Do you have a "work spouse"?

23% of employees in some poll said they did — they had someone at work who plays something like a spousal role, someone who's a source of "mental and emotional support" and even "bickering." And sex? Well, according to the article, they know where to draw the line, and they keep it "platonic." If you've got one of those relationships, here's the test:

• Would you behave the same way if your romantic partner were standing next to you?

• Are your flirtations consistent with the way you normally behave?

• Are you thinking about your "work spouse" while not at work?

• Do you compare your "work spouse" to your real romantic partner?

Those questions are from Heidi Reeder, associate professor of communication at Boise State University in Idaho, who thinks it's good to have a work spouse (who doesn't cross the line): "It's an esteem booster for both men and women to have a little flirtation in their day -- it makes them feel a little better, gives them a little more energy."

Surely, we can think of some better questions.

Does everyone in the office think you're having an affair?

Do you find yourself thinking: Thank God, it's Monday?

ADDED: Another question I thought of for the test:

• Does this person look like someone you'd date if you were free?

"I just had never been treated like that by a man before."

Says David Phillips, describing what he says was a sexual encounter with Larry Craig in one of a series of audio clips presented by The Idaho Statesman in an article titled "More gay men describe sexual encounters with U.S. Sen. Craig." In the third audio clip, Phillips has Craig giving him a $20 bill and telling him to keep quiet because he can "buy and sell your ass a thousand times over" — which is odd, since $20 is not a display of wealth and is an insulting amount of money if it's supposed to be paying for sex. Phillips sounds sympathetic and sincere as he talks about feeling humiliated 20 years ago.

If Phillips is telling the truth, then, on top of it all, Craig was an inconsiderate sexual partner. Not that that is a reason one ought to have to resign from the Senate. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if it was.

Leave Larry Craig alone.

Larry Craig is not leaving the Senate. He's not gay and he's not leaving. I say good.

There are many reasons not to like Senator Larry:

1. The denial of gayness. (Even if somehow he's not gay, it's disrespectful to gay people to feel that you need to deny it.)

2. His apparent willingness to have sex in a bathroom the general public uses. (I'm strongly opposed to sex in public bathrooms, but he didn't actually do that, he only, probably, indicated his willingness to have sex, probably, right there and then.)

3. He's making life hard for his fellow Republican senators. (They're "embarrassed," and they don't want to have to go through with a lot of conspicuous procedures to oust him. Plus, he "promised" to go, so why doesn't he keep his promise? Deal with it. He was elected. Let the people of Idaho pressure him to go if they don't want him.)

4. He pleaded guilty and then refused to accept the consequences, like everyone else who pleads guilty. (Obviously, he couldn't withdraw that guilty plea, and I'd have been outraged if the judge had bent the rules and let this powerful man with his high-priced lawyers break free of the rules that apply to everyone else. But I would have loved to see the legal battle over police tactics and freedom of expression.)

5. He was convicted of a crime. (Yes, a little "disorderly conduct." Does one misdemeanor unrelated to your job mean you've got to go? Are you willing to apply that rule across the board? I think not. As a crime, it's less bad than a drunk driving conviction. How many senators have those?)

6. He's not a solid family man. (Care to apply that rule to every Senator?)

So let's leave Larry alone.

"Subsequent to a sex scandal in a Minneapolis airport water closet for men...."

I love getting my American news filtered through India!

AS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY recovers from the Craig scandal, which forced the Idaho Senator Craig to resign (subsequent to a sex scandal in a Minneapolis airport water closet for men), a US tabloid has published more news which could damage the Republican Party even after Bush leaves office.

A US tabloid called “Globe” has published the news that First Lady Laura Bush is writing her divorce diaries about life in Washington. It has been reported that Laura Bush is unhappy with George Bush returning to drinking and spending more time with Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

According to the Globe, Laura Bush did not accompany her husband even to the APEC Summit in Australia because of her marital discord with George Bush. George Bush loves secrecy and has even asked members of his government not to write about their times in the Bush administration.

