Tuesday is election day here in America. By the time you read this, the elections will be winding to their conclusion. A new president will be on his way to the White House. Will he have garnered support from the naked portion of the great unwashed? Will nudists, feeling suppressed by clothing-mandatory polling sites, have stepped into their voting booths, unbuckled their pants, and — well, pulled their lever?

By all accounts, the voter turnout this year has been extremely high. In future years, however, when cynicism sets back in and voters become apathetic again, perhaps politicians should recollect this little publicity stunt in Florida. Folks may not be lured to the polls by the option of taking off their own clothes — but they may well be lured by the prospect of seeing other people get naked. Or imagine if a presidential candidate him- or herself were to endorse nudism. “A vote for me is a vote for nudity,” s/he might say. Imagine if Sarah Palin declared something like, “If elected, I will pose naked in the Oval Office…” You think it would have garnered her ticket more votes?

This article about the sexualization of torture was written by author Naomi Wolf, a “public intellectual” and prominent feminist. Evoking her experience at rape crisis clinics, she draws parallels between the modus operandi of sex criminals and state-authorized torturers. Ultimately she concludes that some frightening proportion of war crimes are in fact sex crimes, and “people in America need to demand justice for the perpetrators and their victims.”

When you first read her piece, you can’t help but get this image in your head — top politicos, most of them old white men, getting vicarious kicks from knowing that political prisoners are having hard objects inserted into their rectums. As you think about it, though, you realize two things. First, Wolf is correct: political torture frequently includes actions that would qualify as sex crimes in the civilian world. Second, her argument amounts to an inversion of the recent U.N. resolution to declare rape a war tactic. Torture is rape, rape is torture… Yes, but in the final analysis torture is torture. Does it matter much whether your thumbs are being broken or a broom handle is being shoved in your ass? They’re both illegal, according to the Third Geneva Convention.

So what’s the point? The whole thing is less about sex or torture than about politics. To portray torture as sex crime gets attention (hence the proliferating number of headlines about Wolf’s article). If you’re principled, you’ll hope this attention will expose corruption in the Bush administration and prevent such torture from occurring again. If you’re cynical, you’ll figure that it’s all just a matter of grabbing jaded eyeballs and gluing them to the news — so that the newspapers and news channels and bloggers can all fling ads in your face. And if you’re a sexual sociopath, perhaps you’ll consider joining the military or, even better, running for office. What better way to act out your worst impulses?

If you’re one of those PervScan readers in China or Lithuania and you haven’t heard the first thing about the sex scandal involving New York (former) governor Eliot Spitzer, consider yourself lucky. It’s such a big f’ing deal here in New York City that, even when you hear a dog bark, you imagine it’s offering the canine view on the matter.

A few people have sent links to the story — thanks — but, really, the media circus is repellent, particularly when the incident itself is commonplace enough. A politician got caught with his pants down. So what? Far from being perverse, it’s practically normal. If anything, it makes you long for the politician who wouldn’t make such a big display of contrition. Get some balls, dude. You did it. You liked it. Why not show some support for it? Come out and declare, “Yes, I have sinned — but I don’t think it should be a sin and I will do everything in my power to overturn the current legislation on sex work.”

It’s hard to say which is more enjoyable: the sight of a politician interrupting the dull proceedings of congress with a crazy sci-fi scenario (platoon of lesbians) or the sight of a politician interrupting the dull proceedings of congress with a sensible idea (quit firing gays when they have something to contribute). Humor and reason — what a rare combination in a politician. If you read Rep. Ackerman’s official bio he sounds like a bit of a character. While in Washington he lives on a houseboat called The Unsinkable II. Yes, the first Unsinkable sank, but at least the guy can laugh at himself.

