Four ways the Craigslist congressman can benefit from scandal

Four ways the Craigslist congressman can benefit from scandal

Posted on February 11th, 2011 by Kevin R. Breen

When Gawker.com celebrated its new layout by breaking a story about a married congressman’s scandal with a woman on Craigslist, his future looked bleak.

But now former Republican representative from New York Christopher Lee’s prospects are looking good. Below are four ways the disgraced politician can benefit from the scandal.

Lee's "shirtless bathroom photo," a hallmark of Craigslist hook-ups.

4. He can get free sex from the Bunny Ranch.

Dennis Hof, the owner of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, a legal brothel in Nevada, offered Lee free sex at his brothel during an interview on RT America. “…I’m going to offer him free sex for the next 30 days… just for being man enough to resign his job, and let somebody with decent morals go to work,” Hof said.

3. It could have been part of a conspiracy to get out of office.

It may be a wild conspiracy theory, but what would you do if your “organization” wanted to remove someone from office? You couldn’t kill him because that would make it obvious that there was a plot against him, and it would make him a martyr for his cause. And you can’t make threats to force him to suddenly resign because that would make people try to figure out why, (as happened with Sarah Palin’s resignation,) and they might find you. But what if you forced him to destroy his own reputation, like in Alias, when a journalist was forced to pretend to be a drug addict who faked all his articles that exposed SD-6. Don’t remember? Neither does anyone else!

If Lee’s actual goal was to connect with another woman on Craigslist, shouldn’t he have made some effort to hide his identity? He used his real name, real photos, and real email address that was connected to his real Facebook account. Then, when the story came out, he skipped the steps in the “for Dummies” book for dealing with this sort of thing that have long been honored by others, such as Mark Foley, who was in a scandal involving teens working as congressional pages. Lee’s first step was to resign, but resignation doesn’t come until the final step in the book. This has caused experts to accuse him of jumping more pages than Mark Foley.

If he hadn’t resigned, he may have gotten away with it. The tipster was anonymous, so a good PR team may have been able to make it look like a prank. But he didn’t even try. Perhaps he wanted to get caught because, even in the absence of a conspiracy, “cheaters subconsciously want to get caught.” Either way, mission accomplished!

2. It could pave the way for future jobs.

Lee can use the same website that got him in to this situation to get back out of it! He obviously knows how to use Craigslist to find a new woman, so why not use it to find a new job?

He might not even have to! Hof has already suggested having Lee come to work as a trainer at his brothel. And if working as a fitness trainer with attractive prostitutes isn’t glamorous enough for him, he can try to get his own show! Disgraced New York Governor Eliot Spitzer co-hosts a show on CNN, so it seems Lee should at least be able to land a spot on Fox Business.

1. He can finally become the man he dreamed of being.

It appears that the only lie Lee bothered telling in his emails was that he was a 39-year-old divorced lobbyist, rather than the 46-year-old married congressman he really was. But he’s no longer a congressman, and it’s hard to believe that this sort of thing won’t put his marriage in jeopardy. Now, all he has to do is take a job as a lobbyist and wait for his wife to leave him. And find the fountain of youth to make him seven years younger. That last part might be tricky, but hey, “two out of three aint bad.”