Mar 21, 2008

A scandal in the wind

By Malcolm Fleschner / Humor Columnist

Let me begin by apologizing in advance for this week's column, which the more prudish readers out there may find so salacious they simply have to read it over and over. The unfortunate fact is that, as a member of the media establishment, I am contractually obligated to dedicate a certain number of column inches to any major breaking sex scandal that involves a) a high-ranking government official; b) a prominent religious figure; c) a member of the British royal family; or d) a combination of all three (such as, say, Hillary Clinton being caught in bed with Prince Charles and the pope).

These rules also apply to important celebrity stories, such as whenever an A-lister gets arrested for drunken driving, checks into or busts out of rehab, or is photographed with the telltale evidence of a "baby bump." Like I said, important stories.

I don't make these rules. I just follow them to avoid getting in trouble, like a couple weeks ago when Maureen Dowd left me an irate, profanity-laced voice mail reminding me of my responsibility to cover the breaking story that Lindsay Lohan briefly exposed a nipple while leaving a Los Angeles nightclub. And to think I was foolishly planning on writing to warn readers that a looming liquidity crisis might cause Bear Stearns to go belly up!

Of course the big scandal from this past week involved New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who was forced to admit, after being caught in an FBI sting, that the letters of his name can be rearranged to spell "Prize Toilets." Also, and perhaps even more damning, "Peter's Zit Oil."

These factors, combined with revelations that the governor had been regularly patronizing high-priced prostitutes, forced Spitzer out of office. Naturally, he couldn't bow out quietly by announcing his resignation through a press release or in an informal text message to supporters ("Sry bout hkrs ;) lol - NY Guv rsgng cul8r!").

No, instead we all were subjected to the familiar spectacle of an elected official calling a press conference to explain that he had failed to live up to the moral standards he had foolishly set much too high for himself.

Like most Americans, I found the whole episode a little boring. Honestly, haven't we seen all this before - the stone-faced politician, the dutiful wife frowning at his side, the vague references to "mistakes" and "poor judgment"? Sure, we were all entertained back in 1984 when Gary Hart pioneered the practice after being caught engaging in a little extramarital hanky-panky aboard a boat called the "Monkey Business," (or was it monkey business aboard a boat called the "Hanky-Panky?"). But today's voters expect something more, especially after former New Jersey governor James McGreevey and Idaho senator Larry Craig upped the ante by adding a gay angle into the mix.

Frankly, the disgraced politician resignation press conference is in desperate need of a rewrite. Luckily enough, I have come up with a few ideas to inject a little more entertainment value into the otherwise predictable proceedings:

1. Role reversal
If commentators on the Spitzer matter agree on anything, it's that a philandering politician's dumbstruck wife should not have to stand silently beside her husband at a press conference while the bright lights and waves of humiliation wash over her (I couldn't agree more). Instead, the cheating husband should be forced to keep quiet as his wife steps up to the podium and explains, riding crop in hand, precisely what the jerk has done and with whom, and how she plans to exact her retribution.

2. Let the voters decide
America boasts a proud democratic tradition of letting voters decide the nation's most important issues that dates all the way back to the first season of "American Idol." It's time we brought Idol-like excitement and citizen participation to these depressing press conferences by allowing viewers to choose whether the disgraced pol should resign. Voters will, naturally, be assisted by the presence of judges Randy Jackson ("Your apology was a little pitchy, dog"), Paula Abdul ("We've seen that you can be guided by other body parts - now you showed you can be guided by your heart too") and, of course, Simon ("That was dreadful. I would expect a better resignation speech from a county sewer commissioner.")

3. Right of succession
If, based on the nation's measured judgment, an overly libidinous elected official is voted out of office, the law needs to be changed to stipulate that the remainder of his term should be served out by the prostitute, stripper, intern or herd of goats involved.

There's little question that these changes would elevate the entire sex scandal franchise to a new level while permanently focusing the attention of a whole new generation of voters on the political process. Or at least until the next big starlet's nipple slip.


E-mail Malcolm Fleschner with your own reality show-based suggestions for spicing up humdrum political resignation speeches at Malcolm@CultureShlock.com.