"We Can't Expect America to Win Against its Foes, With No One In the Senate Who Can Really Tap His Toes"

Paul Finkelman

The great creator of parodies, Tom Leher, once sang a song about the former actor turned senator from California, George Murphy. Leher wrote “we can't expect America to win against its foes, with no one in the Senate who can really tap his toes.” Well, at least until the end of this month, we have a Senator – Larry Craig – who really can “tap his toes.” The Senator from Idaho seems on again, off again, about whether he will resign. He wants to rescind his guilty plea and apparently challenge his arrest. In all his statements, however, the good Senator seems to tip toe around the issue of why he was actually in the public men’s room at the Minneapolis Airport. We may never know exactly what happened there. It is a classic case of “he said/he said.” But we should ask why he was there at all.

Let me explain for those of you who are not frequent flyers.

As a very frequently flyer, who spends far too much time in airports, one aspect of the story troubles me. Why was he in the public restroom? I am platinum on one airline and am lifetime gold on another. For the last decade I have been in more airports than I care to count. I have met celebrities in first class when I have been upgraded and in the Northwest World Club, the Delta Crown Club, the Continental President’s Club, and American’s Admirals Club. I have met a few Senators and members of Congress. I have seen (and sometimes talked to) the occasional actor, t.v. or radio “personality,” sports figure, and talking head. (I will admit to getting Sparky Anderson’s autograph.) I have seen VIP’s ushered on a plane in a front row seat after the rest of us were all seated.

But, in all my years of flying and running through airports, I have never seen a celebrity in a public restroom. It just doesn’t happen.

They are in the airline clubs or in some secret VIP Room that we mere mortals never see. Maybe a senator who is hurrying from one plane to the other will stop in a public restroom. But, more likely the senator stops somewhere else, while the plane is held. I have seen VIP’s ushered on a plane in a front row seat after the rest of us were all seated, and the doors should have been closed.

So, my question is this: Why was Senator Craig in the public men’s room? Had he suddenly become a populist and wanted to see how the average person lives? I doubt it. This is not conclusive proof of what he intended or wanted to do there. But, it does raise questions. Maybe he is not a member of the Northwest World Club, or any other club, and has spent three terms in the public gate areas and public bathrooms while changing planes in Minneapolis of Chicago on this way to Idaho? If this is true, then I would be first to praise him for his populism and for being a “man of the people.” If this is true, then to paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, “you’re a better man than I am, Larry Craig.”

But, my guess is that the good Senator is a member of one or more airline club, and he was not on a tight schedule, just popping to do his business in between planes. If so, then what why was he in the public men’s room?