americans won’t hear it, and will think I am with them on the slut-shaming, because that’s where their head is at and its all they’ll hear.
Actually, I don’t think so; it’s my perception that most people seem completely uninterested in the “scandal” despite media & political attempts to make it into Watergate. The reporter I spoke to had the same perception, as did my source in the Pentagon. It seems most Americans recognize that the agent was a fool and an asshole (for trying to cheat the hooker), but reject the idea that prostitution makes it worse; even Forbes and Christian Science Monitor said as much.
That’s good, then. Glad to hear it.
Oh well, I have a larger ideological axe to grind here. I am of the faction that feels that 30 years of constatnt effort to delegitimise governent as a component of civilized society–e.g., Grover Norquist’s famous statement that he wants to shrink government until he can drown it in the bathtub–have done us real and lasting harm. Government is not panacea. But on my view good government and prudential regulation are necessary to the functioning of an advanced economy and society.
I therefore get blond with fury when civil servants behave in ways which play into the hands of those who would destroy government root and branch, leaving us exposed to the predations of malefactors of great wealth. That’s the real reason for my anger.
I cheerfully acknowledge that I am your guest here though, and respect the rather different view of government you’ve consistently expressed. 🙂
People keep going on the news saying that if the Secret Service had more female agents, things like this wouldn’t happen. I think the people who say this either incorrectly believe that for men, seeking sex is just like partying and is a thing done only for recreation and would stop if there were women there to keep the men in check, or they deny that the men would continue to look for sex anyway, and would either keep going to prostitutes or would approach their female colleagues for sex (especially if that were easier to do than trying to circumvent restrictions on seeing prostitutes–not that I’m sure any rule could ever completely stop men from seeking out local women in the foreign country where they’re working). It seems to me that the solution of both hiring more female agents and restricting male agents from seeing prostitutes would make for a dangerous or at the very least extremely unpleasant working environment for women in the Secret Service, which would result in few women wanting to hold that job, and so mostly men would work for the USSS and they’d be back at the same problem they have now.
@Informal Whoring – you’re also missing the super obvious objection to hiring more female secret service agents. That is, with a vanishingly small number of exceptions, women are rubbish bodyguards – especially in contrast to the biggest, toughest, best trained military men available.
Just ask Gaddafi how well his female bodyguards performed when the shit hit the fan. Oh, too late.
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