I Just Want to Buy Groceries, Dammit

So I'm checking out at the Safeway. I've swiped my Safeway Club card and the cashier is ringing things up. I swipe my credit card, and the display asks me if I want to make a donation to fight prostate cancer.

I hit "No." Ten seconds later, the cashier asks me if I'd like to make a donation to fight prostate cancer. "Not today, thanks," I reply, and cleave her skull in twain with the meat cleaver I got free for buying $25 worth of premium Angus beef today. Yeah, I know, she has to ask, it's part of her job, and she probably hates it as much as I do, but still.

Yes, I hate prostate cancer. And breast cancer. And homelessness. And the fact that some people can't afford to pay their utility bills. That's why Cunegonde and I make charitable contributions to the Salvation Army and other charities and at least two churches (Cunegonde writes out checks to both a Southern Baptist church and a Unitarian one, which always makes me smile). And on April 15, we add them up and put them on our tax return, and get a tax deduction so the federal deficit increases by a few bucks. And we don't have to scrounge up a bunch of Safeway receipts that show we donated a dollar to end world hunger - if the receipts even show the donation.

We Need A Twelve-Step Program For Jerkaholism

So this week, we're treated to the spectacle of yet another public figure getting caught with his pants down, so to speak. And the morning news-lite shows are full of "experts" saying he needs to get into some kind of celebrity rehab so he can come out and proclaim himself all scrubbed and clean and ready to run for mayor of New York, or get a CNN talk show, or resume his acting career or return to the PGA tour.

Does this strike anyone else as being some kind of publicity racket? Once upon a time, you went into rehab for a busted-up knee, or for drug addiction or alcoholism, with varying rates of success. But sex-addiction rehab?

Does anyone seriously believe this so-called "sex addiction" nonsense? Are we to believe that these rich and powerful celebrities are in the thrall of an uncontrollable sex drive, which they are powerless to do anything about? Has anyone ever suggested that Benjamin Franklin was a sex addict? How about John F. Kennedy? They can control everything else about their lives - and often want to control our lives as well - but they're completely unable to keep their hotrods in their pants?

Please. Just once, I'd like to hear one of these clowns say, "Dammit, I totally screwed up. I knew exactly what I was doing, and I thought I could get away with it. I could have stopped any time I wanted to; I just didn't want to, and, up to now, didn't need to. Now I need to, and that's going to be the end of it. I don't need to see some famous therapist to figure out why I was doing this - I know why. And I don't need a therapist to tell me what I need to do - I know what I need to do. I am not powerless over sex; I can straighten out my own life - all I need to do is stop having sexual relations with people who aren't my wife."