Let's Talk About Sex, and Congressmen

If you want to spice up a slow news day on any level, run a story that someone in a public position went out and paid for sex.

Washington, D.C., and the national media are all atwitter over the latest "scandal" that a REPUBLICAN Congressman's phone number showed up on a just released list of clients who patronized a - how shall we say this delicately in a family oriented column - prostitute! God Forbid! A man PAYING a woman to be nice to him.

The audacity! The effrontery! How dare he PAY? Doesn't this guy have any charisma? Hasn't he heard of marriage?

OK, OK, I know, let's get all the "marriage means having to pay for it for the rest of your life" jokes out on the table right now so we can get on with the serious business of sex talk.

And while you're at it go ahead and get a good laugh over the dearth of Democrats on that list, or at least on the part of it the media releases. According to the American Terrorist Media the only people who have illicit sex are Republicans. Except of course for Bill Clinton, who apparently had enough illicit sex during his wilder and younger years - back when he was president - to make up for the rest of the Democrats in Congress and the Democratic National Committee.

Done? Good.

Now, why do you suppose that every time we turn around, someone on the national scene with a major league public profile is found to have been skulking around in the seedy underbelly of human existence having sex? Well, let's start with the obvious - testosterone.

The two primary driving forces of human existence are physical hunger and the need for sex, and the two are inextricably linked. You may not know this, but since I am a weightlifter and personal trainer I do and I'll share it with you.

If you don't get enough to eat, you can't have sex. Not as in you aren't allowed to, but as in you physically can't do it. The sex drive has its base in cholesterol, the bad word of the diet world.

We always hear about having too much cholesterol, especially the bad kind, but we rarely hear about not having enough. You see, cholesterol is a precursor for testosterone and estrogen, the primary male and female sexual hormones. If you don't have enough cholesterol, your body won't produce testosterone or estrogen and your sexual functions will shut down.

The theory goes that long, long ago, back in the days of primordial mists, when humans were just emerging from - well, wherever - there was only so much food to go around because most of it was alive and mobile. If there were too many people in the tribe, and not enough to eat, then the tribe starved.

So, the wonderfully adaptable human body would shut down the sex drive whenever there was not enough food, ensuring that there wouldn't be too much competition for scarce resources.

However, there was a constant war between the need for food and the need for sex, because right after eating, the next most important aspect of human existence, at least on an evolutionary scale is survival of the species. If you don't procreate, the species doesn't survive.

So here we are, all these millions or thousands of years later, with our bodies still at war over eating or fornicating, fornicating or eating. But, and here comes the big but, so to speak, we now have thousands of years of civilization on top of us that have created all kinds of rules about who has sex, when they have sex, where they have sex, and even how they have sex.

(I was told by a reliable source that the missionary position is the one that is talked about most, but doggie style is the one practiced most. That's where the man sits up and begs and the woman rolls over and plays dead. Get it? Laugh a little will you? That was a joke.)

Some of these rules are absolutely necessary as in those that serve to punish predators who prey on children, or rapists who force themselves on the unwilling.

But I swear, some of these rules seem to exist just to exist, or maybe to give women a shot at equality on the playing field of life. You see, in ancient times, males had numerous partners, which can be explained by the overabundance of sperm, while women were more selective, which can be explained by the limited number of eggs.

This combination ensured that the males would be doing their best to impregnate the females and that the females would be highly selective in who got to impregnate them, thus ensuring a constant upgrade in the gene pool.

But now we have all these rules, the basis of which is that men have to change their natural, time-tested, evolutionary habits and give up the practice of having multiple partners, while women get to stay the same as always and be selective, even after they're married. Doesn't seem fair does it?

But there was one other factor in play along the way. Competition. In the good old days it was pretty straightforward. The biggest, strongest and eventually the smartest, got the girl, she got the sperm, and they got offspring that had the best chance of making a real contribution to the tribe and continuing the species.

