Jester Michael Stebick avoids jail time for role in prostitution scandal

Here's more television footage from Buffalo's WIVB on the Royal Order of Jesters scandal. This one is about former law clerk and prosecutor Michael Stebick's sentencing.

If you prefer to read the news story rather than view it, click here.



Masons | Masonic Scandal | Michael Stebick | Freemasonry | Royal Order of Jesters | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Second Jester pleads guilty in prostitution case

Micheal Stebick, former prosecutor for the Erie County, New York district attorney's office, former New York State Supreme Court law clerk, Freemason, Shriner and former Impressario of the Jesters Buffalo Court #18, has pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiring to violate the federal Mann Act after admitting to driving a prostitute from New York to Kentucky in a motor home so she could be "rented out" for sex to members of the Royal Order of Jesters at one of their weekend "meetings."

Stebick is the second Jester to enter into a plea agreement with federal prosecutors for Mann Act violations. Last March, retired police captain John Trowbridge pleaded guilty to one felony count of violating the Mann Act by transporting prostitutes to Jester parties in Kentucky and Pennsylvania.

Ronald Tills, the former New York Supreme Court judge, is also under investigation for violations of the Mann Act, but has not made any pleas or agreements with federal officials.

As part of his plea agreement, Stebick forfeited his motorhome which was used to take the prostitute to a Jester party in Kentucky.

This matter goes deeper than just some horny old guys taking a hooker to a party, according to Sandy Frost's article at Newsvine. Government documents show that Stebick, Trowbridge and (so far allegedly) Tills hired the prostitute from Len Wah Chong, owner of massage and acupressure businesses, who in April pleaded guilty to Sex Trafficking of Persons by Force, Fraud and Coercion. Chong allegedly used the businesses as fronts for prostitution and had up to 11 illegal alien women kept as "sex slaves."

I can hear the Masonic apologists' even now.

"The Shriners and/or Jesters do great things for 'the children,' and Widow's Son is painting the entire group with a broad brush based on the actions of a few 'bad apples.'"

The three "bad apples" could have had, and probably did have, their way with the woman in the motor home without transporting her from New York to the Jester party in Kentucky. They took her to Kentucky to service the sexual appetites of many "bad apples" waiting there. I'm sure those Jesters were just as anxious and then happy to see the guys with the girl arrive at their party as elderly blue lodgers are to see their young Junior Warden show up with a box of donuts before a meeting.

Image: A 2000 Challenger 335 MHA motorhome, similar to the one forfeited per Michael Stebick's plea agreement.

Masons | Shriners | Michael Stebick | Freemasonry | Grand Lodge of New York | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

NY Gov. Spitzer "involved with" prostitutes

I've learned more today about New York politicians that I ever meant to. While reading about former New York Supreme Court Justice Ronald H. Tills (see story below), Gov. Eliot Spitzer's announcement that he was "involved with" a high-dollar prostitution ring popped up on my radar screen.

I have no idea if the girl-loving governor is a Jester, but he was certainly trying to be funny when I saw him on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart a week or two ago.

There's no doubt he loves women. His wife has her own page on his official website.

And he's a superdelegate from New York who has promised to vote for New York Senator Hillary Clinton at the Democratic Convention this summer.

Recently, he issued a proclamation designating March "Women's History Month." In the proclamation he "honor[ed] the remarkable talents and creativity of American women...."

I bet the prostitutes from the Emperors Club [website taken down earlier today] he was "involved with" certainly do have "remarkable talents and creativity." They'd better, at the prices they're charging.

An hour with one of these women will set you back a minimum of $1,000, and that's just for the woman who is only rated "three-diamonds." To enjoy an hour's company with a Seven-Diamond woman costs $3,100 or more.

Dawn-to-dawn rates are from $10,000 to $31,000 per girl.

Occasional TV-pundit and law school professor (he taught Spitzer at Harvard) Alan Dershowitz defended Spitzer today by saying, "I feel terrible for Eliot and his family. But I feel that this was a story that we have to put in perspective. Big deal. Married man goes to prostitute. In Europe, this wouldn't even make the back pages of the newspaper.

"Men don't use their brains when it comes to something like this," he said. "They think with a different part of their body and that part of the body, the level of brains, there are no relationship to the level of brains in the skull, unfortunately. And when people think with that organ of the body, they make these kind of really, really terrible mistakes."

It's not "married man goes to prostitute" that's wrong here, Professor. It's the blatant hypocrisy of "married man who goes to prostitute made his living prosecuting prostitutes and their customers."

And it wasn't just the governor. Judge Tills allegedly did the same thing.

These men, and others like them, should remember they are public servants, answerable to the citizens, not aristocrats or royalty for whom we'll ignore or forgive their hypocritical indiscretions.

Prostitution | Eliot Spitzer | New York Governor | Emperors Club | Hypocrisy | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Preacher offended by Hooker Street's name

Say you're the minister of a tiny Lutheran church in a small town in a state few can even recall the capital of. How do you get your name not only in the local paper, but picked up by the news networks and have it published and broadcast all over the country?

For Rev. David J. Baer of Whitewood, South Dakota, the answer came to him as if a message from God.

Complain to the town council about the name of a street, and demand the name be changed.

"Hooker Street doesn't quite lend itself to a family atmosphere and is offensive to some residents in the town of about 800 people, according to Baer," news sites across the world proclaimed today.

The street was named for Gen. Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker, a Union general during the American Civil War.

Even changing the name to "General Joseph Hooker Street" wouldn't satisfy the reverend, the article says.

The article doesn't actually go into why the word "hooker" bothers Baer so much. Hooker, of course, is another word for prostitute.

Perhaps he fears the street will become a red light district, or maybe Baer just believes the myth that Gen. Hooker is the etymological source of the slang term hooker for prostitute. Dictionary.com dispels this story thusly:

In his Personal Memoirs Ulysses S. Grant described Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker as "a dangerous man... not subordinate to his superiors." Hooker had his faults. He may indeed have been insubordinate; he was undoubtedly an erratic leader. But "Fighting Joe" Hooker is often accused of one thing he certainly did not do: he did not give his name to prostitutes. According to a popular story, the men under Hooker's command during the Civil War were a particularly wild bunch, and would spend much of their time in brothels when on leave. For this reason, as the story goes, prostitutes came to be known as hookers. However attractive this theory may be, it cannot be true. The word hooker with the sense "prostitute" is already recorded before the Civil War. As early as 1845 it is found in North Carolina, as reported in Norman Ellsworth Eliason's Tarheel Talk; an Historical Study of the English Language in North Carolina to 1860, published in 1956. It also appears in the second edition of John Russell Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms, published in 1859, where it is defined as "a strumpet, a sailor's trull." Etymologically, it is most likely that hooker is simply "one who hooks." The term portrays a prostitute as a person who "hooks, or snares, clients."

While just 35 miles away in Rapid City, an 18-year old man is charged with brutally raping a 3-year old boy, Rev. David "Family Values" Baer is using his pulpit to demand the town protect its 800 residents from being offended by a man's last name. I think he's got his priorities a little, uh, screwed up. There are those who obviously could have used some ministerial services nearby.

What's next for Baer (whose own last name is both an anagram and a homonym — uh oh... homo!? — of "bare," which means "naked")?

Rumor has it the next windmill he tilts with will be the nearby state of Idaho, which is, as is so blatantly obvious as to offend even me, Ebonics for "I am a whore."

Image: The Red Light district in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Whitewood, South Dakota | Joseph Hooker | Rev. David J. Baer | Offensive | Christians | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com