It appears that Bush is afraid that his reputation will be further damaged if there are further revelations of what happened inside the White House. The Republican Party has indeed suffered heavily in its so called “Annus Horribilis ” with Karl Rove imitating a rapper, Craig and his water closet, Giuliani dressed as a woman and now the Bush marital crisis.

It's so freaky!

"What do you think about that?"

I'm sorry I didn't get the chance to weigh in on this yesterday, but everybody's talking about Senator Larry Craig. The story:

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested in June at a Minnesota airport by a plainclothes police officer investigating lewd conduct complaints in a men’s public restroom... On Aug. 8, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct...

After he was arrested, Craig, who is married, was taken to the Airport Police Operations Center to be interviewed about the lewd conduct incident, according to the police report. At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, “What do you think about that?” the report states....

What do I think about that? I think the fact that he did that suggests it works sometimes to get him off the hook. It certainly shows that he thinks it can and he's willing to use his power that way. He should resign for that alone.

[Sgt. Dave Karsnia, a plainclothes officer,] entered the bathroom at noon that day and about 13 minutes after taking a seat in a stall, he stated he could see “an older white male with grey hair standing outside my stall.”...

“I could see Craig look through the crack in the door from his position. Craig would look down at his hands, ‘fidget’ with his fingers, and then look through the crack into my stall again. Craig would repeat this cycle for about two minutes,” the report states.

Craig then entered the stall next to Karsnia’s and placed his roller bag against the front of the stall door.

“My experience has shown that individuals engaging in lewd conduct use their bags to block the view from the front of their stall,” Karsnia stated in his report. “From my seated position, I could observe the shoes and ankles of Craig seated to the left of me.”

Craig was wearing dress pants with black dress shoes.

“At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moves his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. While this was occurring, the male in the stall to my right was still present. I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area,” the report states.

Craig then proceeded to swipe his hand under the stall divider several times, and Karsnia noted in his report that “I could ... see Craig had a gold ring on his ring finger as his hand was on my side of the stall divider.”

Karsnia then held his police identification down by the floor so that Craig could see it.

“With my left hand near the floor, I pointed towards the exit. Craig responded, ‘No!’ I again pointed towards the exit. Craig exited the stall with his roller bags without flushing the toilet. ... Craig said he would not go. I told Craig that he was under arrest, he had to go, and that I didn’t want to make a scene. Craig then left the restroom.”

What a sad, pathetic scene! It's awful that public bathrooms -- especially in places like airports -- are used for sexual activity. The police have to figure out how to drive this activity elsewhere. Karsnia has a tough job, but he seems to handle it with efficiency and as much dignity as you can when it involves sitting on a toilet and letting someone watch you through the crack in the door.

Craig has a difficult moral problem if, as it seems, he has a gay sexual orientation, but he has chosen to marry a woman. Cheating on his wife and obtruding on the bathroom-going public is no way to deal with his predicament. It's especially ugly if he's taking this miserable course in order to maintain his grip on political power with an electorate that wouldn't tolerate him if he lived his life openly and honestly.

Worst of all, to my mind, is the proffering of the business card and the "What do you think about that?"

UPDATE: I see Glenn Greenwald is attacking me about the Senator Craig story:

The reaction to the Larry Craig story provides one of the most vivid illustrations yet of how the right-wing movement works. Last October, just weeks before the midterm election, gay activist Mike Rogers reported that the married, GOP "family values" Senator repeatedly had sex with anonymous men in public bathrooms. His report was based on "extensive research," including interviews with several men whom Craig solicited for bathroom sex.

As Rogers argued at the time, the story was relevant -- just as the Vitter prostitute story was -- in light of Craig's frequent political exploitation of issues of sexual morality and his opposition to virtually every gay rights bill. Rogers' story, as a factual matter, seemed relatively credible, both because of his history of accurate outings and because there is no discernible reason why, if he were intent on fabricating, he would single out someone as obscure as Larry Craig, who was not even up for re-election....

