The big news this week in Portland, the City That Doesn’t Work, is that Portland’s new mayor, Sam Adams (the first openly gay mayor of a big American city), really did have an affair with an intern when he was on the city council. He now claims that the intern came onto him and he was noble enough to at least wait until the intern turned 18. Nothing wrong with that, is there?
For those of you just tuning in, allegations of this affair were raised by one of Adams’ opponents in the mayoral campaign. Adams lied about the affair, smeared the other candidate (who is also gay), and forced him to drop out.
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Three weeks after becoming mayor, a story in the Willamette Week — the same newspaper that exposed the infamous Goldschmidt scandal — forced Adams to confess. Of course, Adams has apologized to the people of Portland (though not, curiously, to the politician he smeared). The Oregonian, among others, has called for Adams to resign, but he will probably try to tough it out. Stay tuned to Bojack for the latest on the story.
Meanwhile, Metro — Portland’s planning czar — has announced that, as a part of its “economic stimulus” plan, it is going to encourage the federal government to make every other city do what it has done: create congestion and drive up housing prices by drawing urban-growth boundaries and imposing high costs on businesses throughout the region. Because, after all, spending money that doesn’t do anything will be so much more stimulating than actually doing something like helping people “commute from Point A to Point B.” As everyone knows, helping people get to work faster will only encourage them to work more, which will somehow make cities less livable.
Excuse me for a second, I have to check the web address here. Nope, not the National Enquirer…
Sam Adam is the leading advocate of Smart growth, street cars and light rail in Portland. His top priorities were streetcars and fast tracking the extension of the existing line, light rail to Milwaukie and rebuilding Portland to higher densities using Smart Growth policies.
This will slow down the process that he had planned to fast track under the guise of rebuilding the economy.
Golly, lemme guess:
Ideologues will use this to try and demonize the things they don’t like…oh, wait: forgot the scare quotes. “Ideologues”.
Yup, happening already.
Weak.
DS
I heard about the “scandal” in the news this morning. Definitely appalling but politics as usual…. just that it made national news since it involves a gay man. So it goes.
You’re right, prk166: the REAL victim here is the new mayor, not the Portlanders who were lied to.
We will never truly achieve equality until we can live in a society where our politicians can freely publicly engage in deviant promiscuity without fear of being judged.
Sadly, we will just have to endure the dark night of public scrutiny for now. So it goes.
prk166 wrote:
> I heard about the “scandal†in the news this morning. Definitely appalling but politics as usual….
> just that it made national news since it involves a gay man. So it goes.
I beg to differ.
I don’t give a damn about the sexual preferences of anyone (including Adams).
What he does behind closed doors with consenting adults is his business, not mine and not yours.
But one could infer from the story cited that his sexual activities in this case may (may) have involved a minor – and it appears that Adams lied about his involvement with Mr. Breedlove, the other person involved in this relationship.
And apparently tried to cover it all up (why?).
Those are the facts that make this relevant.
And that Adams was a high-ranking public official who was running for Mayor, and in the process, may have smeared another candidate (ever heard of Lee Atwater?).
Note to all – if you want to keep your sexual relationships private, then it’s probably not a good idea to run for elective office.
“Note to all – if you want to keep your sexual relationships private, then it’s probably not a good idea to run for elective office.”
While it may be a true statement, it does not justify people prying their eyes into people’s personal affairs. There needs to be some restraint by the public and especially the media in regards to personal relationships.
It probably wasn’t too long ago that someone’s character would be questioned if they had a relationship with a black person. What if a mayor, say 40 years ago, lied about having a relationship with a black woman in order to cover up character assassinations? Is this right or wrong?
t g Says:
Excuse me for a second, I have to check the web address here. Nope, not the National Enquirer…
THWM: There is much of difference, they’re both mostly fiction.
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