Too Busy: The Sexual Politics of the Presidential Crisis

This has been George Bush's horrible, no-good, very bad week. Nothing could be worse- the President had to give up throwing the first pitch of the season.

His spokeswoman said he was "too busy" to make the game.

But W. has never been too busy for baseball in his entire life.

In past years, this was Bush's holiday. He was the first president, in '05, to do the honors in D.C. since the Senators left town after the '71 season. The Senators, of course, became the Texas Rangers, which Bush bought a chunk of in 1989. Sweet times, eh?

But you'd be "busy,"  too, if you were a President who feared the stadium crowd would boo and jeer your arrival.

"I've got a decision to make today. Do I go with the fastball or a slider?" Bush asked in 2005. Now he gets to choose whether he wants to appear in public with a bag over his head, or a Britney-wig.

George's dear friend, Attorney General Alberto "Fredo" Gonzales has also been very busy.

While Congress hounded him to account for the federal prosecutors who were fired on what appears to be "Mean-Girls" criteria, Gonzales refused to answer the indictments, and instead ... is on a national speaking tour to decry the horrors of child pornography.

I'm not going to quote what Gonzales has to say about "child porn," because his speech, all by itself, is a purple-prose, pornographic, exploitation rant. He could leave Andrea Dworkin speechless. I'm surprised no one in his audience decided to stop kiddie porn in its tracks by duct-taping Gonzales' mouth.

It's not enough to say his remarks were disingenuous; they're sickening. The Justice Department under Bush has not been an ally to abused and neglected children -- unless we're talking about block grants of Hot Air.

Ninety percent of reported child abuse cases take place in the home, between blood relatives, and there's no webcam involved. There may be bias to child abuse statistics, but everyone -- except political opportunists -- acknowledge that "hurting children" is largely an ugly and secretive family affair, one which Bush's DOJ has ignored. The issue has no partisan "gain" for them -- why bother?

Of course, the Executive Branch functionaries in charge of "helping families" are the folks at the Department of Health and Human Resources, but they are so busy demanding abstinence education, and trying to stop birth control, that they can't get around to the starving, burned, or beaten.

Let's say, for argument, that the Justice Department has a special priority: "Hey, we're going after global porn monsters here."

Even on their own parochial terms, the Justice Dept. has not hunted down the causes or perpetrators of human chattel, which is the basis for sexual exploitation of children. The label "child porn" is a frivolous, insulting, bargain-basement sales tag for what's really going on: a global, multi-age system of slave trafficing.

Let me quote an encyclopedia-style definition of slavery:

Slavery is a social-economic system under which certain persons -- known as slaves -- are deprived of personal freedom and compelled to perform labor or services.

Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation in return for their labor.

Chattel slavery is the absolute legal ownership of a person or persons, including the legal right to buy and sell them.

Not very sexy, huh? But that's what this is all about. Pimping young people on camera doesn't exist separately from the economic tit of human degradation. It's not the frisson of a MySpace page that is driving young people into literal bondage. Our President's policies trivialize human traffiking to exploit the issue as a "pornography beef" -- and who's calling him on it?