A Wise Word About Larry Craig

From Garrison Keillor.

His beginning:

You do not want people to think of the Republican Party every time they step into a public toilet and so the gentleman had to go and why not dispatch him immediately? Why make him stumble through a week of contrition on cable TV and explain himself into an even deeper hole? Nonetheless, it was stunning, the suddenness with which a prominent man can be hurled from his perch by his own friends and with less ceremony than if he were a convenience store clerk caught taking the plastic wrappers off magazines.

What did him in was not his transgression so much as the fact that it was cartoonish and easily worked up into jokes. The next morning on YouTube there was a video of the gentleman endorsing a presidential hopeful, with the title "Senator Craig Taps His Foot for Mitt Romney," and he had become a punch line, like Bill Clinton. ("They're having a Presidents Day sale at the men's store -- pants are half off.")

And the end:

It's an old refrain, but true: In 20 years, the sexual issues and tensions that led to Sen. Craig's downfall will simply not matter anymore. They don't matter much to young people. When enough people my age are gone from the world, the world will change. Calcium supplements will always be with us, and retirement, but a person's sexual interests will not be an issue.

Garrison Keillor's 65, by the way.