Instead of producing non-productive layabouts who couldn't hold their own, or help in the survival of the tribe, the combination of competition and selectivity ensured that little matters such as hunting and defense would be high on the list of survival priorities. These people ultimately became known as conservatives, or Republicans.

But that was then, this is now.

Over time, an occasional clinker was born, and instead of contributing to the overall survival of the species, these offspring cried a lot, whined when they weren't crying, didn't produce anything, and spent their lives trying to convince like-minded offspring to form groups to lobby the tribe's producers to give them the leftovers. After many centuries this character trait evolved to a point where willingness to accept the scraps and leftovers was no longer enough, and this subspecies started pushing its way to the front of the line demanding first choice in everything that someone else captured, hunted or produced.

The only exception to this rule was in the area of human defense where this subspecies always drifts to the rear and talks about the strategy, or tactics, or the necessity of the warriors taking defensive postures. They sometimes even try to give themselves false badges of honor to fool the real warriors into believing they truly do make a contribution, but usually their falsehoods are discovered and they are banished to the fringes of society.

This subspecies became known as liberals, or Democrats.

You never hear about them in sex scandals, not because they are shielded by the American Terrorist Media, but because they simply don't have enough cholesterol, and hence, testosterone, to be as sexually active as the Republicans. Bill Clinton was a rare exception to this rule. I know of some others too, who call themselves Democrats and don't fit into this category, but for the sake of their families I won't reveal their names here.

So, that is history, evolution, politics and sexuality in a nutshell. But what does it have to do with members of Congress?

Everything. You don't get to be a member of Congress, especially a Republican member of Congress, by having too little testosterone. The process of becoming a Congressman is a grueling competition, at least by modern standards, and while candidates don't have to bite each other and tear one another to pieces, they still have the same competitive spirit and exult in their victory when they win.

When they go to Washington, especially when Republicans have a majority year, they find themselves awash in a testosterone tidal pool that serves to keep their competitive senses honed to a fever pitch.

Unfortunately, many of these walking oceans of testosterone go to D.C. alone, without their wives, and once there find that there also are many females of the species in the area who are similarly blessed with high levels of estrogen. In the middle of this we toss all the trappings of power, and the aphrodisiac affect they have on the libido and voila, the mix is inevitable!

Now, let's get serious for a minute. Many spouses work hard to keep the home running smoothly and the marriage on the front burner while the Congressperson is away dealing with affairs of state. But sometimes the pressures of the job, two lifestyles, separation and myriad other factors are overwhelming and someone strays, either in D.C., or at home.

Let's face it, there also are plenty of marriages of convenience out there where the career is the driving factor and the dutiful wife, and sometimes dutiful husband, knows that there is a strong likelihood of extracurricular sex. But it is tolerated and it isn't discussed, so long as it doesn't become public, doesn't lead to divorce or loss of the coveted Congressional seat, or involve spreading around one those increasingly virulent, incurable sexually transmitted diseases.

But this brings us back to the rules. The rules say that regardless of what you really do in your private life, no one is ever supposed to find out about it, especially if you are a Congressman and especially if the latest revelation concerns sex.

Personally, I find this to be the most unwarranted type of intrusion into human privacy. It appears that the good Congressman in question this time had already come clean with his spouse a long time ago, and the matter was dealt with in the home. Which is where this issue belongs.

It wasn't after all, as if this guy was caught doing something out in public or was indiscriminate about his activities. It took a federal investigation and a holier-than-thou news media to get this into the public domain. And please, don't get me started on the sexual proclivities of the news media. Talk about hypocrites.

But that is what sells papers, or gets viewers and listeners tuned in, so that is what leads the news hour. It used to be blood and gore, but sex trumps mayhem every time. I don't like it, and I suspect most other people don't either, but that is the way it is.

So that is today's lesson boys and girls. Sex and power go hand in hand, and where you have one you usually have the other. It has always been that way and I for one will be horribly disappointed if it every changes.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go kiss a grizzly and wrestle a pretty girl. Hey, what did you expect? I'm a Republican.