Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Falling off high horses
Luanne Traud
Recent columns
- Marking a difficult anniversary
- My daughter, the voter
- A few new Voices would be nice
- A rush to legislate
From the RoundTable blog
You just knew that news of Anna Nicole Smith (by the way, she's still dead) would eventually be buried under breaking scandals.
For a short time Don Imus dominated cable chatter. Unless he pulls a Michael Jackson and dangles a hooded child out a 10-story window or something to that equivalent, not much is left to say about Imus. Celebrities behaving badly -- even if it is an Alec Baldwin venomous rant at his daughter -- merits no more than passing yawns.
It almost appeared as though we "the need to know every public person's private business" public might be deprived of a sizzling summer scandal.
Never fear, ABC and the D.C. Madam plan to fill the airwaves with sex, lies, hypocrites and, oh yes, the powerful being knocked off their high horses. The scandal is still in its infancy, with the cast of characters yet to unfold. The mystery surely has tongues wagging in Washington, D.C., and soon, too, the nation will join the unraveling. We get to gossip and feel smug. What could be better?
It began last October when Deborah Jean Palfrey was indicted on federal racketeering charges. Palfrey, the madam behind Pamela Martin & Associates, which provided escorts to service the Beltway, maintains her innocence. Her girls were simply escorts, perhaps agreeing to massages or fantasies, (wink, wink) but no way did the $300 an hour fee include, gasp, sex.
Prosecutors say they have both former clients and workers ready even if not exactly willing to say otherwise, so Palfrey wishes to bring forth clients to back up her story. Only, her assets, so to speak, have been frozen. Not to worry, she has a scoop.
Palfrey called ABC's "20/20" and handed over her big black book (46 pounds worth, according to reports) so the network could put names with her phone numbers. Palfrey swears the network hasn't paid her -- that would appear unethical, wouldn't it? -- but it will compensate her by identifying her johns, er clients.
Already "20/20" reporter Brian Ross hit pay dirt. So far, he's tied in Defense Department consultant Harlan Ullman, best known for coining the phrase "shock and awe," which surely his family and friends are in at this moment.
But they couldn't be any more shocked than those who know another of the madam's clients: Mr. Abstinence Himself, Randall Tobias, the president's former AIDS guru and until he answered Ross' phone call last Friday, head of the State Department's foreign aid.
It should be noted that Tobias claims he only invited the girls over to his condo for "massages." Whatever. That's for Mrs. Tobias to decide.
All I'm wondering is if Tobias remembered any of the ABCs he preached: abstain, be faithful, and last, if you must engage in sex, although people really shouldn't outside the sacred bonds of the marriage bed, wear a condom.
I once had the privilege of being schooled in the ABC method of AIDS prevention by Tobias several years ago when he briefed journalists visiting the State Department.
He was then charged by the president to spend $15 billion in five years bringing treatment and prevention plans to disease-ravaged countries. Most of the money, he explained, would go to 14 countries, all but two in Africa, where 10 million people were either dying or orphaned from the disease.
With a flair for the dramatic, Tobias said that each day 8,000 people, the equivalent of 20 fully loaded Boeing 747s, died from AIDS. The world would want to stop the planes from falling out of the sky.
That was his job.
So in addition to encouraging the development of new drugs (something Tobias as former head of a pharmaceutical firm knew much about) he was touting the ABCs.
If people would just practice abstinence and monogamy, new AIDS cases would wane. And yes, he remembered to add, condoms were necessary if those lessons failed, especially in the brothels where so many prostitutes were infected, and the visiting men then brought the disease home to their wives and villages.
Last year a Government Accountability Office report found this preachy abstinence-fidelity approach so favored by Tobias, that promoted A and B but skimped on C kept condoms from reaching sex workers and from vulnerable youths and didn't do much to halt the spread of AIDS.
No big surprise there. People are, after all, humans and they succumb to desires. Even politicians.
That they don't acknowledge this in setting policies, well, that is scandalous.
Traud is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.
