Ex-strip club PR guy in Dallas urges America to make an example of Donald Trump

Donald Trump needs to be "repudiated," Dallas strip club PR guy says
(Image credit: Peter Kramer/Getty Images)

Michael Precker won't judge you if you frequent "gentlemen's clubs" — "the S-word sounds too harsh," he wrote in The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday. Strip clubs, he said, are an "antidote" to and "comforting refuge in a politically correct world." Precker once did public relations for a Dallas strip club, and he still sees the appeal: "No matter how insensitive, boorish, or physically repulsive you may be, an attractive woman will smile at you, laugh at your jokes, bolster your ego."

But the behavior Donald Trump described on the Access Hollywood bus, and is accused of actually doing by at least 11 women, is "assault," plain and simple, Precker said. "As loyalists of the S-word scene will tell you, such ungentlemanly behavior might get you tossed into the alley." Trump has never made a secret that "his strip club attitude and his strip club actions had no boundaries," and "sadly, he's exactly right when he says that rich and famous people can say and do whatever they want to women, anytime, anywhere, and usually get away with it," Precker writes, but there's an opportunity here:

This hardly started with Trump, of course. Take your pick of rock stars and athletes, spoiled rich kids and old tycoons, politicians and people wielding power of any kind. Trump apologists will keep invoking Bill Clinton until they're hoarse (why don't they add John Kennedy more often?), and it's hard to argue the point. But no matter how many men have shared this philosophy, Trump is their poster boy. He's the one caught on tape. Will he take the fall for them all? That, to invoke a couple of his favorite adjectives, would be huge. And beautiful. Because repudiating Trump and Trump's behavior would go a long way to send this message: Do whatever you like inside the club, as long as all the parties involved are agreeable. But once you go through the doors and you're back outside, it's a whole different world. [The Dallas Morning News]

You can read Precker's entire op-ed at The Dallas Morning News.

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Peter Weber

Peter Weber is a senior editor at TheWeek.com, and has handled the editorial night shift since the website launched in 2008. A graduate of Northwestern University, Peter has worked at Facts on File and The New York Times Magazine. He speaks Spanish and Italian and plays bass and rhythm cello in an Austin rock band. Follow him on Twitter.