Hookergate 2012

Ooooooh, child, I don’t know if ya heard, but eleven members of President Obama’s Secret Service detail were busted for being “trifling, good for nothin’ type of brothers” when, allegedly, they went on a prostitute binge like they were college students who came home to their dorm room and discovered a box of Entenmann’s cookies that their roommate left on the kitchen counter. Silly college roommate, you don’t leave cookies sitting out. You hide them underneath your mattress next your DVD collection of Felicity because bitches love cookies and finding out if Felicity chooses Ben or Noel.

Anyway, last week, before President Obama’s scheduled arrival to Cartagena, Colombia on Friday, the eleven Secret Service members were fraternizing with prostitutes at Hotel Caribe until the situation turned into Operation: Hot Mess when there was a dispute between a prostitute and one of the officers over payment, so she put on her comfortable hooker heels aka New Balance sneakers and went to the police, who then notified the State department. Not only is this an embarrassing scandal for the Secret Service, but it has subsequently overshadowed Obama’s diplomatic mission to Latin America. Obviously, all the men involved were immediately fired. I sincerely hope that each member of the Secret Service detail, after getting relieved of his job, left the office like this:

Getting fired doesn’t mean you lose your swag. Let your former boss know that you’ll be a’ight and leave that office a la Beyoncé (while wearing shoulders pads that only Joan Collins could love) like you don’t give a fuuuuuuuuck.

And then when each of Secret Service members got home, they opened the door to find their wives doing this:

In all seriousness, if you want to get your freak on while under the employment of the motherfreakin’ WHITE HOUSE where your job requires secrecy and not bringing attention to yourself, don’t be a cheap bastard with a hooker who will take you to the police over nonsense like a woman who takes her ex-boyfriend to Judge Judy over a VCR. Point is: give your ex her VCR back and pay that hooker her pesos for messing with your sloppy peen. That’s feminism. Kidding! Look, I’m not condoning nor condemning prostitution; but it’s pretty clear that this situation could have been avoided. Jobs didn’t have to be lost nor should sexual activities of grown ass men be on the radar of President Obama.

Yet here we are. This supposed scandal is now national news and several individuals currently and previously involved with the Secret Service have been interviewed about the Secret Service. My favorite comment about Hookergate 2012 is from CBS News’ article Secret Service Supervisor in Prostitute Scandal:

“A former agent told CBS News that there is a “culture clash” between the president’s protective detail and the CAT [Counter Assault Team] teams. CAT members have a history of “working hard and playing hard” while the protective services “are the most disciplined group of people.” However, he noted that this is about “one guy” and is an “isolated incident.“

Not to be a stickler over word choice, but a “culture clash” is the plot to My Big Fat Greek Wedding, not an explanation for how some people love to cap their evenings with a friendly game of Boggle while others finish off their evenings by sampling some Colombian tang.

I hope that we can and should all agree that this should not be a scandal. Prostitution is legal in Colombia. In fact, some hotels rent out hotel rooms to hookers by the hour, like people rent Zipcars to move their belongings into a new apartment. Clearly, prostitution is business as usual there, but in America, it is not, so it’s not surprising that this is, unfortunately, overshadowing President Obama’s trip to Latin America because people, especially Americans, have a thirst for what is perceived to be salacious than anything that happened in this situation. And before you say, “Well, someone with the type of job that these Secret Service men had should not have engaged in behavior like this,” let me ask you this: Why? Seriously, I want to know why YOU care what someone else does when it does not harm you in any way.

If the person, or this case, persons, is successfully doing his job, why do bedroom activities matter so much in this country? Oh, that’s right, we’re a country built on Puritan values that we don’t particularly abide by much these days, yet we want everyone else to think we do. Hookergate 2012 is about perception and the fact that these men did not live up to the perception of the Secret Service agents that we see in movies and read about in textbooks is what is so “scandalous.” Oooh, they pay for sex. Oooh, they party. Oooh, I can now judge them because the way I present myself to the world (not the way I really am) is “better” than who these men are. Perception is what truly matters. It’s just like when I complain about how I don’t have any money, yet I go shopping at H&M and when my boyfriend sees me with a new jacket and he asks me if it’s new and I say, “Oh, no, I’ve always had this.” I maintain the narrative that I don’t have money because NYC is so expensive rather than to admit that I impulse buy on my lunch break from work.

Bottom line: what people do in their private lives, especially when it is consensual sex, shouldn’t be a scandal to the outside world nor should it cost someone their job. So can this Hookergate please be just another crazy Thursday night of culture clash?

Tags: Awkward.com, News, Politics, Prostitutes, Secret Service Oopsies