Weiner’s Lesson for North Dakota Politicos

By Josh Boschee
Staff Writer

The news headlines this past week will give Jay Leno’s Headlines segment enough material for a good year. With Representative Anthony Weiner’s confession that he did have contact with several women, new information and photos trickled out each day. While the weeklong distraction kept the nation’s focus on Weiner’s, well um, penis, many elected officials used the opportunity to take notes on how not to get caught.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail saw an increase in the number of e-mail accounts deleted last week. Meanwhile, Verizon and Sprint made some extra cash due to the large number of phone number change requests.

Representative Chris Lee, another New York Congressman who was busted earlier this year for his own online affair, resigned immediately after a shirtless photo he sent to a woman on Craigslist was discovered. Representative Weiner at this point has refused to resign, and has taken a temporary leave of absence to seek treatment for an undisclosed disorder. While Weiner got caught with his pants down, he did eventually use the truth to start rebuilding his trust with his constituents, who to this point are supporting him according to a variety of polls. Lee on the other hand, had more to hide and resigned immediately to keep additional information from becoming public.

What the major networks didn’t mention, because the story had come to pass, was that Representative Lee had posted and replied to ads seeking sex with transgender women. Being a member of a political party that hasn’t been too kind to transgender people, I speculate that he knew the political and financial support from his fellow Republicans would be cut, not to mention what his conservative district constituents would think. Had Weiner been in the same situation as Lee, he would have resigned immediately, regardless of being a strong advocate for LGBT people and coming from a pretty progressive district. Right or wrong, Weiner’s truth is much more bearable, and almost acceptable, by the political establishment and his constituents. After all, he has had several other men pave the way for his indiscretions to almost be expected of any elected men in Congress or executive office.  Let’s not forget about Larry “Widestance” Craig, Bill “the Cigar” Clinton, John “Payoff” Ensign, and Eliot “Wiretap” Spitzer.

Closer to home, I don’t think our lawmakers are immune to the potential of their virtual identities coming to public scrutiny. While sexting and Craigslist have advanced the online hookup a great deal from the days of ICQ chat and Yahoo personals posting, people still seem to think that their online relationships won’t be discovered by a partner, a good investigative journalist or an enemy on a mission.

Whether they are openly heterosexual or a closeted homosexual, members of the North Dakota legislature and executive branch have their own extramarital secrets that will come to public light at some point or another. The advantage that these elected leaders have is that our conflict-adverse culture is so strong that those in the know don’t want to create conflict amongst their own party or between their opposition.

With this in mind, I will utilize the passive-aggressive communication style so many of us were raised with and offer these words of wisdom for our Bismarck power players:

::When sneaking away to lock lips with your mustached beau, whom you are not married to, I would advise that you do so in a building that your co-workers aren’t also hanging out in. You never know when someone may catch a good shot on their camera and accidentally post to Twitter or Facebook.

::When hooking up through Craigslist, don’t provide your personal phone number that is listed on your official web page for the general public to contact you at. It’s nice that you want to be accessible to your constituents, but it only takes a quick search on said phone number to discover that you are a part of the majority party in this state.

::When e-mailing from your official e-mail address, don’t include entire messages that elude to the fact that you may have experience compensating people for their naked time with you. Although you won’t have to pay taxes on them due to their independent contractor status, I don’t think most North Dakotans are ready to learn what actually happens on official state business trips.

I don’t think any of these examples fall under the abstinence curriculum that was proposed this last legislative session.

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