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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34947 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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Sam Brinton is in the news this week.

For those who don't know, Sam is the first non-binary, gay drag queen to hold a federal government leadership position. I know him for his distinctive appearance, with moustache, bald head, and typical cross-dressing clothing and makeup. Here's another piece about him, from several months ago. The culture war angle should be obvious, as this man was highlighted, along with Rachael Levine, as examples of progressive hiring in the Biden administration. Suffice to say that he is not the kind of person I can take seriously, and I do not think he should have been hired, and certainly shouldn't have been celebrated. But that's not why I'm posting.

Now, why was he in the news this week?

Brinton was caught stealing luggage from an airport terminal. I'll notice that this article has no pictures of him. A summary, from here:

On Sept. 16, a female traveler alerted the Airport Police Department at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport that she was missing a piece of luggage.

Law enforcement officers who reviewed surveillance footage that same day saw Brinton remove a navy blue, hard-sided, 26-inch roller bag made by Vera Bradley from Carousel 7, according to the criminal complaint filed in Hennepin County District Court.

The victim confirmed, through a digital still of surveillance footage, that it was her bag with total contents worth $2,325, according to the complaint.

The same style of Vera Bradley luggage sells for $295 from VeraBradley.com.

Law enforcement confirmed that Brinton arrived at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport at 4:27 p.m. Sept. 16 on a flight from Washington, D.C., and had not checked a bag when he departed Washington.

Law enforcement learned that Brinton stayed at the InterContinental Saint Paul Riverfront hotel, and video surveillance from that hotel showed Brinton checking in with a bag that fit the description of the stolen luggage.

So he's been put on leave, for now, and he's due in court on the 19th of this month. At first, I wouldn't have considered posting this, as I simply found it funny in an absurd way, but then I ran across what is really the reason why I posted. I ran across a thread on twitter explaining why this was actually serious, and reflected a dangerous escalation of perverse behavior. I'll quote the main points:

The public needs to understand that this sexual deviant did NOT accidentally pick up the wrong suitcase, as he checked no bags on the flight. This was likely a targeted attempt at gaining access to a woman's underwear. This is what the Biden Admin desperately wants to keep quiet.

With nearly 13K clinical contact hrs, over 14+ years, working in a clinical capacity with men who sexually offend... with men who've done very deviant and heinous things to women and children... I can assure you that, once you see a man steal female items, it's really serious.

Go ahead and read the whole thread.

I hadn't considered this angle, at first, but once it's been pointed out to me, I can't shake it. It's the most plausible argument I've heard of for why Sam would steal the woman's luggage, given that all others make no sense.

So, to wrap up, my questions. First, should he be fired for stealing? Second, how likely is it that Sam stole the luggage specifically for underwear? And third, does this move the needle for you in any way, when considering whether to trust, hire, or promote people like Sam?

  1. Almost certainly. They should almost certainly be charged; I have no idea what the federal standards for actually firing are. I’ll agree with @gattsuru’s observations on security clearance.

  2. Not impossible, but unlikely. Does it have more predictive power than stealing the most expensive looking bag? Because that’s what I’d expect motivates most bag thefts. (As a bonus, I’d guess women’s luggage is more likely to be visibly expensive and thus targeted.)

  3. Conditional on being right about 2), no. If I’m wrong and Mx. Brinton was unable to control perverted urges...yeah, I guess.

I do object to your weaselly “people like Sam,” since I’d consider the appropriate category to be “kink activists” or “identity politicians” or even “people who make the personal political.” Somehow I imagine your chosen category is more broad.

Not impossible, but unlikely. Does it have more predictive power than stealing the most expensive looking bag? Because that’s what I’d expect motivates most bag thefts. (As a bonus, I’d guess women’s luggage is more likely to be visibly expensive and thus targeted.)

This was my first thought as well, but others downthread have suggested that the bag itself was only valued at about $300, which is not an especially expensive piece of luggage. Maybe it looked expensive?

It is difficult for me to put into words why "the kind of person who does public kink shows" automatically registers to my mind as "the kind of person who is likely unfit for public office at any level." I don't think that being into BDSM or dressing like a dog or even crossdressing is especially likely to correlate with being bad at making dispassionate policy decisions, or whatever else it takes to be a good public servant. But being quite loud and public about that sort of thing does give me a strong impression of rampant, unchecked narcissism, narcissism-adjacency, or some other idiopathic impairment of personal judgment.

It is difficult for me to put into words why "the kind of person who does public kink shows" automatically registers to my mind as "the kind of person who is likely unfit for public office at any level." I don't think that being into BDSM or dressing like a dog or even crossdressing is especially likely to correlate with being bad at making dispassionate policy decisions, or whatever else it takes to be a good public servant. But being quite loud and public...

