Take My Wife, Please!

Sorry if we haven't mustered sufficient interest in the Jack and Jeri Ryan story so far: Jack comes across as a pill, and as for Jeri, well—if it hasn't got Kirk, it just ain't Star Trek.

It's an interesting story, the kind I'm always happy to see. While there is certainly something creepy in the kind of hard-sell approach Ryan allegedly put on his ex, I don't see three attempts at group sex as a disqualifier for the world's most exclusive club. I also disagree with Ol' Bill Saletan's definition of Ryan's damage control as Clintonian spin. He did make a seemingly straightforward denial of 7 of 9's charges in their divorce proceedings:

I did arrange romantic getaways for us, but that did not include the type of activities she describes. We did go to one avant garde nightclub in Paris which was more than either one of us felt comfortable with. We left and vowed never to return."

(I know it doesn't sound straightforward excerpted like that, but if you look at the original complaint, he does seem to be responding to her charge.)

You may argue that he's not telling the truth here. I've run the numbers and discovered that there is a 100 percent chance Ryan was lying in the above statement. But he did make an actual denial, so it's not really true to claim he's just weasel-wording his way out of it—pleasurable as it is seeing Republicans forced to use "Chacun ? son go?t" as a defense.

But come to think of it, baldfaced lies, and weasel words too, were part of the Clintonian spin effort. I give up. But I'm for sex. Go Ryan! Go sex! Go America!