Among right-wing pundits -- weeks before the election -- there was nothing but support for Craig and outrage over the reporting of this story. The most hysterical outrage of all was from Glenn Reynolds, who went so far as repeatedly to predict -- literally -- that the country would be so repulsed by Rogers' reporting that it might actually swing the election in favor of the Republicans. More absurdly still, Reynolds cited a grand total of two reasons why he voted for GOP's Bob Corker over Harold Ford in the Tennessee Senate race, one of which was actually Rogers' report on Craig ("the sexual McCarthyism from the pro-outing crowd . . . . has convinced me that [Democrats] just don't deserve a victory with those tactics").

As usual, Bush-supporting bloggers like Ann Althouse and Patterico dutifully echoed Reynolds' line: "I truly believe this sort of tactic is going to create a backlash."

So this is a link back to something I wrote in October 2006. I have to go back and check because I don't remember writing about Craig before. Here's the old post:

"Lefty Blogger Outs Senator As Gay."

Patterico notes. Captain Ed comments.

Kos is taking a poll. "Do you agree with outing Gay Republicans?" 70% say "yes. But don't you think this percentage would change if the strategy backfires? I think aggressive characters like our "lefty blogger" think that uncovering gay Republicans will disgust social conservatives and change their voting behavior. They might also believe that they are demonstrating hypocrisy and that doing so will motivate Republicans to abandon social conservatism. I would like to see Republicans abandon social conservatism, and I'm not cheering on these slimy outings. But, honestly, I think these creepy, gleeful efforts at outing will only make social conservatives more conservative, and they will continue to look to the Republican party to serve their needs.

Well, this isn't about Senator Craig or sex in public bathrooms. (And it doesn't link to Glenn Reynolds either.) This is about the general practice of outing gay Republicans, which I find offensive. Moreover, I didn't even say that I thought this would produce a backlash. I said that lefties wouldn't use this tactic if they didn't think it would stimulate homophobia and turn voters away from socially conservative Republicans. Of course, I am hoping the tactic backfires and that the voters are not really homophobic. This is a longstanding theme here, and Greenwald either can't understand it, won't take the time to see what I'm saying, or is deliberately misstating what I say in a low, sleazy attack. Which is it?

Let's see if Greenwald apologizes and corrects his post. Now that he can see how inaccurate and inappropriate his attack is, a failure to correct is outright deceit.

Also, Greenwald's post is incredibly boring and windy. Maybe he actually can't understand things that aren't blathered about at great length. Ugh!

NEXT DAY UPDATE: Over 300 comments, and I know some of them are abusive. I'm not able to comb through and delete, so I apologize to readers who find some of this offensive. Please try harder to argue with each other in a way that doesn't involve name-calling. And don't use the F word!

What does Mickey Kaus have against "This American Life"?

When I was driving home from Austin two Saturdays ago, I listened to a lot of talk radio. I especially enjoyed the hours when "This American Life" played on the XM Public Radio channel. The segment on the DREAM legislation moved me to tears -- and I do try not to succumb to tears while driving. It told the story of a young woman whose parents had brought her to the United States when she was a child and who had worked very hard and achieved a lot toward her goal of becoming a doctor, but who could not go on to medical school or ever hope to be a doctor unless she were to first move back to the unfamiliar country of her birth and wait her turn to immigrate legally.

Here, Mickey Kaus blasts "This American Life":

Does it always feature tedious bits of propaganda like the recent segment (#4 on this link) from a "fellow at the New America Foundation" crudely presenting one side of the argument for the DREAM Act? ("There is a very simple solution to all of this, a bill called the DREAM Act ..." concludes narrator Douglas McGray--as if he were talking to children and there were no arguments against rewarding "undocumented" immigrants by granting their children legal status, in-state tuition and citizenship.) You'd get a lot more useful information from a two-graf editorial in USA Today.

Well, you listen to that segment and tell me if it's crude or profound. It doesn't set out to examine the provisions of the act. It reaches you emotionally by bringing you inside one person's life. Admittedly, that has a propaganda effect. I was ready to promote the act, though I didn't know the details of it. But I got the message that there is a narrow legislative proposal that is being stalled by those who want to deal with the much larger immigration problem and I realized I'd have to look up the proposal on the web and see if the details checked out. I don't see what is crude about making you care about a problem rather than dissecting the legislation.

