Oscar had reached the peak of his public reputation. Proof of this came when the President was asked about the sex scandal—and about Oscar’s role within the NSC. Here was the President’s main chance to drop him overboard and silently feed him to the swamp crabs; but the President chose otherwise. The President pointed out—properly enough—that a man couldn’t be expected to do anything about the fact that he was the illegal product of a South American mafia genetics lab. The President said that it smelled of hypocrisy to hold such a man to persnickety standards of sexual correctness—especially when other public figures had deliberately chosen to warp their own brain tissue. The President further declared that he himself was "a human being." And that, "as a human being," when he saw lovers persecuted, the spectacle "stuck in my craw."