Hey there, Shimmy… Blogging partner is back and has a few things to say about the innate drive that leads powerful men to send pictures of their junk across cyber space, between cell phone towers, and into the possession of complete strangers, desired women, and ultimately, TMZ.
With a solid history of sex scandals dogging the great leaders of our time: from Kennedy, to Clarence Thomas, to Clinton, to that guy trolling for hook-ups in the airport men’s room… we’ve all read plenty of in-depth articles linking infidelity to power and politics to cheating. We’ve got it. The charisma and drive that makes a good politician also happens to make a great womanizer. Many a founding father kept mistresses – philandering leaders are just as American as apple pie and baseball and sparklers on the 4th of July.
But this week while watching Weinergate play out, I’ve been pondering the repeated incidences of the virtual junk shot. What prompted Weiner to send pictures of his business to strangers via Twitter and Facebook? Has the gift of the junk shot always been a part of courting by powerful men or is this a recent phenomenon? After George Washington crossed the Delaware in the dead of winter and defeated the British in a surprise attack, I wonder if he ever took refuge from the bitter cold around a campfire while sitting nude for a tiny waste-down portrait that was then tied to the leg of a carrier pigeon and flown through battlefields, across rolling snow covered hills and into the window of a young lady that Washington had met the year before while in Boston for a revolutionary convention. I did a little investigating (read as: I googled ‘history of American leaders sending pictures of genitalia’), and my research suggests that this was not the case. At least it’s not documented on-line (until now).
History has historically been recorded from the viewpoint of those who told it. However, tabloid news and instant posts are products of the information age as we crowd source tomorrow’s history today. It’s naive to think that throughout the history of cheatin’ American leaders we’ve suddenly just come across a new cohort of perverts who fancy the image of their manhood (or bare pectorals) to the point that they want to share it with their constituents. I imagine that in yesteryear, these images were anonymous snapshots developed in the back room of some seedy photo-shop. They’re sitting in someone’s grandma’s shoebox of photos in between Uncle Pete’s 75th birthday and Little Billy’s graduation.
In some ways the virtual junk shot is a microcosm of the work that politicians (and let’s not forget sports heroes… Brett Favre) do: engaging with the public and building legacy. I’d like to propose that there are other ways for leaders to connect with the public and leave a lasting mark:
· Take a pottery workshop in your home district.
· Do something cool and get a street named after you.
· Host a picnic in the local park and carve your name in a picnic table with a pocketknife (you could even carve a junk self-portrait as long as no one is watching)
Just stop with the naked pictures on twitter, stupid.
That is all I have to say.
