The Elephant (Horse Penis) in the Room (Elevator)

You make one little comment about manually masturbating a prize racehorse, and everyone in the elevator acts like you're some kind of degenerate. Of course they are all in possession of the same set of knowledge re: the manner in which most high-stakes horse breeding is enacted, but we all play the appropriateness game at the office. Sexual harrassment laws notwithstanding, can I really be blamed if Barbaro's self-mutilating meltdown at the start of the Preakness was the weekend's biggest news? And, let's face it, the real moral/emotional calculus on the part of the horse's owners is not based primarily upon the horse's continued ability to trot and frolic, the summer breeze whipping through his full equine mane as the North Carolinian seafoam washes across his fully healed rear-right ankle. No, the only real question that remains is the efficacy of putting an extraordinarily valuable lame horse out to stud. And, as the animal's leg is now a mess of shattered bone and mangled dreams, Barbaro faces either a metaphorical (or is it still literal?) firing squad or a future of having eager veterinary students and/or experienced stable hands use their (presumably) gloved hands to unleash a spermatozoan stream of endless profitability into the veterinary equivalent of a giant Dixie cup. So roll your eyes all you want. Malign my choice of Monday-morning elevator banter if you must. By all means, affix a scarlet "M" upon my breast! But you know just as well as I do that today's biggest news story has everything to do with whether or not somebody is going to be able to effectively jerk off a broken racehorse.