While the fate of lap dancing remains in perilous balance in Tampa, Florida, Tampa Tribune columnist Daniel Ruth offers these thoughts complete with some really bad metaphors. Tampa gets an F in that this issue ever came to be one in the first place, and Ruth gets a C-minus in alliteration, over-cliched column writing and attempting to be really smug yet clever about sex at the same time.
"I'm willing to go way out on a limb and boldly predict that at Thursday's Tampa City Council meeting to decide the future of lap dancing in our quaint village, the vote will be overwhelming in favor to ban the art of the titillating tango," Ruth writes. [Not since Dove Linkhorn has this phrase been uttered.]
"Seven-zip," says Tuth. "It's just a guess. After all, these 'dancers' are hardly Ginger Rogers. As well, the crystal ball suggests there will be much Sturm und Drang, great howls of protest, videos of naked women doing unspeakable things with Tonka trucks, and more moralizing than the last time Pat Robertson dined alone.
"Once Joe Redner [owner of the Mon Venus], whose name has become synonymous with Sodom & Gomorrah, along with all the other moguls of mammaries, has been barred from providing lap dancers who will be required to remain at least six feet away from one another and the clientele, there will be much rejoicing - especially by Councilman Bob Buckhorn, who has become the Ralph Waldo Emerson of whoopee," Ruth adds. {The two alliterations in this paragraph alone should have Ruth up for malpractice.]
"Let's face it," said Ruth. "Redner and his fellow travelers could pack the Tampa Convention Center with every lap dancer in town along with their extended families, every Playmate of the Month since 1953, Kim Basinger reprising her role in ``9 1/2 Weeks,'' and Robert Bork delivering an impassioned lecture as to how America's finest died on D-Day to protect the constitutional right of naked women to straddle hapless men for $50 a pop - and none of it would make any difference.
"A city council member would have to be denser than Elmer Fudd to oppose the Buckhorn Doctrine," Ruth believes. "And while no one has ever confused the city council with the Algonquin Roundtable, these folks aren't that dumb to be seen as in favor of simulated (and perhaps not so simulated) sex. Well, OK, maybe 6-1.
"Oh, a small question. What remotely possible benefit was there in Tampa Mayor Dick Greco providing a screening of police undercover video depicting exotic dancers engaged in all manner of graphic sex acts to - A GROUP OF MINISTERS?!?!?!? Was there some risk these particular folks were wavering in their support of the Buckhorn Manifesto, which puts a whole new spin on the term 'bugger zone'?
Ruth writes that 30 ministers, representing "a veritable cornucopia of spiritual ecumenism," showed up for the "noon matinee" at Tampa police headquarters to view the tape. "Were Goobers served?" Ruth wanted to know. "Do you think you could get that many tut-tutting clerical collars in the same room if the vice du jour were illicit bingo?" he asks. [Maybe not, but I think adult journalism has found a new bad writer to embrace.]
"Indeed, there will be so much chest- thumping and posturing at Thursday's meeting that it will make the lap dancers look like a bunch of mannequins. Then the council will vote - eight-goose egg. Buckhorn will vote twice - just to make sure. By the way, what accounts for the sudden emergence of Greco, who has never denied his own appreciation for a well- turned G-string, as Tampa's Barney [Fife] of Amore?
"Could it have anything to do with co-opting an issue that appears to be gaining traction for Buckhorn, hardly a political ally?" Ruth also asks. "After all, you could argue Dick Greco had no interest in sex until Buckhorn, the Lone Ranger of Loins, discovered it. It's merely idle speculation, but if you think the banning of lap dancing will end a practice that has made Tampa the Groin Capital of the World, perhaps you also believe Malcolm Glazer will actually pay for his promised half of Bag-O-Money Field.
"After a brief period of laying low (bad word choice, perhaps), Redner and his ilk will figure out a way around the six-feet-of- separation prohibition. In that sense everybody wins. Buckhorn gets his ordinance passed. Redner eventually ignores it and continues with business as usual, giving Buckhorn an ongoing issue to crusade on leading up to the 2003 mayoral election."
Gene sez: "Forget bans on lap dancing. What the Feds oughta do is send William Bennett to Tampa in an attempt to revitalize the creative writing curriculum in schools down there."
