OPINION:
Not since Ted Kennedy made himself a waitress sandwich — with a fellow senator serving as the other slice of bread — has the United States Senate been so publicly featured as the setting for a pornographic escapade.
At least Kennedy had the decency not to record it.
Oh, wait. Never mind. The iPhone had not been invented in 1985 when Kennedy went for his late-night snack at a D.C. haunt.
Can you imagine the footage if Ted Kennedy had grown up with an iPhone? Oh, the dirty sandwiches he could have shared with the world!
Heck, it might have given divers enough time to rescue Mary Jo Kopechne before she drowned.
In Kennedy’s defense, the waitress sandwich happened in the private room of La Brasserie, which in French means a laid-back restaurant. Kennedy probably thought it was a ladies’ underwear shop.
And since this was before Al Gore invented the internet, reports of Kennedy’s performance were confined to Penthouse magazine, where he and all his “public service” belonged.
This latest Senate sexcapade has gone global and has been significantly modernized — you know, to keep up with the times and all.
It was a “waitress sandwich” without the waitress. A waitress-less waitress sandwich. It’s complicated.
Helpfully, the sex performance was recorded. And then sent around on the internet so that taxpayers across the country could see for themselves exactly what it is they are paying for out of all the government work going on in government buildings around here.
At least one of the bread slices in this waitress-less waitress sandwich was in the employ of a senator, Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland. So, yes, this means you were paying the staffer’s salary as he was sandwiching with another gentleman on the dais of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room.
You will also get to pay for the hazmat fumigation and sterilization required to clean up the place after this particularly unsanitary sandwich.
Interestingly, the recorded Senate buggery occurred on the Judiciary Committee desk between the chairs normally occupied by Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Chris Coons of Delaware. This is the august perch from which Ms. Klobuchar normally grills Supreme Court nominees about their beer-drinking habits from college fraternity days and fantasizes about imaginary gang rapes involving teenagers.
Perhaps Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Coons should be flattered that their workspace was chosen as the perfect film location for the waitress-less waitress sandwich. It is almost confusing trying to figure out who defiled the space more.
Aidan Maese-Czeropski, the staffer fired over the weekend by Mr. Cardin’s office, announced after the video went viral that he would never defile his Senate workspace.
“I love my job and would never disrespect my workplace,” he said on an internet message board for job applicants. Previously, Mr. Maese-Czeropski was an operative for the Virginia Democratic Party and starred in an ad for President Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
Just as a side note: These are really hard times for those of us who write a political column for a living. Newspapers are dead. The internet makes words cheaper than ever in human history. Everybody has an opinion.
But hardest of all is that today, our columns must compete with geniuses of delusion like Aiden Maese-Czeropski in positions of great government power whose salaries are paid by your taxes. And they are so ridiculous that they simply cannot be parodied.
Nothing I write will ever compare to his own words in terms of epic hilarity, poetic absurdity and scalding illumination. So, let me just step out of the way and present all his words without my wasted, dull commentary.
“This has been a difficult time for me, as I have been attacked for who I love to pursue a political agenda. While some of my actions in the past have shown poor judgment, I love my job and would never disrespect my workplace. Any attempts to characterize my actions otherwise are fabricated, and I will be exploring what legal options are available to me in these matters.”
All this humble political columnist can add is a chef’s kiss. Wearing a rubber glove and a HAZMAT hood, of course.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
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