So read about the legislation at Mickey's link and tell me -- Mickey doesn't -- why we shouldn't care in a special way about young people who were brought here by their parents, educated by Americans, and then left with no way to follow through on their dreams?

And let's look a little more closely about why Kaus doesn't like "This American Life." He seems quite concerned about Ira Glass and his "clipped, geeky," "ironic nerd/hip" voice. I think it's the big testosterone discrepancy between Ira Glass and Mickey Kaus that is squicking Mickey out.

ADDED: The producer of the "American Life" segment, Douglas McGray, wrote a long piece in the L.A. Times before he did the radio version linked in Kaus's post. Here's some detail about the DREAM Act from the article:

Together with Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, [Democrat Dick Durbin] introduced a bill called the DREAM Act. The bill recognized that kids such as Thi and Martha grew up as Americans and may not even remember another home. It offered them conditional resident status when they graduate from high school; if they graduate from college or serve in the military, that conditional status becomes a green card.

When Durbin and Hatch introduced the DREAM Act in 2001, it provoked the kind of deep disagreement that seems to follow each new immigration proposal. Eventually, though, the bill had collected a staggering 47 co-sponsors, nearly half the Senate, including immigration hawk Larry Craig, a Republican from Idaho; likely GOP presidential candidates John McCain of Arizona and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and their Democratic counterpart, New York's Hillary Clinton; Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman; California Democrat Dianne Feinstein and Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. The bill has enjoyed unusually broad support for an immigration measure for several reasons.

Only the most extreme immigration hard-liner would blame a toddler, or even an adolescent, for the choices their parents made. Some strain to make the case that offering opportunities to kids such as Thi, Martha or Esmeralda is akin to rewarding their parents, but that is just a polite way to argue that punishing children will discourage illegal immigration—not exactly a crowded bandwagon, when there are other ways to address the problem. Besides, there is something undeniably American about kids who scrap their way out of a bad situation with talent and hard work.

In 2003, the Senate's right-leaning Judiciary Committee voted 16-3 to bring the DREAM Act to the rest of the Senate. But the Senate's Republican leadership refused to schedule the DREAM Act for an up-or-down vote. The bill had Republican dissenters, and Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, appeared fearful of dividing his party and alienating right-wing activists.

Again this year, the Judiciary Committee endorsed the DREAM Act, voting to attach it to the Senate's sweeping immigration reform bill. But before Congress left for recess earlier this month, that bill bogged down, perhaps indefinitely. Even if the measure ultimately passes the Senate, it must be reconciled with a tougher House bill on immigration. Just before legislators left town, however, a bipartisan group of House members reintroduced their version of the DREAM Act. Compared with the nightmarish task of overhauling America's immigration system, and determining the future of 12 million illegal residents, offering green cards to a few all-but-American college kids hardly seems controversial.

Unwinding.

Here's the lobby of my hotel. Does it look familiar? Have you been here?



There's a nice fire over there in the fireplace. Isn't that what you want, a roaring fire on the last day of July?

I drove the Great Basin Highway today. I'd never been in Idaho before, and now I've crossed over into Wyoming.

The West is absorbing me, it seems, as I started lingering on the XM radio channel called America, where I felt utterly charmed by Willie Nelson singing "Don't Fence Me In" followed by Johnny Cash singing (talking) "Ragged Old Flag," a song I'm sure I and everyone I knew mocked when it came out. Further on down the road, I was on the channel Frank's Place, and I laughed at Frank Sinatra singing "Gentle on My Mind" -- because who can picture Sinatra in a sleeping bag or in a train yard or with his "beard a roughning coal pile" or with a "dirty hat pulled low across my face" and his hands cupped around a tin can full of soup? In the thin drizzle, the brilliant talk-singing of Fred Astaire made a lot more sense -- "Isn't This a Lovely Day to Be Caught in the Rain?" -- and it moved me to tears.

UPDATE: There's a 3-year-old boy here with his parents, and the guitarist goes and sits with him and engages him with "The People on the Bus." The boy is laughing with delight.

