First there was the case of the Presidential residue and Monica Lewinsky's dry cleaning bill -- and not forgetting William Jefferson Blyth III's acrobatic semantics with the legal definition of "sexual relations", that somehow lead to oral pleasure being re-classified as oral hygiene -- and then there was the case of Weiner's Weiner (who needs to create double entendres when real life presents them to you on a silver platter?)
And now, with shades of Clarence Thomas, we have a Presidential Candidate not only groping for words, but also being accused of groping his colleagues.
Is this nature or nurture -- are Men-in-High-Office born with sexual overdrive or are they corrupted by the attainment of power?
JFK, Silvio Berlusconi, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, even the avuncular Mao Tse-Tung -- a long line of leaders stretching back to Caligula and doubtless beyond, all of whom had a little bit too much of an-eye-for-the-ladies.
Ironically, 'Tricky Dickey' was the one President that no one could imagine indulging in such antics -- so every cloud has a silver lining after all. Enter-stage-right, the latest incumbent -- Herman Goering (sorry, Cain), former head of the NRA (the 'R' thankfully standing for Restaurant and not Rifle) and the CEO of a pizza company who allegedly liked more than just extra toppings, or should he better be described as an aspirant, as his 4 alleged incidents of wanting to take-away more than just pizza all appear to have failed ?! Moreover, the road to The White House is a long and arduous one and Kim Kardashian has just filed for divorce, so who knows what booby-traps may lie-ahead for the populist contender and his simple -- some would say simplistic -- '999' policies and seemingly obligatory, foreign policy gaffes.
Maybe the reason why so many politicians, corporate executives and Wall Street bankers get into this kind of trouble is that they spend too many nights in hotel rooms with their research assistants (sorry -- research papers), surfing-the-net for forms of 'entertainment' -- or, in Weiner's case, spreading a little happiness with his very own form of on-line entertainment (I use the word 'little' advisedly). Now, there's nothing wrong with low-level pornography of course -- so long as it's not easily accessible by children (of which more later) -- but our travels through cyber-space while Web Sheriff'ing have revealed an alarming trend of sites and portals that don't so much entertain, as utterly corrupt.
One of the most graphic examples of this was in relation to a murder trial at London's famous 'Old Bailey' criminal court, a school teacher -- Jane Longhurst -- met a man on a blind date and, unbeknown to her, he frequented web-sites that were literally dedicated to the strangulation of women for sexual pleasure (principal among which was the disturbingly titled 'HangingBitches.com') with a sad inevitability, Jane's 'date' lived-out his sick fantasies, murdering Longhurst for sexual 'kicks' by strangling her. Although her murderer was sentenced to life 'At-Her-Majesty's-Pleasure', the Police were powerless to take-action against the sites concerned, as they were outside of the jurisdiction. This led to a national newspaper asking if Web Sheriff could take-on these peddlers-of-death and, even though the owner of the sites in question was repellent and completely unrepentant -- and even though his Dutch ISP endeavoured to adopt an absurdly 'sexually liberal' approach to the matter -- we nevertheless closed-down all of the sites concerned within 48 hours, hopefully helping to save many a 'Jane Doe' from a similar fate. The site owner then had the audacity to threaten to sue us for interfering with his 'business' interests -- to which our riposte was that we'd happily meet him in front of a jury anytime.
With eerie parallels, our policing of the internet on behalf of clients for infringements of their movies, TV shows and cartoons etc has shone-a-light onto a hitherto (very) dark-corner of the web -- to wit, cartoon porn / animated pornography sites directed at children and, even more worryingly, easily accessible by kids the length and breadth of the nation within a few short clicks of a mouse. 'Disney' porn on the internet is rife (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs taking-on a dimension never envisaged by founding-father Walt), whilst leading, current shows such as The Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park all have swathes of the internet dedicated to incestuous and graphic 'interpretations' of these family shows ('FamilyGuyPorn.com', 'South-Park-Porn.com' and 'SimpsonFuck.com' hardly being a million-miles-away from the official sites concerned in terms of their names or search engine listings). Why people should do this in the first place is bad enough and, as to why they should get-away with continuing is even worse -- where are the Feds when you (or your children) need them ??
Talking of the Feds and their international cousins over at the CIA -- cue images of Felix Leiter in a Hawaiian shirt -- the US government is shortly due to open a 'virtual' embassy for Iran, which, with overtones of the occupation of the real US embassy and subsequent hostage crisis in Tehran back in '79, Iranian hackers have vowed to virtually 'occupy', this impending battle should be fascinating and is part of a wider cyber-war that also involves attempts to neutralize Iran's nuclear facility in Bushehr, so, without anyone knowing it and while we sleep, World War Three could be fought-and-won on laptops in Washington and Tehran in an all-too-real version of Call of Duty.
Here's hoping that, when the circus stops and the real debating starts, Cain, Romney, Perry, Gingrich and Bachmann et al (seeing as the latest debate was in Vegas -- of all places -- she may have considered herself lucky not to be standing next to the Pizza Man !!) will address issues of genuine concern to the American people, such a jobs, welfare and mishandling of veterans' remains at Dover Air Force Base, and, if Clarence (sorry -- Herman) comes out on top of the republican pile, then the President might be obliged to play his trump card in order to avoid being 'cained' at the polls -- Obama Girl!