Ah, how close I came to writing, “No, you morons…”!

The headline nearly was “Unethical Website of the Month: Addicting Info.” This pathetic site surely deserved it. It’s headline was:

North Carolina Legalizes Call Girls For Politicians

After a few smart-enough-to-know-better-but-apparently-having-an-off-day Facebook friends posted links to this crap with expressions of horror, I checked it out, assuming it was a hoax. Well, it wasn’t a hoax, exactly, just a dishonest, misleading, sensational bit of link bait. That’s not what the story is about.

Equally dumb but not quite as dishonest was the Daily Beast, which headlined its incompetent story...

North Carolina Lobbyists Can Officially Screw Politicians Legally.

What’s wrong with this one? It also has nothing to do with the facts of the story, and if you think about it, is as reasonable a headline as Annie Says The Sun Will Come Up Tomorrow. There is no place anywhere in the United States of America where it is illegal for adults in any occupation to have consensual sexual relations with any other adult regardless of his or her occupation. So, to put it in the crude, also link-baiting terms of the Daily Beast—stay classy, you left wing hacks!-–all of these are also accurate:

Oregon Lobbyists Can Officially Screw Puppeteers Legally.

Texas Pharmacists Can Officially Screw Sushi Chefs Legally.

Maine Radio Talk Show Hosts Can Officially Screw Assistant Zookeepers Legally.

Ohio Chiropractors Can Officially Screw Professional Frisbee Golfers Legally.

This is fun, but you get the idea. Apparently —this is no surprise, I guess—the Daily Beast staff and editors are unaware of the provisions and case law of the U.S. Constitution, which declare that the government can’t prohibit anyone from having sex with anyone else, no matter what they do for a living. Privacy, you know. All that rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness stuff in the Declaration. Surely you’ve heard of it? No?

The Beast, and the Unethical Website, and many, many others completely misinterpreted a very reasonable and clear government ethics opinion because…

• They probably didn’t or couldn’t read it.
•  They don’t understand law.
• They don’t understand ethics.
• They don’t understand the difference between law and ethics, and
• They are too ignorant to be trusted to explain anything to anyone, but we’re stuck with them.

Here’s my favorite sentence by one of these disgraces for a reporter, again from the The Daily Beast, from the sadly inadequate Olivia Nuzzi, who “is a writer and journalist who covers politics for The Daily Beast.” Good to know, and it explains a lot about what passes as political analysis there. Here is what Olivia wrote:

“A clandestine sexual relationship between a lobbyist and a government official they lobby may sound unethical, but the North Carolina Ethics Commission says it’s perfectly legal.”

I’m really, really trying to avoid using that rude term “moron.”

Here, Olivia, write a thousand times on the blackboard “Legal and Ethical are two different things,“ then go find a job that doesn’t require critical thought. Take your editor with you.

The document that launched this attack of the ethics dunces was  North Carolina’s  official ruling on lobbying regulations, “Re: Sexual Favors or Sexual Acts as a Gift or “Thing of Value.” The  opinion: for the purpose of the lobbying law that restricts a registered lobbyist from giving a gift, defined as “[a]nything of monetary value given or received without valuable consideration to a designated individual [that is, a legislator or other state official] unless a gift ban exception applies,” sexual relations between a lobbyist and an official will not be considered a “gift” in violation of the law.

Well, duh. How would anyone enforce such a ban, it one were attempted? How would one prove that the consensual sex involved was a quid pro quo bribe, and not based on sexual attraction, which would immediately make it legal? You couldn’t. Nor would a law telling lobbyists and officials who they could and couldn’t sleep with be likely to get through the courts. If a lobbyist paid for a call girl to service a legislator, however, that would be a gift, and would be illegal. The opinion didn’t deal with that, lying headlines to the contrary.

The very reasonable and not even newsworthy opinion, however, does not say that a lobbyist sleeping with a legislator isn’t unethical, because it is unethical, and blatantly so. It violates the ethics of both professions, but not the ethics laws. Such relationships create a conflict of interest, interfere with independent judgment and produce the appearance of impropriety. They are wrong. No ethical lobbyists or officials engage in them. Such relationships do not violate the law, however. They are not illegal.

Do you understand now, you…

Never mind.