Today on The Editors, Noah, Charlie, and Jim discuss the revolting happenings in a Senate hearing room. A staffer for Senator Cardin filmed himself having sex in a Senate hearing room, and then proceeded to post it on the internet. Some of the responses to his disgusting actions have themselves been dreadful, mainly because they try to paint this staffer as the victim. Charlie finds this instinct repulsive, and says so on today’s edition of The Editors.
“I have read a bunch of pieces in the last week,” he said, “suggesting that it’s homophobic to think this is a bad idea, that it’s prudish or puritanical . . . that if you compare this to some of the things Congress has done in the past, it’s less bad.”
Unfortunately, something we should all “instantly, immediately” agree is beyond the pale apparently doesn’t seem so shocking to people. Charlie said he is “somewhat cautious about using William F. Buckley Jr.’s line about becoming so open-minded that your brain falls out insofar as I worry that it is sometimes utilized to justify speech restrictions . . . but in this case, it seems quite clearly to apply.”
“This is bad behavior. There is no excuse for it. . . . This is one of the foundational things on which we should all be able to agree. . . .”