Reading Between the Lines.

Susan Estrich, like Kathleen Parker, is -- to me -- a "clean up" columnist. Not a must-read stand alone, as there is rarely "new" material covered. Usually, it's just a wrap up of other writers -- they seem to look to see what material other writers are working, then chime in with a "woman's perspective". Feeding a market need in a mainstream world with too few unique woman's voices, it seems.

Nice work if you can find it...

Today, Estrich loses me. She worked for Ted Kennedy. Supported Bill Clinton. Was raped herself, which affected her career path... You'd think somewhere in there, there might be some acknowledgment that -- whether legal or not, whether taxpayer funded or not -- the Secret Service hooker scandal damages America's reputation abroad, not to mention forwards the notion that many Western men still view women's flesh merely as marketable commodities, despite all our purple-fingered assurances that education, respect and rights need to be accorded to women worldwide.

Instead, with her prominent political platform, Estrich offers up this:

I went to a strip club once. OK, maybe it was twice. The guys were going; I was curious. It reminded me of the first time I walked into a casino, in a hotel in Reno where I was staying on business. I expected glamour, James Bond look-alikes in dashing tuxedos. I found sad-looking seniors throwing away their Social Security money and standing in line for cheap buffets. Even "high-end" strip clubs are full of sorry women. Having taken gym at a public school, shared communal bathrooms at a women's college and belonged to endless health clubs in my never-ending efforts to shape up, the sight of an unclothed female body doesn't do anything for me.

?????
What exactly is she saying there?
Public school gym class cured her of potential lesbianism by revealing flabby flesh? That it's ok to go to strip clubs with the fellas, so long as you're doing ... "research" and not appreciating the talent?

I've never been to a strip club either, Ms. Estrich. Never knowingly worked for men who exploited women, all the while publicly professing their innocence whilst consuming their flesh (or having their flesh consumed, is it ...?)

Being a rape victim, surely Estrich understands this is not about meeting natural or "normal" needs, but about buddying up, bonding, and using the power of money to pay poorer women to perform for one's personal non-private pleasures. (Or not pay, as the sad case here might be...)

Estrich's lockerroom observations, like her strip club observations, mean little. Her inability to understand how the world perceives these men, her former bosses too, shouts loud.

Surely I was not the only one wondering, since the scandal so nicely broke during mid-April tax time -- exactly how much of my tax money went to fund these ... benefits for our Homeland Security workers. Even if it was only .76 percent of one cent, that's simply too much to me...

Plus please, don't tell me these people were paying for their pleasures out of their own pockets. We fund this, we working American taxpayers, and the entitlements simply continue and continue ... unchecked, even for those female hangers on, not for their own excitement of course, simply to satisfy their natural ... curiosity.

And,
Just a time or two, at that...