Friday Mad Science: When is a Scandal REALLY a Scandal?

Alright.  I have to say this.  What is the big fucking deal with this Secret Service scandal?  From what I understand, these guys went to Columbia, hired some rather higher-priced escorts than they realized that they were hiring, and then tried--with only moderate success--to try to stiff the poor girls the next morning.  And, oh by the way, there was alcohol involved.

So, okay, yeah.  I'll agree that that's not good behavior.  It's distasteful and disreputable, and it's in really bad form to try to stiff a girl after you've already agreed on a price, regardless of whether or not you were drunk during the initial negotiations.  But.  Prostitution is legal in the part of Columbia in question, and in any event, there are always two sides to every story.  I mean, yeah, a smart guy would've either avoided the situation or paid to make it go away quietly, but at the same time, it's also at least somewhat possible that these girls realized they had a chance to make some money, took it, and made a scene.  I mean, extortion can be a money-making opportunity.  And in any event, no laws were broken at the end of the day, and while I think we can all agree that prostitution is both immoral and unfortunate, I think we can all also agree that the practice isn't going to end any time soon.

My question is this: What does any of this have to do with these guys' professions?  No one is alleging that they sold information or compromised their actual job performance in any way, so why is this news?

Is it bad form?  Yes.  An international incident?  I'm sorry, but that I don't see.

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After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I've finally decided to write my little comic story up as prose fiction.  I got into actually scripting it, realized it was likely to run to something like thirty-two pages of script, and realized in turn that that fact alone made the story totally unmanageable.  I mean, it's not that I think this is the story that's gonna make me famous or anything, but... it's hard to write something when you know ahead of time that it's a dead end.  So prose it is.  I know you're excited.

Anyway, I'm hoping to run the pieces here, in weekly installments as if it were a webcomic.  As I said earlier, I was initially thinking of the story as The-Son-of-Avengers-vs.-the-X-Men, but as I was writing it up, it became a kind of police procedural.  I went with that.  So now I'm thinking of it a "Post-Superhero Military-Sci Fi Procedural".  Which is glorious, if you ask me.

Look for it, starting next week.

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And now it's about 9:30pm, and I just got back from dinner at the Barnsider in Albany.  Finally got my Stella, along with a nice Pinot Noir and a Fillet Mignon.  Finished with a giant bowl of vanilla ice cream.  All of which is to say that business trips aren't always a riot, but they don't have to suck.

I'm going to sleep.  Have a good weekend.