There is a thing that happens in every political workplace in US America, and probably also Guam, where everybody’s just doing their business, but then this one family values Republican, probably named Missouri House Speaker John Diehl, gets a shame boner in his knickers because one of those nubile co-ed intern girls just came into the room, and before you know it, he’s sending her text messages what say “God I want you right now” and wanna “leave you quivering” (probably in the vagina), punctuated with ALL THE EMOJIS, because that’s how you talk to Kids These Days. And then he has to resign…. And then not FIVE MINUTES LATER, as if to somehow prove that Both Sides Do It, a Democratic Missouri state senator named Paul LeVota had to resign, also for doing sexual harassment to interns. So the Missouri Legislature is going to solve this, by God, and they’re going to do it by making sure those interns don’t come in here dressed like trollops or whores or sirens or sailors, or whatever it is the fine male lawmakers of Missouri are into[.]
In most workplaces, when employees are guilty of engaging in sexual misconduct- including sexual harrassment- the employees responsible are recognized as being the problem and are dealt with accordingly. It’s about being responsible, professional adults who can distinguish appropriate from inappropriate behavior in the workplace. It seems not at all unreasonable that this short of respectful behavior should be a minimum expectation, no?
Then there’s the Missouri Legislature, where the problem isn’t with horny (and usually married) men behaving in inappropriately sexual manners with interns. The problem, of course, isn’t with the men- whom you’d think would be able to keep their libido under control in the workplace. No, the problem is the way interns dress. And instead of requiring members to control their members…and their behavior towards interns…they’re changing the rules to place the onus on interns.
IF ONLY THEM THERE INTERNS WEREN’T SO DAMNED HOT, I WOULDN’T HAVE TO CONSTANTLY FIGURE OUT HOW TO HAVE THEM TAKE CARE OF THIS ANNOYING BONER OF MINE….
So what is the Legislature doing to address the problem? Yep, you guessed- they’re killing the patient in a misguided effort to cure the disease. Stay classy, y’all!
Rep. Bill Kidd, an Independence Republican, responded almost immediately with the suggestion that an intern dress code was needed. He was seconded by Republican Rep. Nick King of Liberty.
“We need a good, modest, conservative dress code for both the males and females,” King wrote in an email to colleagues. “Removing one more distraction will help everyone keep their focus on legislative matters.”
Fair enough; minimizing distractions in an effort to make legislative boner management as easy as possible is a good thing. Unfortunately, making this your primary focus completely ignores the reality that some of your members can’t keep THEIR members under control. That sort of immaturity shouldn’t be made the responsibilities of interns. Should they dress appropriately for the workplace? Of course; but they bear only part of the responsibility for ensuring a workplace free of sexual harrassment. The legislators in question should and do bear the lion’s share of the responsibility; they’re supposed to be adults setting an example for interns, and chasing skirts would seem to work against creating a maintaining a workplace free from inappropriate behavior.
It’s a legislative body, not Animal House. A certain level of dignity and decorum would seem a reasonable expectation, and yet those members who should take that responsibility as a minimum daily requirement seem to have difficulty with the idea of keeping their members under wraps. Then again, when the inmates are running the asylum….