Cross-country driving mania.

Yesterday, I did a post on long cross-country drives, which is a special little mania of mine. The post brought this email:

I once drove straight through from (approximately) Ft. Madison, IA to Monck's Corner, SC (just north of Charleston). A bit more than 1150 miles, as I remember it, and I made it in just over 21 hours. The most amazing think about the whole trip was that, while well over 75% of it was via Interstate, I saw not one, single police car the whole way. Wonder what the odds of that are?



Also, back in the '60s, when I was younger and dumber (I hope) a fellow cadet and I drove back from the St. Louis area to Denver on the way to the Air Force Academy. We were taking his sister-in-law to Denver prior to returning to the Academy. It was a bit over 850 miles and we made the trip in a bit over 11 hours, counting all stops. That's an average of over 75 MPH, and most of Interstate 70 (or 40 or whichever one it is) didn't exist. We used mostly old US 40 between St. Louis and Denver. Other than that, it was all two-lane highway. Once when we stopped in Kansas for gas, I went to check the oil and popped the hood. The engine block was glowing a dull orange. I figured since the oil pressure gauge was registering good pressure I really, really didn't need to touch that dipstick. We were driving a 327 '65 Chevy Impala with a Muncie 4-speed. We drove US 40 in the middle of the night pretty much flat-out, pedal to the metal, and the speedo registered pegged. Don't know how fast we were actually going. Plus 100 MPH, for sure. Nice car. Wish I still had it.

Yikes! A glowing orange engine. In the middle of Kansas. I've gotten myself in trouble a few times driving. I've made some mistake that I still shudder to think about. Like the emailer, I've driven very long distances -- from Orlando to Madison -- without seeing one police car. Now, I'm thinking I'd like to do another long drive again. Kansas is one of the states I've never been to. I'd like to drive through all the states, including Alaska (and some day I'll get to Hawaii). I could hit the most as-yet-undriven-through states if I did a northwestern trip: North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon. If I did that, then the only states I haven't visited, aside from Alaska and Hawaii, would be Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and South Carolina. My all-time favorite drive was through Death Valley. Also great: the Badlands. And it is just great fun driving across Nevada on Route 50 --the "loneliest road in America" the signs posted along the way tell you. It's nice to do the two-lane blacktop through the desert. I also loved driving from Boulder to Sante Fe, especially the Arkansas Basin and the northern New Mexican landscape that let me know I'd overestimated Georgia O'Keeffe's powers of imagination.



That email reminded me that I used to drive an Impala, a 1961 seafoam green convertible. My father had bought it new and passed it on to me when he bought another car a few years later. I now realize what a fabulous classic car I drove to high school every day in the late 1960s. I also realize that I need a new car now to do the kind of driving I like! I loved my New Beetle when I got it five years ago, but the fun has worn off. Yesterday, I got a big black envelope in the mail, obviously an advertisement.



"What the hell is this? Chevrolet is wasting money sending me a big advertisement. What's the point of putting it in this big envelope?" I say with my usual outrage that anyone would dare to send me an advertisement in the mail and amazed that they would put it inside an envelope, which would normally end up in the trash, unopened.



"You're opening it," said Chris, making me laugh.



"Oh! It's for Corvette!" I say and pretty soon I am literally petting the glossy pages of the brochure. Within the minute, I'm checking out the Corvette websites, trying to find a price, discussing with Chris the problem of a person with two sons buying a car with no backseat, and comparison shopping for an Audi TT Coupe, which does have a place to put a third and fourth person in a pinch. "Mmmm ... what color?"



"Red! Then you could sing 'Little Red Corvette.'"



"If I got red I would think the song 'Little Red Corvette' whenever I was in the car. Every time I parked it, I'd think about parking it 'sideways.' Much as I love Prince, that might get a little annoying. Plus, if I got a red car, I'd have to have my house painted. Or move."



"Black."



"Or blue. I like the blue ... this particular blue. I'm really quite opposed to most blue, especially for a car. I object to a blue car, as a general principle. But this blue -- 'Le Mans Blue Metallic' -- I like that!"