Fifty Shades of the CIA?

Some days it looks like Barack Obama is just trolling the whole world. The same man who opposed ousting Saddam Hussein now will arm Islamist rebels in Syria. The same man who railed against Bush for wiretapping terrorists wiretapped all of us.

That same man has now nominated Avril Haines to the number two post in the Central Intelligence Agency. It’s an important job, one you’d think would require some intelligence or military background of some kind.

Haines has none of that. What she does have is experience reading sexy sexy books out loud.

20 years ago, Haines opened and co-owned Adrian’s Book Café in the Baltimore waterfront neighborhood of Fells Point. She opened Adrian’s after dropping out of a graduate program in physics at Johns Hopkins University. The store featured regular “Erotica Nights.” including dinner and a series of readings by guests of published work or their own prose, according to a 1995 report in the Baltimore Sun; couples could attend for $30, while singles paid $17.

“Erotica has become more prevalent because people are trying to have sex without having sex. Others are trying to find new fantasies to make their monogamous relationships more satisfying,” Haines, then in her 20s, told the Sun. “What the erotic offers is spontaneity, twists and turns. And it affects everyone.” (She also told Baltimore Sun reporter Mary Corey that friends heckled “you just want a mass orgy in your bookstore, while she and her co-owner were initially worried only “dirty old men” would show up.)

I’m not here to slam “Erotica Nights.” It’s not really my thing to sit around with a bunch of people in a book store listening to someone read much of anything. Whatever floats your boat. It’s just…Barack Obama doesn’t seem to take some of the most serious parts of his job very seriously at all.