Larry Craig and The Old Superman Trick: Trying to Turn the World Backward on Its Axis
September 12th, 2007
By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
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Larry Craig has apparently gotten his court date in Minnesota. His case is scheduled four days before his first proffered resignation date, September 30th. He’s going to apply to wind the world-clock backward, to take back time.
It’ll be interesting to see how the judge will rule… Senator Craig’s new plea before the court may inadvertently help the cases of the other 41 men arrested for soliciting sex in men’s rooms in the Minneapolis airport police operation that day. If it is ruled that ‘injustice’ has been done to Craig on the evidence offered, and the other men have similar evidences against them, Larry Craig may become ‘the hero of the bathroom brigades’ at least at the Minnesota airport.
There’s another hero, a comic book one, who used a similar tactic of ‘turning back time’ to a more ‘acceptable’ place and space. I love the stories of Superman and all the other modern mythic archetypes that flow out of the pens of so many gifted thinkers … And, there’s an old Superman movie with a leitmotif similar to that which Senator Craig is undertaking.
In the story, near the very end, Lois Lane is killed. Superman, flies into space and using his super-human strength, turns the world backward on its axis in order to make time stop, to push back time in retreat to a previous moment when Lois was still alive… so this time she could be saved.
Senator Craig is going to plead to the court on the basis that he accepted an involuntary guilty plea which constitutes manifest injustice. As some say in the backwoods where I grew up, He’s agonna try to undo that deed that he done did.
My expert in the field, Jill Kuraitis, the Boise Idaho publisher of New West, writes about how the outcome for Senator Craig, might not be as swift as it was for Superman and Lois Lane:
Craig will make his case for a reversal of his guilty plea in an airport sex sting. But it’s unknown if the judge will rule that same day, so Craig’s self-imposed deadline may pass without a resolution of his case.
Superman aside, who says the Senators Specter and Craig have not been inadvertently caught up in an anti-hero moment as well… with Senator Specter doing an Abbot and Costello joke setup…
Senator Arlen Specter, one of Sen. Craig’s only defenders, said [about manifest injustice], “and that is defined that a plea can be withdrawn if it was not intelligently made,†Specter said. “And what Senator Craig did was by no means intelligent.”
Although much has been bandied about privately about Senator Craig being charged with ‘lewd conduct,’ that appears not to be true. He’d apparently pleaded guilty to misdemeanor ‘disorderly conduct,’ a throw down from the misdemeanor charge of “interference with privacy…” which has more nuances to it legally than what the three words appear to convey.
Kuraitis also cites two case she thinks might have impact on Sen. Craig’s new application to the court: “State of Minnesota vs. Michelle Kim Gibson-Webb “reversed in part†a plea agreement, but the facts and details are very different from Craig’s case. And Jeffrey Allen Vernlund vs. State of Minnesota reversed a DUI guilty plea.”
She continues, “D.C. Republicans are white-hot with fury at Craig, a Senate staffer told NewWest.Net/Boise. “He’s like those trick birthday candles that won’t blow out,†she said. “Of all the times for a Republican senator to break ranks and fall out of formation, this wasn’t a good choice.â€
“Trick birthday candles,” and the old Superman trick, being accused of trying to pull off a trick… lots of tricks, lots and lots of tricks eddying in this story. In mythos, the trickster is an archetypal character who is filled with rampant appetites. The trickster is magical and useful and also unconscious and out of control and often makes more messes than successes. The trickster is funny in many ways, for it is so human. They try to wiggle out of any corner they painted themselves into.
But, can a trickster turn back the world, slice and dice Time to his desires? When the trickster is near, anything can happen. But in many images of the Trickster since time out of mind, he is shown walking off a cliff into thin air, accompanied by a little white dog at his side, sometimes with an umbrella over his head, and all the while smiling and looking up into the sunshine. Instead of looking down, and being aware of what his shoes are touching.
Read the rest of Miss Kuraitis’ article on Senator Craig, here:
http://www.newwest.net/city/article/craig_gets_court_date_whos_driving_now/C108/L108/
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Law Enforcement, Homosexuality, Larry Craig, Ideologies, Senate, GLBT Issues, Evolution, Law & Legal Matters. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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