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03:45 pm - 'But you #@%^ just one goat...'

I have a faint, uncertain recollection that I may have written something along these lines before, but since it came up in conversation recently ... realinterrobang said something about how (literally) in-credible a prediction would have been a dozen years ago, that nowadays we would be having national and international conversations about whether torture is justifiable -- that there'd be any real question, anybody supporting it ... and she mentioned the latest politician to have come out spouting torture-apologia, and my reaction was something like, "In a sane world, for a politician to speak out in favour of torture would be his 'but you fuck just one goat' moment," referring to this old joke:

A tourist visiting Scotland spots a man drinking by himself in a pub, looking depressed. The tourist asks him what the trouble is. "Well, me name's MacGregor, and I'm a stone mason by trade. See that pier in the harbor? I built it meself. Took over a year. But do they call me 'MacGregor the Pier Builder?' Nae. And take a look at the roads in this town. Built most of 'em meself. Took years. But do they call me 'MacGregor the Road Builder?' Nah. But you fuck just one goat..."

Now I was going to write about torture, and what it means that, as a culture, we are having this conversation and People Accustomed To Being Taken Seriously As Leaders (or potential leaders) are among those trying to excuse it, but I got sidetracked. You see, I googled the key phrase to make sure I wasn't screwing up the joke somehow due to not having heard it for several years, and while I waited for my sssllloooooooww computer to load relevant-looking pages, I also clicked on some links on my friendspage/readinglist, and was startled to realize that there was a story showing up in both places:

A gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, a morals-and-no-abortions kinda guy, casually reveals that he's had sex with a mule and considers it not a big deal with respect to his reputation and his political aspirations.

Now I suppose polls will show whether he's right about the political impact of his mule-loving coming-out or not. but the synchronicity was distracting regardless. Anyhow, the moral, ethical, religious, symbolic, and psychiatric significance-or-lack-thereof of the bestiality aside, the bigger questions in my mind are whether we-as-a-culture have a long enough attention span for anything to be a "you fuck just one goat" scandal for a politician (sticky-looking memes like "Keating Five" seem to have lost some of their stick recently), and what do we have to do to get advocating torture on the goatfucking-equivalents list? Not so much for action-movie fans trying to have a philosophical debate after a couple pitchers of beer, or college freshmen trying to figure out where the corners are in philosophy class, but for politicians, those who we trust to make and implement policies on our behalf, representing us.