A while back, I sent a local newspaper a short letter commenting on the views one of its columnists expressed regarding the case of Justice Lori Douglas, the Manitoba family court judge much in the news of late because of stories that claim she posed nude for photos in ways that left little to the imagination and that a montage of such photographs were later posted online in 2002-03 on a porn website by her husband and then legal partner at a prestigious Winnipeg law firm.
I took the view that the revelations had sullied her reputation and seriously compromised her ability to continue working as a judge. I emailed the writer of the piece a copy of my letter, and within a day got a reply. To which I immediately responded by inserting a few comments into his text.
He said: “I'm sorry to say I don't think you are even close to being right.
“Judges don't enforce morality - that's the job of the Taliban and priests who can keep their pants zipped. Judges enforce the law, which only reflects morality in a general sense. Judges are technicians, and like any technician, their personal life has nothing to do with their skill at the job. If the world's best cancer surgeon smokes, I'm not going to stop him from operating on me.”
I said: Forget smoking! If the surgeon had BORN TO LOSE tattooed on his knuckles, you might have second thoughts -- despite his sterling reputation. Judges in Manitoba are appointed, not elected, and have their salaries paid for out of the public purse, are expected to maintain a sense of decorum and uphold community standards and otherwise avoid bringing "the Law" into disrepute by their conduct both in and out of court.
He said: “From what I understand, Justice Douglas is known as a fine judge in the performance of her duties - fair, hardworking and wise in applying the law to those who come before her court. That is all we can expect of any judge, and what they do when off duty - as long as it is legal - is no concern of mine.”
I said: Not all taxpayers are as live-and-let-live as you. Some, however hard they'll try not to, will nonetheless feel queasy appearing before a judge who does creative things with sex toys in her spare time and shares the experience with others via graphic images posted on a porn website with a membership list.
He said: “I also think you haven't read the story closely enough. It appears the mover behind the photos and website posting was her husband, and she may have not been the mover in the subsequent events. I think she deserves more sympathy than judgment, although there will never be any shortage of people with less than perfect personal lives themselves ready to pass judgment. There's that whole ‘mote in the eye’ thing.”
I said: I wondered if the judicial record shows the family court judge making statements that project the wholesome persona of a soccer mom defending old traditional family values, with Eliot Spitzer as the example of an official whose public persona didn't square with his private conduct. I posed a question about there being a possible parallel between the 1st case and the 2nd case in Winnipeg.
I added: Pornography's dynamic comes from projecting images of power arrangements, which for this judge and her husband evidently included an inter-racial component which to me seemed to have fed on a historical narrative of white privilege during colonial times.
He said: “As for you (sic) comments on colonialism and racism... Umm, okay. All I'll say is it's an interesting reading into the story. While were (sic) at it, let's also say it promotes cruelty to animals due to the leather....”
Reading Aristotle, novelist Joyce Carol Oates wondered when he wrote that “Man is a political animal,” whether the key word there was “political” or “animal.” Similarly, when I read of Justice Douglas posing with a sex toy, of the two words, it was “toy” rather than “sex” that grabbed my attention.
Toy is a word we associate with childhood and childish things; they are meant for fun and play; we give babies toys so they can keep themselves amused. I pictured the lawyerly couple in Manitoba as the sort of people who put on party hats during a New Year’s Eve bash and toot party horns at midnight.
“The caprices of adult children,” I thought, the phrase the Vatican employed through its mouthpiece the Osservatore Romano back in 1963 to rebuke actors Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton who were carrying on an in-your-face adulterous affair in Rome on the set of Cleopatra. A torrid romance that was a boon to the image-hungry paparazzi and the scandal-friendly tabloid press.
Across Britain that year, the caprices of adult children were very much the fodder for its own tabloid press. The News of the World made of the Profumo Affair a kind of X-rated Coronation Street of the raunchy upper classes. Its cast of characters was compelling.
