I noticed in Newsweek last week, on a different page from that interesting tale about how we might not have elections this fall, a truly important story about how America's hardworking ecdysiastical class is offering free lap dances at certain establishments as long as the customer agrees to register to vote. At last, I thought, I understand the difference between hard and soft money.
With that, as Lyndon used to say, let us continue ...
I watched with interest over the past few days the spirited debate in which the Senate of the United States deliberated the crucial issue of who should be allowed to marry whom, and why that is in any way the business of the federal Constitution, which has had a pretty bad couple of years, poor thing, and should be left alone for a while to heal up, in my opinion. Anyway, I realized late Tuesday night that the Republican supporters of an amendment to ban the latest boon to Massachusetts's tourist economy had abandoned wholly the critical issue of interspecies dating.
I mean, there was Senator Rick Santorum, glowing and chuckling and channeling either Jimmy or Martha Stewart, talking about how much he'd rather be home, tucking his kids into their beds. Not a word -- nay, not a syllable! -- about how God made Adam-and-Eve, not Adam-and-Fido, a problem that had obsessed him when activist judges here in my beloved Commonwealth had first sent us down the road toward the day when the Westminster Kennel Club's annual show turns into a bridal fair. And then there was Senator John Cornyn of Texas.
(Note to self: Drop another line to Ivins thanking her and the Great State for this piece of work.)
Anyway, in the prepared text of a speech he planned to deliver to the Heritage Foundation, Cornyn explained:
"It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean that it's right. ... Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife."
Later, a spokesperson for Cornyn explained that Cornyn had not read the passage in his actual address. In other words, at the last minute, on an issue of mighty national import, Senator John Cornyn choked. Pure cowardice. Naked -- you should pardon the expression -- political expedience wins out again over principled leadership. Where is the outrage?
(OK, it's in Atlantic City, waiting by the slot machines for Bill Bennett to finish up, but you get the point.)
As a matter of fact, it matters a great deal to my daily life if my neighbor marries a box turtle. Granted, it doesn't matter as much as it did to my old college buddies who went out and got drunk one night and woke up married to snapping turtles. That didn't end well, although they both can hit the high notes in the national anthem now. However, having a neighbor who's married to a box turtle presents its own set of problems. For one thing, father-son softball games are pretty much impossible, if one of the dads takes several days to leg out a grounder to shortstop.
But there are larger questions here on which Cornyn took an inexcusable pass. Now, I grant you that it's not my business what kind of turtle people choose to marry. My own taste in my wilder youth ran toward Redbellies, who hung out in a roadhouse outside Pewaukee and were superb dancers. Only pure luck it was that saved me from a lifetime of sunning myself on a rock with the in-laws.
How could Cornyn take a dive on those people who weren't as lucky as I was?
How could he fail his trust at the last moment, especially on box turtles. Some of them can be real lookers. For example, according to Someone Who Knows, the Ornate Box Turtle (Terrapene ornata) has a "distinctive pattern of radiating yellow lines on a brown or black background." I mean, hubba-hubba. Hard to believe they're an endangered species with all that going for them. Get a young man in the big city for the first time, feed him some hard liquor, and he's going to fall for any hussy whose plastron has a "distinct movable hinge."
And, let me tell you, upright young ladies from the heartland often fall victim to the first smoothie they meet with his own keelless carapace. I could tell you stories, boy. Wow.
Where was John Cornyn when these poor girls needed him?
And what would have been the harm of sounding this alarm? An important public concern would have been aired, very likely for the first time by a member of Congress. Parents would have been encouraged to have that difficult but necessary talk with their children:
"Now, kids, one thing you have to remember is that box turtles are one of the few things that neither Rush Limbaugh nor Newt Gingrich ever have married."
And, politically, it would have put the issue "in play" for the upcoming fall campaign. It would have forced the two members of the Democratic ticket to take a stand on whether or not people have the right to marry box turtles. This would open the door to an advantageous line of attack in which John Kerry and John Edwards then could be forced to reply to an endless series of questions of whether or not people have the right to marry chickens, shotguns, party favors, or a 1955 DeSoto. This could turn the tide in a lot of swing states (although that part about the shotguns might cut both ways in Wyoming).
All of this John Cornyn abandoned because his rhetorical vision didn't match that of his crack team of speechwriters. ("No, Jim Bob. I'll bet you $20 we can't get him to say 'box turtle' to Heritage.") It was a great disappointment to me, I must say.
You will have to excuse me now. I have to shred some lettuce and punch some holes in the top of the shoebox.
The neighbors are coming to dinner.
Charles P. Pierce is a staff writer for The Boston Globe Magazine and a contributing writer for Esquire. He also appears regularly on National Public Radio.
