Let me try to explain this in terms Bill Clinton could appreciate. Imagine you’re the kind of guy who spends lots of time looking at, I don’t know, Canadian S&M porn on the Internet.
(What’s special about Canadian S&M porn, you ask? Frankly I don’t know. But I imagine it’s really polite, involving a lot of maple syrup, and whip-wielding women saying “eh” in the dirtiest ways imaginable.)
Now imagine your wife suspects you’re up to no good, but has no proof. Just vague suspicions derived from all the time you spend at Tim Hortons and the way you linger over your poutine. She wants to search your computer.
You could let her search your computer, knowing full well that you’ve scrubbed everything incriminating off of it.
But the best way to maximize your leverage, to make her feel like she’s in the wrong, is to first make a huge stink about the invasion of privacy, about how unfair she is being, how hurt you are that she doesn’t trust you etc. Invoke principles, act indignant, draw out the drama. And, then, with much theatricality, relent to the search. “Fine! You want to look, go ahead and look!”
That way, when she finds nothing, you get to really rub it in like an Ottawan dominatrix with a pint of Aunt Jemima.
-Jonah Goldberg
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