The procurer of sexual provender -- nubile teenage girls -- for the power elites was an osteopath named Dr. Stephen Ward, who the judge during his trial for “living off the avails of prostitution” called “the sort of man that would allow his servants to read Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” There was John Profumo, Harold Macmillan’s Minister of War, whose great political sin was to lie to Parliament about his liaison with Christine Keeler, one of the two nubile teens.
Other randy players included Eugene Ivanov, a Soviet diplomat; Lucky Gordon, a Jamaican dope dealer; Mandy Rice-Davies, a very worldly 16-year-old, whose lovers, Lord Astor and Peter Rachman, the notorious London slum landlord, were already household names.
The caprices of adult children was a theme explored in its literal sense in a 40-year-old film entitled Loving. A quick synopsis:
George Segal plays the harried commercial artist Brooks Wilson, a married man with two children and a girlfriend on the side; she is pressing him to abandon his family and commit to her.
The climax of the film occurs at a party held in a grand Connecticut home to which Brooks and wife Selma are invited. There our hero encounters Grace, his girlfriend, who, none too pleased that he has not yet quit his marriage for her, gives him the cold shoulder. Overstressed and despairing, Brooks proceeds to get drunk as a skunk.
After seeking solace in drink, Brooks turns to the embrace of the equally liquored-up wife of his associate, Will. He and his lascivious companion steal outside and end up inside a children’s playhouse. Spurred on by lust and maudlin melodies of a children’s play song, the two of them climb into a playpen and begin to get it on.
The scene then returns to the living room inside the sprawling and opulent mansion. A guest on a sofa is seen playing with a remote to a CCTV security system; every part of the mansion has been wired for sight and sound; we know this because the host of the party, a fabulously wealthy business tycoon, previously boasted to his guests of the comprehensive nature of the security system. It is at this point the movie-watcher begins to experience one of the best OMG moments he’ll ever have.
A trifle bored, a party-goer flicks the remote to bring up room to room shots, images of which are projected on to a big screen TV. We glimpse empty rooms, and rooms crowded with party-goers. And then we catch the saturnalia in the playpen in the children’s playhouse. Brooks and his newfound lover’s latherings are beamed into the living room. At first, few of the guests take notice, but a round of nudge-nudge and wink-wink draws a lot bigger crowd. Within minutes, the living room is abuzz with good-natured laughter and commentary from an appreciative audience, all watching “the live show” on the monitor. It includes Will and Selma, still unaware who the amorous couple actually are. By now Brooks has peeled off his trousers and is down to his long-johns.
Will and Selma make the painful discovery simultaneously. She, of course, is mortified, while Will explodes with boiling anger. A huge commotion ensues, and Will and Brooks need to be pushed apart.
The final scene in the film is as bleak as any Samuel Beckett ever crafted. We see Brooks still in his long-johns reeling with drunken confusion against a late-night wintry landscape, struggling to stay upright, while Selma repeatedly clobbers him with her handbag as gusts of fury overwhelm her.
As I say, Loving came out 40 years ago; the same year that Saul Bellow’s novel Mr. Sammler’s Planet was published. Bellow’s hero, Artur Sammler, you may recall, was stricken by his awareness of a “sexual madness” that was sweeping the world. What would ol’ Mr. Sammler make of a worldwide “sexual madness” grown by several orders of magnitude thanks to the global reach made possible by new media, I wonder?
Surely, Vatican insiders must wax nostalgic for bygone days when they wielded the kind of moral authority that rattles the steel nerves of studio bosses at 20th Century Fox just by deploring the antics of some movie stars it had on the payroll.
A fig leaf, anyone?
Orest Slepokura is a retired schoolteacher, after 30-odd years spent teaching, much of that in Alberta; but also in and around Montreal, as well as in a Native community on James Bay, over in London, England, and Toulon, France. A lifelong reader, Orest continues using much of my time reading books, journals, and newspapers.
