Not as puritanical as Old Europe likes to imagine
In the current New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg gets in a nice jab at the pompous German weekly, Die Zeit: "For a country that Europeans like to patronize as hopelessly prissy (they think we're 'inhibited, puritanical, and immature,' Die Zeit reported last week), our ex-colonial republic has a talent for turning out politicians with exciting sex lives." In his article, Falling, Hertzberg writes about the Eliot Spitzer kamikaze affair. "You don't do it to be, ah, the most approval-rated governor of New York, for fuck's sake," says Hitchens in the Village Voice. And check out this related WaPo report: "Detective Steven Schwalm of the D.C. police department's prostitution enforcement unit said some call girls charge $10,000 for an evening that lasts three or four hours — and $250,000 for a weekend getaway..." We'd like to know more, but High-Priced Call Girls' Lips Are Sealed. Clever.
Anyway, exit Governor Spitzer in disgrace; enter David Paterson, "legally blind", African American and a beacon of hope for the scandal-shocked Empire State. But he's barely in the door of New York's gubernatorial mansion when he tells the Daily News that he and his wife had, well, you know... "In a stunning revelation, both Paterson, 53, and his wife, Michelle, 46, acknowledged in a joint interview they each had intimate relationships with others during a rocky period in their marriage several years ago." Inhibited? Puritanical? Not!
While the guests at the new governor's reception were reeling from the impact of this disclosure, across the wires came the dramatic news that former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey said he and his wife and a male aide had engaged in sexual threesomes. Inhibited? Puritanical? Not!!!
So, the ball is firmly back in Old Europe's court, and what have we got to offer? A lumpy Prodi, a plumpy Merkel, a dumpy Brown, a frumpy Zapatero, a neuter Ahern... The exception is, of course, Sarkozy, but his recent predecessors in the Élysée Palace (Chirac, Mitterand) were notorious philanderers so he's got a French tradition to uphold. Things might pick up this summer, though, if this famous swordsman becomes Mayor of London in May. Die Zeit, on the other hand, will have to look far beyond the Rhine for prurient titillation should this character become Chancellor of Germany next year. Inhibited, puritanical and immature. Who?
Comments
"For a country that Europeans like to patronize as hopelessly prissy (they think we're 'inhibited, puritanical, and immature,' Die Zeit reported last week), our ex-colonial republic has a talent for turning out politicians with exciting sex lives."
No contradiction here, of course, because of the hypocrisy of those who preach water, but drink wine secretly. The US (some politicians) is prissy at the surface, and at times the opposite in secret (the same was true here for Seehofer). Aye, there lies the rub.
As to Sarko, his life is a hilarious soap opera, however you cannot really take him seriously - apart from selling nuclear facilities like cake factories, I don't see he achieved anything of substance.
Posted by: hans ze beeman | March 20, 2008 11:49 AM