Congressional Interns
The New Republic gets this well-deserved rap, emenating from a spot in the stuffy confines of Washington belt-way think. Which somehow leads to articles about marital infidelity on Capitol Hill, Michelle Cottle’s “Second Wives Club”. And this paragraph, which in the next iteration of Schoolhouse Rock oughta be sang about.
“They dress just shy of hookers!” marvels one middle-aged Democratic Senate staffer, noting that staff assistants are just as bad. “You get these young women walking around with their belly buttons showing — in these short skirts. It’s the damnedest thing you’ve ever seen!” To be fair, no one has proved a direct correlation between the number of exposed navels and the frequency of marital crack-ups on Capitol Hill. Yet. But the spectacle of shlubby, graying lawmakers adrift in a sea of fawning, nubile “skinterns” is just the most garish example of your garden-variety congress member. Asked about the issue, longtime Washingtonians will spin you a tale both tragic and tawdry: The long hours; the constituent demands; the relentless fund-raising and campaigning; the sweet, pretty, young things who understand your troubles and want to make them all go away.
Something is off about this paragraph, probably limited to the first sentence. Does, say, Representative Darlene Hooley have that same problem? If the Congress-man thought woman “dressed just shy of hookers” was a problem, sincerely and really thought it was a problem, wouldn’t he have the discretion to implement a dress code of some sort?
As it were, Bill Clinton was impeached at this juncture. The most solid case that made sense for his impeachment, rarely said and seemingly not said (and here I mean by average citizens) simply due to a lack of confidence in the central argument because it comes around to “really, it is about the sex”: Can your boss get away with having a sexual relationship with you? Your college professor? And thus we can casually lay aside the points that Kennedy did Marilyn Monroe.
But then Larry Flynt hovered over the proceedings and knocked out two House Speakers. Final sentence in the New Republic article: To put it in Newt-speak, for every Marianne, there’s a possible Callista. And the juicy-faux tittilation of this relatively vapid article dissipates out of my head, so I can think the part of my brain that thinks about politics on Israel — Lebanon.