Defenseless

Watching the lifeless proceedings of the U.S. Senate on C-Span can elicit an expected numbness.

The committee members discuss what are sometimes monumental social issues with the emotion of drywall. Tailored suits and perfectly bland haircuts seem to shroud the severity of the topics in a cloak of monotony. 

Even the recent voting record of the “Franken Anti-Government Contractor Rape Liability Bill” couldn’t produce a sting worthy of its true meaning. Thirty senators opposed the legislation? That’s not much more surprising than having to buy more toilet paper after a night of Chipotle.

However, it finally took a video of a rape victim’s actual confrontation with one of those 30 senators for me to fully understand how abhorrent this situation really is.

Sen. Dave Vitter, R-La., is one of the senators who opposed Al Franken’s amendment, which outlaws government funding for defense contractors who deny sexual assault victims an opportunity to bring their case to court.

On Oct. 31, Vitter was confronted by a rape victim during a town hall meeting in Baton Rouge. Here, the horror of rape was not neutralized by the businesslike symposium of the Senate hearings. I had to believe that the cold aloofness Vitter possessed would be shaken by the personification of his decisions.

Needless to say, my optimism was short lived.

The woman begins telling the senator that “it meant everything to me that I was able to put the person who attacked me (behind bars). And what allowed me to do that was our judicial process.”

Vitter tells the woman that he supports a case like that, which is “prosecuted criminally to the full extent of the law.”

The woman argues that there are “rape victims who are being kept silent” and asks how the senator can “support (a law) that tells a rape victim that she does not have the right to defend herself?”

Vitter, still speaking in a Ben Stein-like intonation, tells her, “You realize Mr. Obama was against that amendment; that his administration was against that amendment.”
At that moment my hope flatlined.

The horrifying abundance of hypocrisy that seeps into every political crevice is, by now, mostly common knowledge.

But this particular instance was especially deplorable.

A cowardly Vitter evades the woman’s question by callously passing the blame of his own vote to Obama, a man who Vitter opposes on almost every other issue, including energy policies, economic policies, health care and abortion.

The woman boldly tells the senator, “But I’m not asking Obama. I’m asking you.”
And she is damn right. If you’re audacious enough to oppose a woman’s right to defend herself, you had better be able to defend your reasoning. And hiding behind a Democratic rival when all else fails?  It would be comical if the situation wasn’t so disturbing.

Let’s not forget that Senator Vitter was linked to a prostitution ring run by D.C. Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey. So the positions he takes on various women’s rights issues, which also includes a “YES” on pro-life measures and a “NO” on funding for contraceptive education, should automatically be taken less seriously. 

Shame on you, Vitter, you spineless weasel.