As you may recall, on January 6th 2021 I was on air with Tucker as the alleged "storming of the Capitol" was drawing to a close. It was not yet over, but the media had already agreed the Official Narrative - that it was a shameful violation of the most hallowed precincts of "the Citadel of Democracy". I got sick of that shtick almost instantly:
Mark Steyn rips media's 'citadel of democracy' framing of Capitol: 'It's a citadel of crap'
Ah, but I was wrong. It turns out it's a Citadel of Shags. Headline from The Daily Caller:
EXCLUSIVE: Senate Staffer Caught Filming Gay Sex Tape In Senate Hearing Room
Er, don't hit the link unless you enjoy that sort of thing. If you think "Filming Gay Sex Tape" is just the usual teasing click-bait for a bit of lame-o soft-focus light-petting, not at all. It's definitely Not Safe For Work, although evidently it's safe for government work, as the Senate staffer in question had no qualms about uploading it to the Internet. The setting is the table of the Hearing Room of the Senate Judiciary Committee. That would be the room where Brett Kavanaugh was grilled, and FBI straight-shooter James Comey testified at length and with an impressively straight face about the "Russia investigation". I have also testified at the US Senate, but can't remember if it was that room or another. Still, if I'm ever asked back, I'll remember to bring a couple of moist towelettes to wipe down the furniture.
So, if I understand the social norms of the People's House, it's completely unacceptable (and, indeed, a crime) to wander its precincts goofily with a MAGA hat and an American flag; but, if you stop for ten minutes to have anal sex before the Supreme Court nominee hearing re-convenes, that's perfectly fine - so fine it might be worth entering it in mitigation and getting a couple of years knocked off your sentence. You will get a serious prison term if you put your feet on Nancy Pelosi's desk, but not if you climb on, get down on hands and knees, and um...
Useful to know.
The staffer in question, an aide to Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin, one Aidan Maese-Czeropski, responded indignantly on LinkedIn:
This has been a difficult time for me, as I have been attacked for who I love...
In fairness, he was mostly attacked not "for who I love" but for where he loves him. Nevertheless, I assumed that this defence would prove effective - and that no Washington bigshot would dare to pink-slip a gay guy for getting caught being gay. Besides, in the broader sense, in a decadent pseudo-republic with no equality before the law, it seems entirely natural that some citizens rot in gaol merely for passing half-an-hour ambling aimlessly around the People's House- and other, more favoured citizens can with impunity roger like billy-ho on the very People's Table that determines the composition of the highest court in the land. The symbolism is too perfect.
And there's a lot of it about: the cocaine in the West Wing, the topless tranny in the Rose Garden, the incoming school-board president who chose to eschew the Bible and be sworn in with her hand on three books about gay schoolboys plus a fourth about a trans eighth-grader... "The Bible doesn't hold significant meaning for me," says Democrat Karen Smith, whereas Flamer and All Boys Aren't Blue "they do mean something to me". So what's the big deal about Flamer on the Senate Judiciary table?
Alas, it seems we are not quite there yet. So Senator Cardin's staffer has come to an unhappy end - although that may be not because of the gay congress in Congress but because, either shortly before or after, he yelled "Free Palestine!" in the face of a Jewish congressman. Might have done better to relax with a post-coital cigarette in Chairman Durbin's seat before wandering back out into the corridor. Had he asked my advice, I would have cited the line taken by the British MP Michael Brown - that gay sex in parliament and political courage go hand in hand. From my Telegraph column almost two decades ago, back when gay Tories were all the rage:
In yesterday's Sunday Telegraph, the gay former Tory MP Michael Brown raised the stakes: "They take risks - and how! - which is why we need our gay MPs and their scandals."
In the course of this thesis, Mr Brown observed: "The press were generally indulgent towards me: maybe that was partly thanks, once, to my having oral sex in Douglas Hogg's Commons ministerial office (I was his PPS) with a lobby journalist."
It's hard to decide what's most kinky and transgressive here: the homosexuality, the lobby journalist or Douglas Hogg's office carpet.
Mr Hogg [now Viscount Hailsham] doesn't seem to have been present on this occasion, although these days most senior Tories would be chuffed to wander in on such a scene, weary of being flayed by Francis Maude and co for being too "white, male, middle-class and heterosexual": "Excellent work, Michael. Just the ticket! Hold it right there until the camera crew arrives for the campaign video."
