Nope, We Really Haven't Come That Far At All

First, trigger warning for discussions of rape and rape culture on this post.

On Sunday, news broke of the verdict in Steubenville, OH for two football players who sexually assaulted a drunk and mostly-unconscious 16-year-old.  And just because that wasn't despicable enough, one of them saw fit to take pictures of her naked and share them with friends, as well as let friends film him assaulting her.

The two defendants have been found guilty, and sentenced to a paltry three years between the two of them.  But that's not what has -- or should have -- everyone with even a basic grasp of human decency incensed.

No, what should make anyone following this case so utterly fucking furious is the media coverage.  CNN in particular, but the sentiment has spread to other stations.

Scott Prouty, the Man Who Saved America

As far as history's concerned, we only remember the big guys.  The ones in the thick of the action, for good or ill.  The wealthy white men making the big decisions.  Yet if you know where to look and who to read, you discover this sprawling world of seemingly insignificant people whom history has completely overlooked, but who were actually responsible for some of the biggest game-changers that have ever gone down.

And so it is today.  Tonight, after finally outing himself, Scott Prouty joins the ranks of Frank Wills, the security guard who discovered the break-in at Watergate which led to Nixon's resignation and the passing of the Freedom of Information Act, and Barton W. Mitchell, the Union scout who found the copy of Special Order 191 and is the reason we're still the United States of America, in this country's army of unsung heroes and heroines to whom we owe so much, but don't really know who to make the check out to.  Little Guys who, like Frodo Baggins, snuck past the Gate because Sauron thought them too small and insignificant to pose much of a threat; Frank Wills was a high school dropout because he had to help support his single mother and made $80 a week then as a guard at Watergate, and Mitchell was a Corporal who was tasked with what was then known as "getting shot at first."  Compared to one of the most cunning tactical minds in American history, and the 37th President of the United States, these two men were the human equivalent of that last bit of boot polish that comes farting out of the bottle.

But unlike Frodo, neither one of these men was on a crusade to defeat the evil overlord when it went down.  Frank Wills did not wake up the afternoon of June 17, 1972 and get ready for work while thinking "you know what, I'm gonna bring down the entire fucking government today."  He was simply wandering the halls like he was shittily paid to do, and just happened to see some duct tape on the doors where duct tape really shouldn't be and did the right thing and called the cops.  Barton W. Mitchell didn't approach D. H. Hill's deserted camp in September 1862 thinking "I'm going to find the secret to winning the entire goddamned war today."  He was simply hoping not to get shot at by any stragglers and looking for useful shit that the Confederates might've left behind (like the cigars that Special Order 191 was wrapped around because why the fuck not?).

Likewise, Scott Prouty did not go to work on May 17, 2012 thinking "I'm going to make double-damn pinky-swear sure that Barack Obama gets re-elected today."

Scott Prouty, like Frank Wills and Barton W. Mitchell before him, was simply doing his menial I-don't-get-paid-nearly-enough-for-this-bullshit job serving alcohol to rich assholes who could afford to blow what the average American makes in a year on one fucking dinner.  He brought his camera purely hoping to get a souvenir photo-op with some famous rich guy, because at a previous event that Prouty worked, another famous rich guy named Bill Clinton made it a point to go to the kitchen and treat the staff like people.  What he got instead was Mitt Romney verbally pulling down his pants and pissing on nearly half the nation.  And he just happened to catch that shit on tape.

It was a case of sheer dumb luck for the entire nation that the man who managed to record those remarks also had the balls to do the right thing and make them public, as he puts it, "so that those who couldn't afford to be there could see what Romney really thought."

By putting a needle in the arm of Romney's campaign through exposing his raw, uncensored schmuckery to everyone who didn't have a year's worth of paychecks to blow in one night, Scott Prouty saved the country by making Obama's re-election a foregone conclusion.  By preventing a real life Gordon Gekko from making a leveraged buyout of the U.S. to whoever would give him the best offer.  Like Frank Wills for exposing a thoroughly corrupted administration, and Barton W. Mitchell for finding the Confederates' complete war plan and getting it to the right people, Prouty is also a national hero.

Someone, make him a drink for once.

Why Nobody Should Care What Mitt Romney Thinks, But We Do Anyway

It's not uncommon for the loser of a presidential election, regardless of party, to have an interview a few months later to reflect on their loss.  And in the last few elections prior to 2012, nobody really bothered to question why we do this.  It's interesting to hear from the also-ran why he didn't get to the finish line, to be sure, but there's also the matter of previous candidates still being in the political arena in some fashion despite not being president: John McCain is unfortunately still a Senator, John Kerry was still a Senator, and Al Gore, while not holding public office, is still a huge activist for not screwing up the planet any more than we already have.

Mitt Romney is nothing.

After his second failed bid for 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Romney has gone back to doing what he does best: diving through mountains of cash like Scrooge motherfucking McDuck.  Only Scrooge made his money with honest hard work -- the character started out as a literal boot-polisher -- instead of being born into money and wresting an even bigger fortune away from actual honest, hardworking people.

And we know why he lost.  He lost because he was a terrible candidate: an out-of-touch, self-righteous, exceedingly arrogant, chauvinistic asshole who ran the biggest clusterfuck of a campaign since George McGovern, and couldn't convince even half the country that he wasn't a total schmuck.

Nobody should give a single constipated shit what he thinks.  He's not involved in politics anymore, and he isn't going to tell us anything we hadn't figured out by November 6, 2012.

So why does anyone care enough to let him tell us his sob story about how much he and his wife pretend to be concerned for anybody but the ironic 47% who voted for him?

The answer is twofold.  First, we need a distraction.  Or more specifically, the GOP needs a distraction.  They need something to point at to get their constituents' minds off how much they can't get their shit together, because they care more about being True Republicans than actual lawmakers.  Second, it's a mad scramble to get back into the bubble before reality turns them into progressives, because Romney was the center and wall of that bubble for a year and a half.

So by rights, nobody in either party should be caring what Romney thinks.  He's a loser who should fade back into irrelevance, and be remembered the same way we remember Michael Dukakis' existence after 1988.  But for a party that is smack in the middle of a midlife crisis that would make a 49ers fan roll his eyes, Romney is grudgingly safe territory.  A reminder of what the party should stand for, and the Dickens-era hellhole that it wants to drag the country back kicking and screaming into.

For the rest of us?  Hearing a smug asshole weep is some sweet, sweet music and a slice of schadenfreude pie.