Oscar Corral: Rescuer of Lost Souls

19th-century British prime minister, William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), whom Queen Victoria hated, well, because he was too Victorian, was in the habit of going out late at night to "rescue fallen women." There is no evidence that he laid a finger on any of them. There is no record that he ever laid a finger on any woman. His contact with them was limited to rescuing them, and then going home, alone, and masturbating, which events he noted in his Diaries with an "X."

Nor was Lord Gladstone the only Victorian to engage in such "works of reclamation." General Charles Gordon (1833-1886) would prowl the streets at night looking for waifs and take them home with him, bathe them personally — remember, the Victorians invented the Biblical quote "Cleanliness is next to godliness" — give them new clothes in the morning and send them off to become Horatio Alger success stories. As a matter of fact, the Rev. Horatio Alger (1832-1899) also did the same thing in America. The Victorians were great humanitarians and also great experts at having their cake and eating it too. If Freud had never been born, mankind would still hail their "good works."

Since, obviously, The Miami Herald editors are not going to cover Corral's ass by claiming that he was doing an investigative report for them into prostitution in the area, his only other option is to claim that he was on a humanitarian mission there, following Gladstone's footsteps in his Acura, assisting a "fallen woman" (or, in his case, a teenager) with a donation of $50.00 to buy food and lodgings for the night, so that he could pray into the wee hours for her redemption while the fallen woman related to him the story of her corruption. There is even a Victorian word for that: "unbosoming" yourself.

In case the story sounds familiar to you, there is a modern precedent: this is what televangelist the Rev. Jimmy Swaggert claimed 20 years ago he did with prostitutes, too. He kind of got away with it; anyways, his ministry, much reduced, is still around. Maybe that will be Oscar Corral's fate, too — to stick around, but as a reporter for a weekly shopper.