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Doug Clark: Craig fund stimulates reader fun

Last week I plucked shamelessly at my readers’ heartstrings.

I asked all of you to dig deep into your sofa cushions and pull out a dime that you could mail me to benefit ex-Sen. Larry Craig’s ongoing courtroom commode woes.

The “Save Wide Stance Larry” fund was born.

Well, I’m proud to report that the lack of economic common sense out there is astounding.

No wonder the country is trillions in the hole.

Speaking of which, I argued that Craig’s 2007 quest for love in an airport men’s room had provided all of us with at least a dime’s worth of comedy.

Even so, I figured that nobody with access to a calculator or even the intellect of Dennis Rodman would waste 46 cents on a stamp in order to donate 10 cents on behalf of one of Idaho’s biggest bozos.

What a miscalculation.

After stumbling into work the other day, I checked out the bulge of letters in my mailbox and gasped.

It looked like the old pre-Internet days, when it took several postal workers just to haul my hate mail.

I opened one of the heavier envelopes to find a row of dimes taped to a typewritten page.

“Dear Doug,” wrote Coeur d’Alene’s Russell Dunning.

“I am sending you 6 dimes because I had six times the fun from Larry Craig over the years.

“… When I travel somewhere, someone always brings up Larry Craig or the skinheads in Idaho.”

Ah, life on the wild frontier.

If you’ve followed the Craig saga, you know that the Federal Election Commission took umbrage with Larry using $216,000 of his campaign funds to pay lawyers who failed to reverse the guilty plea Craig made after he rubbed tootsies with an undercover cop who was seated in the toilet stall next to him.

Craig claims he had every right to the money because he was conducting “official business” at the time of his lavatory love hunt.

And that, my friends, is living proof that reality is definitely screwier than fiction.

Anyway, a federal judge will soon decide whether or not Craig should’ve reached down around his ankles and paid the money out of his own pockets.

Either way, I thought it was time for us to pay it forward.

So did Kath’ren Bay and Alexis Higdon, who each contributed a dime.

“Living in Boise for decades, owning a successful and award-winning business and being a lesbian couple, we found Craig’s anti-gay ‘stance’ rather stunning in light of his bathroom proclivities,” they wrote.

“Over the years we have donated thousands of dollars to try to enlighten our political representative, to little avail. So, you ask if we received ten cents’ worth of joy?

“Well, yeah.”

See? That’s the spirit I was looking for.

Sure, we know Craig’s a toilet troller. But if you can’t consider the sheer cosmic folly of his predicament and summon up a belly laugh, I fear there’s something dead inside of you.

And now for our grand total:

The Save Wide Stance Larry fund has raised an unprecedented $2.90, which I will joyfully mail to the nearest Idaho Republican Party headquarters.

I’m also including two Canadian dimes that came in but weren’t counted due to confusion, like Larry.

True, $2.90 is not quite a Jerry Lewis telethon finale.

But considering Larry Craig is the recipient, I’m dubbing it a flaming success.

Not wanting to wind up on some Homeland Security watch list, I will NOT be forwarding the disturbing contents that I discovered inside an envelope from William Brock, of Pullman.

Several rubbery, condomlike thingies wriggled at me.

I screamed like a little girl.

Say what you will about emails, but they’re a whole lot more sanitary.

On a happier note, Jim Bayne, of Colbert, sent a dime with a request.

“While I am more than willing to contribute to this worthy cause, is there any way you could set up the ‘Wide Stance’ fund as a 501(c)3?

“I am on a fixed income, but still had to pay the IRS and could use another charitable deduction.”

What do I look like, Jim, the Red Cross?

And so we conclude our good deeds with a final contribution from John N. Luellason.

No, John didn’t send a dime. Or even a wooden nickel.

What he gave to the cause, however, is worth more than 10 rolls of dimes.

Luellason authored the following limerick for Larry…

Family values Senator Craig,

Hung his coat and his pants on a peg.

In a Twin Cities crapper,

He did a toe-tapper.

T’was a poor time for acute restless leg.

Like I said, you just can’t make this stuff up.

Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by email at dougc@spokesman.com.

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