It makes you wonder how Rep. Ackerman would respond to the recent pronouncement by Senator Jay Rockefeller that sex and violence in the media are a “national security issue.” Each politician mixes up sex with the war on terror, but Rep. Ackerman is clearly making a joke. Senator Rockefeller, on the other hand, is deadly serious about an absurdity. How can sex and violence be a national security issue? Is he afraid that young people will learn the ways of perversion by watching tv and then, God forbid, join the army? Sounds like he’s afraid of precisely what Rep. Ackerman knows is a joke: lesbian platoons.

Here’s one of the pictures that Canada Post rejected. It’s very tame. Most men and probably some women would be glad to see it adorn their envelopes. It’s a stamp you might actually fantasize about licking.

It’s hard to think of Canada as prudish. Prostitution is quasi-legal there, and places like Montreal and Niagara Falls have a million more strip bars than New York City, even though they’re much smaller cities than the Big Apple. Meanwhile Vancouver has become a mecca for “alternative lifestyles,” sort of like a Canuck San Francisco. There are certain more conservatively countries on the map — like, say, Iran.

That being said, it’s hard to consider this censorship. It’s not as though the Canadian government is refusing to let Mr. Potter exhibit his pictures. It is just refusing to let him make official stamps out of them. That’s the government’s call. If you go to the state for something, you have to play by its rules. It’s like when artists whine about not getting grant money to fund some lewd performance. Why should the government — or anyone, for that matter — fund it? You’re free to perform it but that doesn’t mean anyone else is obliged to foot the bill for you.

Let’s keep the terms clear. When jackbooted thugs show up at your house and beat the shit out of you and your family for making “decadent” art, that’s censorship. When the government refuses to make a postage stamp out of your wife, that’s just bureaucracy.

Here is Mayor Gosek’s official picture; here he is on the local news; and here is a shot of him leaving jail. When you see a 58-year-old guy who must use so much Grecian formula, inevitably you think one of two things: either the guy is a politician or a pedophile. Who else would make such a concerted effort to look so young?

In Mayor Gosek’s case, he is both politician and pedophile — and to throw in a third shady business, he’s also an electrical contractor. Prior to his arrest by the FBI, the greatest scandal to trouble his administration was his allowing a woman to use his official mayoral car for some sort of personal use. In light of the current allegations, you can’t help but wonder if there’s a bit more to that story too.

Anyway, when you read about a guy like this, it’s hard not to ask yourself: Why? Why? A man esteemed by his community, the owner of a successful business, husband of a schoolteacher and father of two grown sons — why risk it all for some momentary pleasure? It’s not like having sex with two 15-year-olds is probably great enough to justify throwing away your whole life. So why do it? It’s a difficult question to answer. Maybe there is no answer at all. Maybe the guy is having a mid-life crisis. Maybe he’s not happy with a life that seems successful on the surface. Maybe he’s stupid. Who knows? But when you consider that the previous President was willing to throw away the most powerful position in the world for a blowjob, you can see that there are crazier things than a mayor willing to throw it all away for two nubile teens.

To see a politician undermine himself by getting caught with his pants down is nothing new. It happens all the time, and in that respect there is nothing remarkable about the case of Mr. Knapp. However, take a close look at exactly how he ended up (allegedly) committing a crime. He approaches a man who was already lingering on the street. He strikes up a conversation. The conversation must have been comfortable enough for him to proposition the man. The man agrees to meet him in a parking lot somewhere. In the parking lot, Mr. Knapp asks the guy to come home with him — and wham! The cops pounce on him like he’s a bank robber.

Frankly, it’s difficult to see what the crime is. Nowhere does the story say that Mr. Knapp offered to pay for sex. He was charged simply with “loitering with an intent to solicit sex.” But why is it illegal for an impromptu conversation to lead to a sexual proposition? It’s not like the guy went up to a fourteen-year-old boy and copped a feel. It’s not like he forced himself on a random pedestrian. He struck up a conversation with somebody who was already hanging out on the street. What’s the big stinking deal? People cruise each other all the time. Is Mr. Knapp in trouble just because he approached another man? Is that it — institutionalized homophobia? Does the police department in Elmira have a hard time meeting its quota of speeding tickets and therefore feel the need to drum up some revenue by harrassing the local gays?

