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Brian Sorgatz
(rhymes with “cats”)
Arcata, Humboldt County, California, United States
What sort of man blogs about Playboy? I flatter myself to think that Kendra Wilkinson might call this blog intellectual pimping.
To see what I look like, click here.
ISFP “Composer Artisan.” Culturally and economically libertarian for reasons having nothing to do with Ayn Rand. The rabbit in the avatar is not mine. I stole the image from the House Rabbit Society home page. Favorite activities: reading, writing, crosswords, Jeopardy!, moviegoing, television (and proud of it), piano, didgeridoo, foreign languages (currently Spanish), light hiking, spiritual practice, friendship, sex.
Hollywood, California, is my spiritual hometown. I actually grew up in three other communities in California, but it hardly seems to matter which three. How could my heart take root anywhere under the tyranny of American public schooling?
I don’t have to work for a living. After my father died in December 1997, my family and I won a legal settlement.
Playboy: Would you support [Bill] Clinton [for president again if you could]?Libertarian about love? Bullshit, Bill. In context, your exception for teenage men and their older women is reverse puritanism at best.
Maher: Sure. He has a reputation as a party animal because of the Monica Lewinsky situation, but basically he’s a wonk. He can do Monica and run the country. He’s a multitasker. If he had been president when Katrina hit, he would have been in New Orleans three days before the storm. He wouldn’t have slept. Yes, he would have been getting blown—come on, Slick Willie in the Big Easy? He would have had some excellent étouffée. But he would have been working the whole time. I think the country has learned a lesson: If he can do the job, let the guy be who he is. People don’t care about sex.
Playboy: They cared about Mark Foley.
Maher: Monica Lewinsky was an adult. Foley went after boys. [sic: The 16-year-old in question was above the age of consent in the District of Columbia.] Actually, I wasn’t terribly taken aback by Foley. He was like a college professor, in a job where every year there’s a new wave of fresh meat. He would look over the field and decide. He probably had pretty good radar to know which kids were amenable. From the evidence we have, he tried to do something only after they were out of the page program. If a 19-year-old gay kid wants to go out with an older guy, why not? The guys his own age are probably dumb doofuses [sic: doofi].
Playboy: But even after leaving their jobs as pages, they were far younger than Foley.
Maher: Look, I’m a 51-year-old man, and I go out with girls in their early 20s. I’d be hypocritical if I said it’s ridiculous for a gay man to do that. I’m very libertarian about love. I’m the only guy I’ve ever heard who defends Mary Kay Letourneau.
Playboy: Are you saying teachers should be allowed to have sex with their 13-year-old students, as she did, and not go to jail?
Maher: I think it’s a little offbeat, but you know, I believe in the double standard. If a 28-year-old male teacher is screwing a 13-year-old girl, that’s a crime. But with Debra Lafave [another teacher who had sex with a student] screwing her 14-year-old boy student, the crime is that we didn’t get it on videotape. Was he being taken advantage of? I wish I had been taken advantage of like that. What a memory she gave him! I would think he’s a champion among his friends. Are you kidding? Even with Michael Jackson—
Playboy: You’re being remarkably open-minded.
Maher: Woody Allen is the one we might have been wrong about. I was pretty hard on him on my show, but how many years has his relationship continued? Maybe that, like Letourneau’s, was true love. If you look at him or Letourneau, who is still with the guy after her time in jail—they have two kids—the lesson is love will take the form it’s going to take. Sometimes it’s at great variance with the mainstream. I don’t think teachers should be allowed to do that. I think they should be fired. But to send that woman to jail and separate them all those years?
Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 3:03 PM
ChilledBeer left this comment at April 4, 2007 2:58 PM
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