Ah, but Aidan Maese-Czeropski has already been in a campaign video. For Joe Biden. As the candidate told him:
From the bottom of my heart: thank you.
Did the fetching young twink thank him right back from the heart of his bottom? I could do cheap gags all night, but let me get to the British member's big takeaway from two decades back:
I hasten to add Mr Brown wasn't just rubbing it in for those of us who've led more sheltered lives. He was making a big political point, to whit: "It was such recklessness that made me willing to go on holiday with an under-age man in 1994 - the flip side, I suppose, of the political recklessness that made me willing to threaten to resign my seat and cause an embarrassing by-election if nuclear waste was disposed of in my constituency. Thank God for the risk-taking by reckless politicians."
Got that? The gay sex and the maverick iconoclastic political courage go hand in hand.
At which point, the Telegraph editors cut a Steyn joke:
So on nuclear waste, he's just another 'Not In My Back Yard' type. On underage youths, he's quite the opposite.
Oh, dear, back to the cheap gags again. But that's because a generation ago any intersection of politics and sexual identity was assumed simply to add to the grand comedy of life. Shortly after Mrs Thatcher's successor, John Major, announced the government's new "Back to Basics" family-values campaign, a Tory backbencher was discovered, inevitably, to have shared an hotel room in France with another man. He explained that that was because the cost of separate accommodations had been a little pricey and they had slept back to back. So The Sun dispatched its crack investigative team to the Continent, where they photographed the bed in question and splashed it over the front page with the headline "Back to Back to Basics".
In those days, tragic and career-detonating as such episodes might be for the hapless principals, they were for everybody else peripheral diversions from the main thrust of politics - budgets, foreign policy, wars, etc. Today the ever proliferating range of boutique identities seems relentlessly central to every aspect of public affairs, from the White House Christmas jubilations to that school-board president's kindergarten classes to the flagpole of the abandoned Kabul embassy to Nato headquarters, where the Secretary-General now issues an annual statement against "biphobia" and "transphobia":
Is battling "biphobia" really a strategic priority for Nato? Did he run that past the Turkish defence minister? Is that why the Nato-created "Afghan National Army" went (unlike Aidan Maese-Czeropski on the Senate Judiciary Committee table) belly up?
Well, yes, it is our strategic priority, according to a fascinating essay in The American Conservative. Helen Andrews starts with a throwaway quip by Rod Dreher - that we're in Ukraine to "queer the Donbass" - and quickly concludes that it's true. Most of us, according to political inclination, assume that foreign aid goes either to potable water projects in up-country villages or straight into the dictator's retirement account in Zurich. In fact:
American taxpayers sent $19,808 to an NGO called Queer Montenegro to introduce Gay-Straight Alliance clubs in Montenegrin schools; $24,000 to stage a gay film festival in South Korea; $32,000 to produce a comic "featuring an LGBTQ+ hero" in Peru; $42,000 for the gay classical group the Well-Strung Quartet to perform in Kazakhstan. An NGO in Ecuador received $20,600 to "host 3 workshops, 12 drag theater performances, and produce a 2 minute documentary."
These would seem odd budgetary items for an alleged superpower even if America were not the brokest country in the history of brokeness. But given the centrality of sexual and gender identity to every aspect of US government - the first lesbian press secretary! the first four-star transgender! the first non-binary kleptomaniac Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition! - Helen Andrews' thesis makes as much sense as any other explanation. If "who you are" is the most important thing to school boards and military alliances alike, it should not be surprising that lowly staffers are minded to dispose of their own spent fuel in the Senate Judiciary room.
And, aside from anything else, Aidan Maese-Czeropski has just demonstrated that he can make a two-minute documentary for a lot less than twenty grand.
~Speaking of our Nato allies, the "far right" Geert Wilders has just won the Dutch election. We have a few copies left of a joint Steyn/Wilders literary endeavour: Geert's terrific book Marked for Death, complete with an introduction by Mark. It's available at the SteynOnline bookstore, and is the perfect Christmas gift for the far-right member of your family.
However, if you're nervous about last posting dates, etc, there's always a Mark Steyn Club Christmas gift membership, which can be digitally delivered.