Naturally Mr. Knapp’s Republican opponent is “outraged.” The newspaper quotes Susan Skidmore, the opponent, as saying: “I would be outraged if I was a member of the public if I knew a person of this ilk was trying to take public office and be a representative of this community… He certainly isn’t a representative of our community.” What does she mean by “a person of this ilk?” A homosexual?

Advice to Mr. Knapp: contact Lambda Legal ASAP.

(Thanks to alanr for the link.)

Oh, those poor little terrorists. It’s not right, is it? It’s not just. It’s not humane. They go around bombing and beheading, and how do we respond? With unjustified use of exhibitionistic force. We torture them with titties, frighten them with thongs, humiliate them with vaginal emissions. Doesn’t this violate the Geneva Convention? After all, one victim even got an erection during his interrogation. Oh the shame, the horror, the abuses of human rights! He must have been begging to receive a mere beating instead. “Pull out my fingernails with pliers,” he must have cried. “Stick a cow probe in my rectum! Anything! Just don’t give me a boner, pleeeeaase.” You can hear him break down in sobs from here.

Jesus. Get real. No doubt every one of you who enjoys the sight and touch of a female is thinking the same thing. “I did it! I masterminded 9/11! I’m Osama bin Laden’s best friend! I know all the secrets — everything! Come interrogate me!” How bad can it be to have a buff female soldier give you a little lapdance? Ask any of the poor grunts who were tortured in Vietnam if they think these lewd interrogation techniques are inhumane. They’ll wake up from their post-traumatic-stress nightmares to laugh at you.

On one hand, you can see the governor’s point. People would be in a dither if he kept porn magazines on his desk. Granted, art is Art and likes to distinguish itself from pornography. But in the final analysis, a naked body is a naked body and it’s not ridiculous to pose the question of whether it belongs on a desk where it can be seen by third-graders. How many parents would accept the same statue if it were placed on the desk of a third-grade teacher?

On the other hand, who are we kidding? The governor’s lamp — here’s a picture of it — is probably more modest than Britney Spears and Gwen Stefani. If third-graders watch television and read teeny-bopper magazines, they probably know more about the female body than they’re going to learn from an old lamp.

And to make matters even more ironic, it’s interesting to note that the statue was once an icon in the fight to free the slaves here in America. It would be a good joke if some black advocacy group made the governor keep the statue, arguing that to remove it would be racism.

Ever wonder about the seamy side of life in occupied Iraq? Curious how soldiers seek relief of unbearable urges there in the hot desert? “Massoud” tells us that a tour of duty is apparently different in Iraq than in certain other countries, where local prostitutes follow the troops like swarms of bugs. In Iraq, cultural and religious differences necessitate that troops are mostly confined to socializing with each other. However, that does not stop certain entrepreneurs from capitalizing on the pent-up lusts of a captive audience, and so apparently some women — and maybe some men? — have found a way to supplement their pay. It must be awkward for those soldiers to get a reputation as a hooker with other soldiers, but then again the wages of a tank mechanic probably don’t compare to those of a base whore. And even if the profit motive is lacking, sleeping around probably cuts down on the immense boredom that weirdly makes up too many hours of a life of danger.

Apparently there are some opportunities for soldiers to get their rocks off with the locals, but mostly the linguistic barriers prevent it from happening. Massoud describes how Kurdish women sometimes hang around the perimiter of the military base, looking for husbands and even lovers. When the reporter marvels at this, given the traditional nature of Kurdish society and the unpopularity of the American occupiers, Massoud describes how it’s not inconceivable to sleep with the enemy. “Well, yes, they possibly could have sex with a soldier,” he tells the reporter. Then he adds: “Afterwards they might get to kill him too, of course.”

Which means that those guys who don’t leave base for fun are smart — or maybe lucky — and those people who turn tricks on base are actually saving their comrades’ lives. Maybe they should get a medal for turning tricks.