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Loading...Secret Service and Prostitutes: Just Boys Being Boys?
I’m sure you’ve heard about it by now…
11 Secret Service agents + 10 military men + 21 (20?) prostitutes = international incident.
In case you’ve been away from your radio/TV/computer/phone for the last week, here are the details:
An advance team of Secret Service and military personnel were sent to Cartagena, Colombia in preparation for President Obama’s attendance of the Summit of the Americas. Aside from the President’s security, they appeared to be quite concerned with having a good time. Reports a Christian Science Monitor article (among 11 million others on Google search if you need to catch up):
There are 11 agents involved. Twenty or 21 women foreign nationals were brought to the hotel, but allegedly Marines were involved with the rest,’ Sen. Susan Collins (R) of Maine–who was briefed by the director of the Secret Service, Mark Sullivan–said in an email to Reuters.
The Washington Post adds that the twenty men made the rounds of nightclubs and strip clubs before indulging themselves with sex-workers — apparently legal in Cartagena. All of this likely would have gone off smoothly and all of us be none the wiser if it hadn’t been for at least one of the Secret Service agents haggling with one young woman over her price. Yep, pure class.
So far it appears that no sensitive security information was leaked–the agents involved were apparently not high-ranking enough to have access to the President’s schedule in advance — nor that the women had any affiliations with drug cartels or any other group that may have interest in infiltrating the Secret Service.
Nothing was compromised. Nothing was illegal. So what’s the problem?
Obviously, the Secret Service and the United States Military aren’t pleased about having their name dragged through the mud. My biggest hesitation with this whole mess, however, is that it seems to be written off as normal male behavior. Take this excerpt from a Talk of The Nation interview with former Secret Service agent Jeffrey Robinson:
“When you get 11 guys together with a lot of testosterone, things happen,” he told host Neal Conan. “It happens in the Secret Service, it happens with the New York Yankees, it happens in fraternities. I suspect it would happen in the House of Representatives…I think it was simply boys being boys, and I’m afraid boys will be boys. I know, because I was one. I still am, I guess.”
Just boys being boys? Should we be OK with that?
Read more: Cartagena, colombia, human trafficking, prostitution, secret service, sex workers, summit of the americas
Photo Credit: Paul Evans
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+ add your ownsadly women are seen solely as objects. if we were seen as more, cheaters would be fewer. Marriages would last longer. And the way we are treated would be improved. If we were seen as actual human beings and not just a quick fix, perhaps men would have more respect for us. But that isn't the case. So men go to strip joints and to prostitutes. They cheat and run around. They rape and abuse and molest and terrorize. Why want a real relationship when you can get what little you want from a stranger? I wonder how many of those men were in "committed" relationships?
Who cares?
Lets focus on issues of concern please!
"I think it was simply boys being boys, and I’m afraid boys will be boys. I know, because I was one. I still am, I guess.”
Is this supposed to be cute and endearing, said with a boyish grin, do you think? Anybody else feeling slightly sick?
Weren't they supposed to be there working? If I paid them, or relied on them I'd not not want silly, selfish "boys".
Better perhaps to have females only doing this important job.
Boys will be boys....when we keep this attitude in place, why are we outraged that boundaries have been crossed?
Btw, I have no problem with prostitution per se, as long as it's legal and regulated, and the women kept disease free. Makes a lot more sense than outlawing it as we do in the US. But like it or not, even casual sex is an entanglement that the Secret Service do not need, not when they are traveling with the President.
These were not businessmen, let alone vacationers, who only had to answer to themselves for their actions. I don't give a hoot what they do in the United States, as long as it's legal and doesn't hurt their families. but in Columbia, they were in the President's entourage. Sorry, folks, sometimes you just have to rein in your impulses and desires, and act like a responsible adult - and this was one of those times.
Think about this: if "boys will be boys," then doesn't that say something about how seriously they took their responsibilities? It makes it sound like they were there on a lark, playing games, not to protect one of the most important men on the planet!
Beth, I do not disagree with your assertion that you can't trust a drunk, and it may be that you can't trust men who use prostitutes. But if you acted on those beliefs at election time, there probably wouldn't be a quorum in either House or Senate, and on Sundays there'd be no one to give the sermon in fundamentalist churches. You may think me inane, but I'm afraid we who were idealists in our young years almost invariably become cynics with age, and cynics tend to be pragmatic.
If we all chipped in, do you think we could put together enough money to pay Steve R. to SHUT UP!! If someone posted an article about their granny's recipe for apple pie on here, he'd just right another comment about how Obama hates apple pie and therefore isn't really American and granny violated his constituional rights by not asking him if she should bung in some cinnamon. Manic-Obsessive Disorder. Ought to add that to the DSM.
Also they were not on their own time, they were on the job. Wow!
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