Viral BJ (BJ=Basic Justice, not that other thing)

April 20, 2012

Tags: Bachmann, Baghdad, sex tape
Posted in: Embassy/State, Iraq

If you are one of the few people who missed the story about an “alleged” sex tape that includes an “alleged” State Department VIP having “alleged” sex on the roof of the old US Embassy building in Baghdad, well, it must be for lack of interest, because the story seems to be popping up everywhere.

Meanwhile, the State Department has yet to issue a denial, a curious thing. You can read the daily press briefing here to check.

While the story has not made it to Doha yet, it is in the UK and another in the UK, India, Poland, and Nigeria. The Week, which include the story as item number three in “Five scandals that could undo Obama’s re-election bid.”

Basic Justice

“BJ” in this context stands for “basic justice,” not the naughty thing you were thinking of, shame. My point in raising all this fuss is to mark the way the State Department turns on charges of “poor judgment” against me for blogging (I am being fired due to my book and this blog, long before any sex tapes raised their, er, head) while turning its back on any number of instances of questionable behavior when the persons involved are not bloggers that they are looking for an excuse to fire.

Here’s one of the actual charges:

Which referred to this:

For those who don’t recall, that photo of Ms. Bachmann (of questionable judgment of its own) appeared on thousands of web sites; try this Google search to see. And yes, everyone from Colbert to Leno to the guy in your car pool (and me) made the same joke about it.

Childish? A bit. Snarky. Yes. Maybe even rude, funny, immature, naughty, bad taste, whatever. But a firing offense? Seems a stretch, especially since the photo appeared briefly on my blog in October 2011 and here we are firing me in late April 2012, some six months of festering “poor judgement” later. Now that seems a bit, well, childish. Or maybe vengeful.

Keeping State Secrets

I met recently with a group of young professionals in Washington interested in foreign affairs, several of whom expressed some interest in joining the State Department. The question of security clearances came up, and the point I made was that more and more the secrets you will be asked to keep are not matters of national security as much as matters of embarrassment.

Instead of keeping vital info from the Chinese, you are instead expected to remain silent when your boss has sex on the roof above you. Instead of keeping information secret to protect the President, you instead must learn to keep silent when his Secret Service agents bring whores back to their Government-paid hotel rooms abroad.

Those are the secrets you must keep. Anything else is poor judgment.

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