G-String Ethics

AJC five-start print edition Saturday 5 March 2005: Jim Tharpe once again brings us some juicy quotes. In Senate vows to toughen ethics bill, Jim and byline-sharing Nancy Badertscher root out this exchange from GA House Minority Leader DuBose Porter and House Majority Leader Jerry Keen. Porter fires the opening salvo:

This thing has gone from a choir robe down to a G-string. What is covered needs to be covered. It just doesn't cover much.

Keen goes with the rope-a-dope, referring to Porter's meal at a lobbyist-funded bipartisan pork-out:

Let's look at what Mr Porter had to eat that night. Appetizer: broiled crab cakes. Entree: An 18-ounce New York strip steak. Dessert was Key lime pie. And there was a $39 bottle of wine on sitting on the table. Now Mr Porter: You're talking out of one side of your mouth and eating out of the other. If you keep doing that, that G-string's not going to fit.

According to the article, Porter said he was at the dinner, but there was no wine on his table and he didn't remember the crab cakes. I can only infer that this is politicospeak for that goddamn lying sumbitch! Porter closes:

It's typical of Republicans when they are in the wrong on the issue, they attack you personally.

I'm sure this tactic predates Republicans and Democrats both.