The Bigger They Are
The Mother of All Sex Scandals brought down a government. The UK’s Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, didn’t know what he had wrought when he fell for a beautiful call girl named Christine Keeler. He was married to a film star and in a High Society family, but his brief affair rocked the halls of power and ended the reign of the administration in 1963. It wasn’t just sex that did it, but the revelation that Keeler had also been seeing a naval attaché and reported KGB agent at the Soviet Embassy – this was the height of the Cold War and Hot Passion – and the affair ruined the reputation of Prime Minister Harold MacMillan’s government and he resigned in a few months, citing ill health, although he probably didn’t feel as bad as did Profumo. This also opened the door to more damaging coverage of sex and politicians and today they’re all fair game, even if many of them manage to survive in a Paris Hilton-era when sex on the Internet isn’t something shameful, but boastful.
Love Potion Number 9
Why does it always seem that it’s the politicians who are the most zealous about prosecuting other people’s sex lives who find themselves hoist with their own petard? That’s petard. New York’s crusading Democratic governor, Eliot Spitzer got caught in a big-bucks prostitution sting and even his smug, smarmy attitude couldn’t save him this time. He had been known by his servicers as Client Nine, although 69 would have been more apt. He quit in March of 2008 after it was revealed he had been regularly forking out $1,000 to $5,500 per hour for having the kind of sex he liked to jail other people for.
France keeps a secret
After her father’s death the long-hidden love child of former French President François Mitterrand, Mazarine Pingeot, told all in a book about her childhood, in which she said she could never call him “Papa,” and had to hide in a car as she visited him in the presidential Elysee Palace. Mitterrand lived a double life, setting up a home with his mistress in central Paris and it was reported he even ordered the wire-tapping of French personalities to keep her a secret, but it finally broke at the end his presidency.
Papandreou and the stewardess
Former Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou didn’t even hide the fact he had a lover, an airline stewardess, even though it shamed his elegant American wife, Margaret, who had the dignity to rise above it, even as the Greek press had a field day with jokes about his philandering. Even the late actress Melina Mercouri couldn’t resist when she said, “Greeks have infidelity in their blood.” He had been married for 37 years and had four children but the stewardess won him and he stayed in office, but his bad behavior and worst taste tainted him for good after that.
A really big raise
Paul Wolfowitz was the head of the World Bank but that didn’t save him in 2007 when it was reported that he had broken the bank’s rules by helping his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, win a promotion and a huge pay raise for working under him, so to speak, of course. She got a $60,000 bump in pay and he got the door, forced to resign after trying to tough it out. His resignation delighted his European Union foes, who didn’t like him, and they knew that Americans were less forgiving of improper sexual behavior than Europeans, who could get elected to office on that alone. Wolfowitz quit, but only after insisting that he had acted ethically and in good faith. Don’t they all? And isn’t unfaithful usually the word that comes to mind in most political scandals. Europeans wanted his scalp because he was a mastermind behind the war in Iraq, the one they didn’t want to fight, proving the French axiom that they are lovers and not fighters.
The old college try
Jeremy Thorpe was an Eton and Oxford graduate and became leader of the British liberal party in 1967, at just 38 years old. But two years later, a man named Norman Scott made claims that they had been lovers, at a time when homosexuality was illegal in the United Kingdom and in 1974, Scott claimed a hit man had been hired to kill him. In 1979, Thorpe was tried for conspiracy to murder. He was acquitted, but the damage was done and his career was cooked.
No Nazis were involved
Formula One President Max Mosley gets both the Moxie and Chutzpah Awards for not only trying to hide the fact he liked a good S & M romp, but sued a newspaper in the UK which said he did, and won, because they said – wrongly and libelously a court ruled – that it was Nazi-themed, which struck a particular nerve with him because his father, Oswald, was a founder of the British Union of Fascists and imprisoned by the British during World War II, so he objected to the report that he was shown in a video whipping five women dressed in WWII concentration camp outfights while shouting at them in German and then took a whipping himself until he bled. Mosley said he was no whipping boy and the court agreed, proving that that if you can beat them in more ways than one.
Another stewardess, more sex
Vaclav Klaus began his second term in March of 2008 and almost immediately it was reported that he’d had an affair with a young flight attendant. He said it would be hard to explain to his wife, especially since he’d done it before, with a young blonde stewardess in 1991 and then in 2002 with a 24-year-old who worked on his official aircraft, and not as a mechanic. The reaction in the Czech Republic? They were proud of his virility, so maybe this isn’t a scandal after all, and Klaus has been devoting his time these days to blocking the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, which he doesn’t like as much as he does stewardesses and young women.
La Dolce Vita
Ah, the sweet life. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has never hidden the fact he likes the company of sweet, young nubiles, although he said he likes to watch but not touch. He never seemed to be damaged by his predilections until recently, getting away with dismissing stories about his lifestyle with the casual “I’m no saint,” perhaps not a good choice of words for someone whose office is so close to the Vatican. But now he’s hanging on the hair of his chinny-chin-chin after revelations that dozens of young women, preferably around 18, were paid to attend parties at his official residence and one girl claimed Berlusconi offered her a seat at the European parliament. His wife began divorce proceedings, stating: “I cannot stay with a man who frequents minors,” making this a major problem for him, but maybe not for long because the love of young women is the Italian national sport for men, although he went on national TV to deny any suggestion of a sexual relationship with 18-year-old glamour girl Noemi Letizia, calling it a lie and demanding she apologize.
The Oral Office
Former US president Bill Clinton had more Teflon on him than Berlusconi and even survived impeachment and being found guilty of giving false testimony (lying) and contempt of court for his super-spin that oral sex, even in the Oval office, wasn’t really sex, although the young woman who performed it, Monica Lewinsky, apparently thought so and saved a blue dress with his DNA on it to prove it. He’s gone on to more fame and fortune and she’s gone, well, she’s gone somewhere.
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