The Naked Emperor and His Nude Critics

The Naked Emperor and His Nude Critics

©2018  Ross Williams

One of the disadvantages of a being libertarian is that political news is dominated by blue-nosed republicans and idiot democrats; hearing about either is tiresome.  We are constantly accused of being the other whenever one of them does something phenomenally stupid and we laugh or criticize.  The cross to bear for libertarians is to point out all the naked emperors in the major parties’ parades.

Similarly, one of the disadvantages of living in the metropolitan area of a fairly major city of another state is that your own state’s news tends to get drowned out.  Even though I live in Illinois, I seem to know more − I certainly hear more − about the Missouri governor and his travails than I do about the travails of my own … which are numerous.  At this point, though, I’d have to admit that the Missouri situation is a lot more salacious.

I’ve snickered about the Missouri governor’s problems and have been called a hypocrite liberal for it − the Missouri governor is a republican.  I’ve criticized the things being done to and about the Missouri governor, and have been called a hypocrite conservative − these things are being done by democrats.  In truth, the republican governor is stupid, but not by so much that it rises much above background political stupidity; the democrats’ response to it is political sour-grapesing.

The Missouri governor, one Eric Greitens, is an ex Marine officer with many combat deployments under his belt.  He returned home from war and decided that his first real job after leaving the service would be to run the state of Missouri despite having no political resume.  His claimed charter was to clean house; neither democrats nor republicans want that. 

He entered the republican primary field against several names with more and fuller pedigrees, and beat them all.  He then faced a probably-can’t-lose democrat and won against all odds.  As a result of this, Missouri democrats loathe the guy, and republican mainstays aren’t all that happy with him either.

Three years ago, a year before he decided to be Missouri’s next Chief Executive Without Credentials, he had an affair with a woman whose own marriage was faltering.  At the beginning of this tryst, he was reported to have snapped a photograph of his mistress, naked, without having her express prior consent.  Millions of Americans in relationships having a strong sexual component have done the same thing.  This includes hundreds of thousands in the state of Missouri, and a few tens of thousands in St Louis and St Louis County.

Greitens’ affair lasted for several more months, so the putative photograph had no bearing on anything, and it’s not even meaningfully deniable that even if prior consent was not obtained, there was consent after the fact.  In short, the woman didn’t care about the photo.

Then Greitens decided he was going to run for governor, and − to clear the decks − he confessed to his wife that he’d had an affair.  The two “worked through it”, as the saying goes, and by all indications seem a happy couple today.  No one would be able to gotcha the Greitens!  Indeed, rumors of the affair circulated from the day he tossed his Marine dress blue hat into the ring.  Essentially, everyone who mattered knew about it; the guy’s affair was not a secret.

The mistress’s marriage, in long-standing decline, however, collapsed and her husband caught wind of the affair and who it was with.  As his cuckolder was a budding politician, and because rationalization runs deep among those in failed marriages − particularly when they have been … um … intimately betrayed − he secretly taped the future governor’s mistress confessing to the affair with Greitens.  Her confession mentioned the photograph.

To this date, the tape recording − hearsay in its truest form − is the only evidence of the photograph in existence.  No one who didn’t take it or was in it has seen the photo, and there’s some doubt that it existed at all, though it probably did.  Whether it still exists today, though, is extremely doubtful.  Greitens is not, after all, Anthony Wiener.

Yet this photo, despite its extremely dubious existence, has formed the basis of at least two extortion plots conspiracy theories jabbered about in local media.  Neither of these extortion plots is the one run by the jilted ex-husband of the governor’s mistress − as no one seems to acknowledge it being an extortion plot though it most certainly is.  None of them, however, save the one started by the jilted ex-husband, have any physical evidence to support them.  The mistress, officially anonymous, has stated [through her attorney] there is and was no blackmail, by photo or otherwise.  But because Greitens couldn’t be gotchaed by the affair, he’s being gotchaed about the photo.

Whereas secret audio recordings without express prior consent are perfectly legal in Missouri, photographs without same are not.  It constitutes the “class D felony” of Invasion of Privacy.  The St Louis Circuit Attorney, Kim Gardner − a democrat, as if it needs be said − recently concluded a kangaroo grand jury inquest into the governor’s affair-slash-blackmail and returned with an indictment for felony invasion of privacy.  The invasion of privacy charge is predicated upon the naked photograph of the mistress. The only evidence of this photograph is the hearsay tape recording.

Political opposition to the pedigree-less Greitens demands he be removed from office because the state of Missouri cannot properly function with a governor that no one from either party likes.  Scratch that: because the governor is a blackmailer.  And to properly ensure that the state function improperly for long enough and thus prove their point, the Circuit Attorney, Kim Gardner, requested a trial date for felony invasion of privacy in November, right around the time of the mid-term election.  Both the official and cynical explanation for this is self-serving moronitude.

The cynical explanation is that a state government squabbling over unknown outcomes of an evidence-less criminal trial against the governor will work in favor of the opposition party being able to collect enough seats in the legislature to impeach the guy anyway in case the criminal trial results in a not guilty verdict.  The official explanation offered up by the Circuit Attorney’s office is that, essentially, they need time to look for actual evidence; the tape recording is inadmissible hearsay.

The judge tasked with this circus on his docket ruled against Gardner’s argument.  Apparently, if there is enough evidence to indict there is enough evidence to try.  The state will have only two months to find − or concoct, as it may be − non-hearsay evidence that the governor of Missouri blackmailed his mistress from three years ago into silence for his political ambitions.  One can almost hear the photoshop presses grinding away in the Michigan private detective firm Gardner hired for $250 per hour on St Louis city residents’ dime.

For what it’s worth, the mistress has − through her attorney − repeatedly said there was no blackmail attempted, and she is effectively not cooperating with The State’s attempt to remove the governor by criminal proceduralism.  The State’s only meaningful witness left would seem to be the scorned ex-husband of the mistress, and he is largely reduced to providing jilted hearsay.

Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner insists that the indictment and future trial of the republican Governor that Missouri’s democrats loathe and Missouri’s republicans merely, by contrast, intensely dislike is not, not, NOT political.  Further, she makes this claim with a straight face.

In this day of iPhone cameras, revenge porn, Ashley Madison and craigslist, there are between several hundred and a few thousand examples of nude photographs taken without express prior consent within Kim Gardner’s jurisdiction.  All these photographs actually exist, on the cloud, cheating spouse and dating websites, and on-line personals ads.  They do not rely on allusion in non-consensual tape recordings for their veracity.  It doesn’t take a $250/hour private dick to find these photographs, either; a minimally google-literate prosecutor could find enough evidence to convict a dozen privacy invaders a day.

Yet, how many of them are being prosecuted for felony invasion of privacy?  The answer is none.  Not one.  The apolitical prosecutor is setting her sights, instead, on the high-hanging fruit [grapes, perchance?] of the almost literally one-in-a-million case where the evidence is elusive … if it still exists at all … if it ever existed at all.  The fact that the guy being prosecuted is the outsider governor hated by the opposition and disliked by his own is, we are solemnly informed by politicians, purely coincidental and not political at all.