Similarly, most defenders of this guy would probably object very strongly to giving the same job to someone like Andrew Tate. That would be true even if he had a degree in nuclear engineering or wrote 12 academic papers on the topic.

But being quite loud and public about that sort of thing does give me a strong impression of rampant, unchecked narcissism, narcissism-adjacency, or some other idiopathic impairment of personal judgment.

I think that it basically comes down to impulse control. If Jack likes to cross-dress and puppy-play in xer home dungeon, but when xe goes to work xe wears a business suit and uses "he/him" pronouns, then Jack can put a sock in it when necessary and I expect that if Jack ever gets a little "hmm, it'd be sort of easy for me to embezzle some of this money", that Jack can quash that impulse.

If Jack likes to cross-dress and puppy play in xer home dungeon, and when xe goes to work xe dresses up in (unflattering) red lipstick and heels and sends out an email to all xer colleagues about the particular pronouns they should use, oh and by the way there will be an interview on the local radio morning chat show where xe is discussing with the host xis involvement in the local kink scene, tune in at 10 a.m. tomorrow, then I am going to be more inclined to think that if Jack gets a little impulse towards "hmmm, it'd be sort of easy for me to take some of this money", xe has less rigorous safeguards around breaking stuffy old rules.

Is that unfair to Jack? Quite possibly, but on the other hand - 'the louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted the spoons'.

TBH, some of this behavior is simply inappropriate in the workplace. If I sent out a department wide email about doing an interview on my sexual preferences, I would quite rightly be in HR, likely to be fired.

Only if you're a straight white guy, though; otherwise, that would be homophobia and transphobia to single you on the basis of your sexual and gender identification. I think this is at the heart of what people are objecting about - "if I did this in my job, I could expect to be in serious trouble and likely even get fired. I couldn't expect a host of people to be standing up defending me about 'just some creative roleplaying' and the likes of it".

What's sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. Should Brinton get the presumption of innocence, just like everyone else, regardless of their weird lifestyle? Yes, they should. Should Brinton get protection from investigation and presumption of "this is persecution", because of their weird lifestyle? No, they should not.

For me part of it is the special treatment based on identity category.

If I, a straight man, gave a talk on my favorite Playboy centerfolds, there's a very good chance I'd become unhireable in my industry. Even if it was a joke PowerPoint I delivered privately to a few friends and it happened to get leaked.

If you're a nonbinary queer activist, you can be much more risque, completely in the open, and be celebrated for it.

TBH that's as much class norms as anything else- posting your favorite playboy centerfold as a decoration at your desk would be totally accepted behavior in many working class jobs(yes, including the ones that have desks). Doing a comedy routine centering on your favorite playmates wouldn't even be remarked upon(although sending it out as a department wide email would be seen as beyond the pale).

Yeah, with the caveat that I wouldn’t recognize expensive luggage if I saw it.

I don’t even have a problem with being loud and public about such hobbies. Especially as activism. It’s crossing over, no pun intended, with their actual position that might be fraught. The government mouthpiece ought to be staid and boring and decidedly not transgressive.

"the kind of person who is likely unfit for public office at any level."

Your intuition is correct. Their participation in these behaviours means they reject polite society

I suspect "polite society" being used to judge fitness for public office would just be moral busy bodies banning anyone outside of a puritanical norm. Like how all homosexuals were banned from security clearances and witch hunts were ran to try to root out closeted homosexuals from security and defense jobs.

And yes, in this one case such moral nannies would have been correct. But as a general principle I don't want them gatekeepers. A closeted gay engineer in the 80s working on missile tech shouldn't live in fear of getting caught and fired since polite society had nothing but cruelty and derision for such people. Hell, I'm in a mixed race marriage. Thank God it isn't a few decades ago when polite society didn't take a fond view of miscegenation and deviants such as myself.

If we have to hold the line at firing the gay engineer to prevent getting to this point, well then I’d be fine with that. The slippery slope seems to have been very real, and so it’s just a question of where the slope became too steep to stop our slide.

TBH it seems like there's a pretty firm brightline between a closeted gay man and a man who wears women's clothing to work and gives lectures on his sexual preferences.

But being quite loud and public about that sort of thing does give me a strong impression of rampant, unchecked narcissism, narcissism-adjacency, or some other idiopathic impairment of personal judgment.

Setting aside what personality traits may motivate it, isn’t it better for a high-level government staffer to be public about what many might consider embarrassing? No one can likely blackmail this fellow about being a kink enthusiast, or whatever.

Plausibly, but this assumes that everyone who puts their (metaphorical) dirty laundry out in the open doesn't necessarily imply an absence of darker secrets available for blackmail. That might be true, but in this case the open parts didn't include "steals luggage and clothing for presumably nefarious purposes." Did the analysis include the risk of compromise by being paid off under the table in stolen women's luggage?

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