"Handcuffs" Ravenstahl Did Not Have Sexual Relations With That Pair of Handcuffs

Despite hordes of developments in the Ravenstahl arrest story (which some have taken to calling "Taking-One-For-Team-Gate"), I didn't post anything new yesterday. This was largely intentional on my part. My previous post, which pointed out that Interim Mayor Luke "Handcuffs" Ravenstahl lied to reporters about the incident, remained at the peak of it's relevance. It covered most of everything that developed yesterday. It said everything that there really was to say, and I decided that I wanted to leave it right at the top of the blog so that it would remain the leading story here.

While the story of Master Ravenstahl's lies has stood firm for the last 48 hours or so, it has also expanded a bit in scope. We now know that he lied about it over and over and over again. We now know that he was asked about the incident by many different reporters on many different occasions and in many different ways. And in every case, until it was clear that truth could no longer be avoided, Interim Mayor Luke Ravenstahl lied.

His defense and his defenders are twisting semantics as hard as they possibly can, bending logic and language into unrecognizable new forms in a desperate attempt to claim that no actual lies were told. Their hope is that we, the people, will take our eye off the ball and begin to argue meaning rather than substance. If the debate can be converted into mere semantics, they know that our attention will be diverted away from Master Ravenstahl's behavior, both during the incident in question and in lying about it afterwards.

This is largely the same tactic which was used, quite successfully, by President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky affair. It worked very well then. The public twisted itself into knots debating the real meaning of terms such as "sexual relations" and even "is", and in the end forgot about what the President had actually done. It worked then. And Master Ravenstahl and his supporters are hoping and praying that it works here.

It's a disgusting tactic. Arguing over whether Interim Mayor Luke "Handcuffs" Ravenstahl was or was not "arrested" makes him look cheap. It makes him look like he has something to hide. It makes him look weak and immoral. And it puts him in the company of such stellar indivuduals as Rush Limbaugh, who also tried to argue that his time in custody did not amount to an "arrest". When the Democratic mayor of heavily-Democratic city is forced to act just like Rush Limbaugh, you know that something has gone drastically wrong.

My strong inclination is to not engage in an argument over the meaning of the term "arrest" or "detained". I don't think it wise to allow us to be distracted with the precise wording of the reporters' questions to Interim Mayor Ravenstahl. I think it's important to stick to what anyone with common sense -- or at least anyone who isn't intentionally ignoring what their common sense is telling them -- already knows. Master Ravenstahl was asked about the incident. He knew precisely what incident he was being asked about. He knew that it had happened. And he looked us all right in the face and told us that it never had occurred.

Bill Clinton did, indeed, engage in some sort of sexual activity with Monica Lewinsky. Luke Ravenstahl was placed in handcuffs and taken into custody by a City of Pittsburgh police officer. Both of these men were given ample opportunity to be honest with their constituents about the whole thing. Both of them failed us when they instead denied that the incidents ever took place. And both of them failed us even further when they resorted to a bullshit argument based merely on semantics to extricate themselves from the scandal that they, and they alone, had caused.

Bill Clinton remained in office anyway, and in many ways his opponents' grossly excessive reaction to his behavior backfired. The same sort of thing may happen here. But nothing can change the simple fact that neither man served us very well by lying to us. Nobody ever really forgets being lied to. And nobody ever looks at a political figure quite the same way after their lies have been revealed. Those who have supported and stood behind Luke Ravenstahl through all of his troubles should know and understand that, even if he emerges from this scandal with an election victory in May, the public will never again trust him in the way that they did before.