In an apparent attempt to meld the devil-may-care lifestyle of Sen. David Vitter with the insouciant vagabondery of Sen. Larry Craig, it seems that St. Bernard Parish councilman Joey DiFatta has been tappin' a toe or two in the restrooms at Lakeside Mall just outside New Orleans. And he's been detained by the police for doing so not once, but twice.
Christine Harvey's story in tomorrow's Times-Picayune is a thorough accounting of delightful delovely DiFatta's various scrapes with the gendarmerie (including PDFs of the police reports), and surely it can't be a coincidence that the career pol announced today that he was dropping his bid for the Louisiana state senate -- like, now, man.
Kenner police issued a misdemeanor summons to DiFatta in September 1996 in connection with a peeping Tom incident in a men's bathroom at the former Mervyn's department store at The Esplanade mall, according to a Kenner Police Department incident report obtained by The Times-Picayune.
The report states that DiFatta watched a man use the bathroom while peering through a hole in a bathroom stall. The man held DiFatta until police arrived, at which time he was issued the misdemeanor summons and ordered to appear in court.
Oh, Joey. Maison Blanche -- well, the public could forgive. Dillard's -- maybe. But Mervyn's??
But hold! As his spiritual mentor, Sen. Larry Craig, stated: it was all a big mistake, says Mr. DiFatta. And so was the second time!
In the second incident, Jefferson Parish deputies working an undercover detail in a men's bathroom at Dillard's at Lakeside Shopping Center in March 2000 stopped DiFatta after he indicated a desire to engage in sex with an undercover deputy in an adjoining bathroom stall, according to an interoffice memorandum written by Sgt. Keith Conley, one of the deputies involved in the investigation.
The report said DiFatta slid his foot into the deputy's stall and tapped the deputy's foot. In the report, Conley noted that such activity is common among men to indicate a willingness to participate in sex.
The deputy inside the stall, Detective Wayne Couvillion, responded by tapping his foot, and DiFatta reached under the partition and began to rub the deputy's leg, the report states.
The detective asked DiFatta, "What do you want?" according to the report, and he replied, "I want to play with you."
The detective did not want to play with Mr. DiFatta, and you can guess the rest of the story. (Not included in Ms. Harvey's story is this detail from the second police report: "It should be noted that DiFatta was well-familiar and comfortable with the routine and body language involved in this type of activity and did express that he has done this a lot.")
But hold once more! DiFatta is full of explanations, and has crafted a unique one to explain his hasty departure from the political hurlyburly:
DiFatta also noted that the stress from enduring Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath might have gotten the best of him.
The ongoing stress of Hurricane Katrina didn't prevent him from putting up a handsome campaign website, though it may explain why the damn fool hasn't taken it down yet. It's an instructive, but sadly predictable, profile of a very sad man, and many of the particulars will probably seem familiar in this day of toe-tappers and Washington madams. I won't go into his his marital status or his family-values platform (these days, that would be redundantamento), but it didn't take long to come across this nugget:
THE JOEY DIFATTA PLAN FOR LOUISIANA
Create the nation’s strongest Code of Government Ethics to fight political corruption and send a signal to the country that Louisiana will be a different state starting in 2008
Defend our conservative values from attacks by extreme liberal groups
And now, it seems, Mr. DiFatta's plan is...all...tapped...out.
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