Take note, bathroom trolls: Though the "wide stance" defense has now been mocked out of viability, an alternative for explaining away your restroom run-ins with the cops comes courtesy of Rudy Giuliani's father.
Yesterday's Washington Post profile of Giuliani includes an odd anecdote which begins with Hizzoner's late pops Harold summoning a trusted friend to his home in 1961 and confessing to a scrape with the law. No stranger to getting hassled by the fuzz—he'd previously spent 18 months in jail after robbing (and de-pantsing ) a milkman on Manhattan's Upper East Side—this was a little different; he'd been arrested for loitering in a public restroom for "immoral purposes." With a 17-year-old Rudy standing at his side "like a sentry," Harold explained to his friend that he simply suffered from chronic constipation and that the cops had happened upon him in the midst of some pre-bombing preparations: "He had been doing deep knee bends to loosen his bowels."
Made perfect sense, apparently, to the authorities who ended up dropping the case. The upshot of the tale, the Post notes, is that it perfectly captures the essence of a man who really, really values loyalty. Except for when he wants to screw chicks he's not married to.