scandalous scarlet letters

my father used to say:
excuses are like buttholes- everyone's got one!
i suppose the reader might see where this is going in light of certain controversies (and how appropriate that "buttholes" is the key vocab word...)

so, i'm not going to name names here, because while one got caught with lurid, lecherous emails and instant messages, i am sure there are younger, more techincally-savvy guys out there doing the same thing. let's run through the important points of this case:

• strongly believing that you're an alcoholic is no excuse for what you did. you knew the rules, silly!


• being gay and also sexually molested by a priest as a young'un are not excuses either. again, you knew the rules.


• when you're dealing with teenagers, certainly you were aware that they have the advantage, technologically speaking? i was the one to get my family started with AOLv1.0, when i was thirteen!


• this makes you look a little stupid, if in fact you were aware of the teenager's technological superiority, and if in fact you were aware that instant messages and emails can be SAVED... either you really, really trusted the kid, or you needed some way to end the madness and you knew you would be found out.


• as with everything, i try to look at it with varying perspectives: imagine from the perspective of the teenager. obviously he knew what he was doing, otherwise the IMs and emails would not have been saved. does that seem a little non-innocent, if in fact he knew what the lawmaker was doing was wrong and was planning on blackmailing him?


• curious teenager or not, he was still under 18 and therefore OFF LIMITS!


• if the reader has read the IMs himself... it might make his skin crawl. not that what they were talking about was very explicit (that's a lot tamer than an average weekend conversation with my friends in chicago) but when one takes into account that this is a 50-odd year old man talking about "spanking it"! ewwwwwww!

darling, there is NO EXCUSE, i don't care if you're a nymphomaniac, there is NO EXCUSE for the inappropriateness in which you participated. and to your friends: please let us know, for whom else are you hiding an icky bit of information?