I read this in The New York Times on Thursday.
“Sitting in her living room wearing a short jean skirt, high-heeled espadrilles and a spandex top with a plunging neckline, the prostitute described how she and another woman were approached by a group of American men at a discotheque. … ‘They never told me they were with Obama,’ she said, addressing published reports that some agents may have openly boasted to prostitutes that they were there protecting the president. ‘They were very discreet.'”
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I thought at the beginning of this story that the real news was that the Secret Service, dark-suited men generally who talk into their sleeves and look around a lot, were just as human as the rest of us.
I thought it was all about sex.
But as you will see, it’s all about money.
Actress Lauren Bacall made espadrilles famous way back in her film “Key Largo,” but the modern espadrilles are fancier and pretty pricey. High-heeled espadrilles are going to run you a good $200 to $300 if you want quality. Cheap prostitutes can’t afford the real thing.
I am doing everything I can here not to address the subject raised by the report of Secret Service nocturnal behaviors in Colombia before President Barack Obama arrived for a summit last weekend. That is because I feel the need to comment, but I don’t care about the passions of the Secret Service.
James Bond was in the British Secret Service. He was lots of things, but never chaste. Are you telling me our Secret Service is less, ummmm … hormonal than its tea-drinking British counterparts?
I don’t think so, even though theirs is all about spies and ours is all about security and counterfeiting and the like.
We now know that short jean skirts and spandex tops are apparently a sign that you are looking at a hooker (or perhaps just a tourist from Florida) in Colombia, but in this case, a question of terminology has caused a problem.
Semantics is a funny business.
You might just toss the word “ho” around without recognizing that there are men and women who take money for sex, then there are men and women who take money for “escorting,” which is what the particular woman in the Secret Service scandal called her profession. Apparently, escorting is better.
These agents are in trouble because of some confusion about negotiating price.
Somehow, one of them thought the price for an overnight visit was $30, which would have been quite the bargain. Somehow, the espadrille girl thought the price was much closer to, say, $800, which would be a pricey encounter, indeed.
This is quite a disparity.
It indicates that there was too much Absolut vodka in the formula at dinner, or a Secret Service agent was caught short on pocket change, or a hooker who just didn’t want to be thought of as a hooker instead wanted to be viewed as an escort.
Think about this for just a second.
Apparently, it’s just fine to describe yourself as an escort when you are getting money for sex because you are also classy enough to be taken to dinner and can hold a good conversation (but apparently not about economics). You do not ramble the streets of Cartagena, Colombia, trying to scrape up business. Your pimp does that for you.
Note here that prostitution is not illegal in certain parts of Cartagena.)
What is most remarkable about this story is that it is being seriously investigated by Congress and lots of people are in a dither about it. Some Secret Service people have left the Secret Service.
So what is this really all about?
Cash.
Apparently, there is nothing louder than a Colombian escort scorned. Perhaps offended by the offer of $30 for a night of purchased bliss, she called in the cops. The whole situation got ugly, and now look where we are.
The Secret Service, an agency with a sterling reputation for never doing anything wrong, is being tarnished by a guy who refused to pay enough for sex. I am shocked. Wait a minute. Where are we?
People pay for escorts here in America all the time. I would suggest even cops have done that kind of thing, and soldiers and doctors and members of Congress and reporters and priests and rabbis and anyone else you can think of.
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As almost always happens in the United States, we are destined to get upset about the wrong part of this story, the sex part. Inevitably, someone will claim the woman was being exploited by a lascivious, aggressive male who was just using her. It’s all Obama’s fault.
But no! This is actually a business story.
If Colombian escorts carried those little card-readers that people attach to their iPads for financial transactions these days, this all could have been avoided. One swipe could have settled the debate. Just think, new espadrilles for the escort, no flap and a Secret Service that could live to fight another day.
Once again, technology could have saved the day.
Charles M. Madigan is presidential writer in residence and head of journalism at Roosevelt University.