Rebutting the Star Tribune

An editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune today enitled "So what if he did?" addressed the recent scandal surrounding Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig and his arrest for lewd conduct charges at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport earlier this summer. The editorial, which suggests that Craig was simply "an adult prospositioning another adult," perpetually shocked me as I read it, line by line, worse and worse.

Senator Craig's actions, followed by liberal rhetoric such as the article published today, beg the question: Have some Americans lost a moral grounding? The answer, if one merely reads this editorial, is overwhelmingly a yes. To suggest that a sitting United States Senator is not out of line when he/she somewhat clandestinely seeks sex in a public restroom in an international airport is beyond absurd. To turn the issue into one focusing merely on hetero/homosexual relations, as this editorial did, is beyond absurd. Whether Larry Craig was a man or woman seeking sex with a man OR a woman in such a setting is irrelevant. We wouldn't tolerate that type of action in a public place from an everyday electrician, stock broker, or retail salesperson, much less a United States Senator elected to represent those individuals.

The bottom line here, as with so many other cases that the mass media spin into headlines of seeming importance, is that like with Don Imus earlier this year, before this incident most Americans had no clue whatsoever who Senator Larry Craig was. Further, most of them simply did not care who he was, and many still do not now. What we are left to take away from the incident then is that, like with Imus earlier, Craig was absolutely in the wrong and most of those people who do pay attention or even pretend to care, would agree with that. When his fellow Republican senators ask Senator Craig to step aside from his job, it is not because they are all bigoted haters of all homosexuals eveyrwhere in America (which is not even clear if Craig is to be included as part of that population), as the liberal media like the Star Tribune would like to have readers believe. Instead, asking the Senator to step aside is merely saying, as the country did with Don Imus, that his actions were inappropriate and that his conduct was unbefitting that of a United States Senator, period. Reading any more into it than that is simply raising speculation. We have morality and we have ethics. In the terrain between right and wrong, Senator Craig was in the wrong. He has had a distinguised career and done much for his constituents. While a rational person would hope that is not to be overshadowed, quite simply, the legacy of this retiring Senator is now resting on his own actions, which cast a remarkably long shadow of their own.