Some of the prudes, Victorians and hypocrites, who, as evidenced by their statements, obviously want to turn back the clock on sexual liberty:

• The editorial board of Just Out: “By his own admission, by committing the act of lying to the citizens of Portland, Adams has failed to show the principled character that this publication feels is a basic requirement for an elected official.”
• Jeana Frazzini, executive director of Basic Rights Oregon, as quoted in Willamette Week: “We condemn what he did, but we support him going forward.”
• Oregonian columnist Anna Griffin, as quoted by Byron Beck in Willamette Week: “Way to go, Sam. Way to play into the stereotype.”
• Dan Savage in the Stranger, July 2008 (tip o’ the hat to Matt Davis): “Gay men in their 30s and 40s who will date teenage boys are almost always scum….”
• Mark Wiener, quoted in Time: “I believe what I said was, ‘You’re a f___ing moron,'” says Wiener. “I was, and am, pissed and saddened by it.”

That’s how Commissioner Randy Leonard describes Mayor Sam Adams, who declared today that he will soldier on as mayor, shortly after the Oregonian broke the news that his relations with Beau Breedlove were closer to the thin blue line than previously reported.

Adams should understand that his political future depends much more on what guys like Leonard think than the thoughts of court musician Thomas Lauderdale, Breedlove’s attorney Charles Hinkle (“…if he committed a crime by having sex with a boy two months shy of his 18th birthday, that is not a crime that looms large in the history of mankind”) or one-time reality TV star Storm Large (who tells us she’s “kind of a big deal”). Or Dan Savage (described by Kevin on Wacky Mommy’s blog as “the aging sex columnist who parachuted in from Seattle like Al Sharpton”).

Or Gus van Sant. (“The only people in this town who still want to think that 40 something gay guys screwing teenagers is hot made Mala Noche,” says Rose on Wacky Mommy, who also wonders whether Michael Stoops and Walt Curtis will step forward with their support and reminds us of “Portland’s sordid history of chickenhawks, from our heyday as the country’s boy prostitute capital in the early 1980s to how we treat gay pedophilia with our glitterati with a wink and a nudge.”)

Of course, if you are the parent of a teenager, or if you think maybe a the most powerful gay man in the state just maybe oughta have avoided playing so strongly to the stereotype, you must be a hysterical prude. A Victorian, I say! Why, you must want to turn back the clock on all the advances we’ve made in society for middle-aged men who love teens! (Never mind that Sam Adams himself has brought tremendous shame to the gay community, and that Just Out, the state’s largest gay newspaper, was among the first voices calling for his resignation.)

The outcry from Sam’s crowd of extended-adolescence admirers has been nearly deafening. They want desperately for this to be about sex and sexuality, which gives them what they humorously think to be the moral high ground. As long as it’s about sex, those who talk about honesty, loyalty and — heaven forbid — getting work done are just bigots and prudes.

Tell that to Randy Leonard, the guy Adams has thoroughly snaked. Adams leaned heavily on Leonard when the rumors of his affair with the young intern first broke, and Leonard bestowed his own credibility on Adams’ mayoral campaign.

So instead of giving a shit what middle aged men who romanticize sex with teenagers (van Sant, Savage) or local pop stars (Large) or cocktail pianists (Lauderdale) have to say about things, we should be asking how Sam’s patrons like their chances now that their man will not have the trust and implicit backing of his colleagues on the council (Dan Saltzman is alone in his unconditional support, Amanda Fritz has backed down after earlier support, and Nick Fish seems disinclined to put his name on the line for Adams).

How does Michael Powell like his chances of having his Burnside Couch couplet/streetcar dream fast-tracked now? How are the Naitos and Edlens and Williamses and Walshes feeling about their subsidized “green” development plans under a hobbled Adams administration?

Tell them this is about sex.

My cautious optimism about Adams’ education agenda has been all but dashed. Seriously… who won’t be distracted now when Adams talks about helping more high school students graduate on time?

Having no direct control over any educational institutions in this city, all Adams has to go on is his name. When it comes to improving opportunities for disadvantaged teens, that name isn’t going to be one many people want associated with the cause now.

Tell me this is about sex, as my hope of a mayor pressing the school board for meaningful, progressive changes in our schools evaporates.

Randy Leonard has made it pretty clear that his trust was betrayed by Sam Adams, and it doesn’t seem likely there’s much that will repair that relationship. This means that this will be more than a distraction when it comes to getting the city’s business taken care of. If Adams thinks that’s what’s best for Portland, I believe he’s mistaken.

Say what you will about Sam Adams, he’s got a lot of friends and supporters. I have never been one of them; I’ve always considered Adams to be overly-motivated by personal ambition, and in the pocket of Portland’s real estate developer mafia.

So I see this scandal in the light of somebody who wanted to advance his career so badly, he was willing to lie publicly and vociferously, and coach others to do so, too, regardless of whom those lies may have hurt.

Like I said in my initial reaction, this isn’t about sex, it’s about the cover-up. Sam’s supporters want to make this about sex and sexuality, which would make this whole thing a sanctimonious, Victorian which hunt.

The Web site Sam Is Still My Mayor couches it like this:

1. Consensual sex between adults does not impact one’s ability to serve in public office;
2. The personal affairs of gay officials face a level of scrutiny that is not equal to that of their heterosexual counterparts;
3. We acknowledge Sam Adams’s dishonesty in this matter and do not endorse it;
4. Sam Adams is the person we want to lead our city.

I can agree with number one, to the extent that the law is very clear on this. But since the matter is still under investigation, we don’t know the facts. But this is not just about law, it’s also about ethical judgement.

The issue is clouded by the fact that even if Sam waited until Breedlove was 18 and legal, he may have groomed him for sex when he was a minor. At the very least, even if legal, this shows a colossal lack of ethical judgment. This is not a question of sex, it is a question of use (or abuse) of power and position for personal gratification.

Number two is easily dismissed. How about Packwood? Goldschmidt? Clinton? In Clinton’s case, there was no question that the relationship was between consenting adults, yet he was nearly hounded out of office for it. (Packwood and Goldschmidt clearly engaged in criminal activities.) How is Adams facing a higher level of scrutiny?

If Tom Potter had befriended a high school girl, had sex with her as soon as she turned 18, then lied about it, coached her to lie about it, and engaged political allies to defend him at the outset of his mayoral campaign, would we have given him a pass when the truth came out? Would we be saying things like “some young women seek out older men for sex” or “consensual sex between adults does not impact one’s ability to serve in public office”?

Acknowledging Adams’ dishonesty and refusing to endorse it is a cop out. How about addressing how this may impact his ability to lead the city? What about coaching Breedlove to lie? Abusing the loyalty of Randy Leonard? Smearing opponents as homophobes? Trashing the trust of the LGBT community?

Finally, Sam was never the guy I wanted to lead our city. His sense of inevitability as our next mayor was distasteful to me, as was his predilection for high-end, glitzy development in the central city, while poor neighborhoods lack basic services and infrastructure like paved streets and sidewalks.

But I was willing to work with him. I was cautiously optimistic about his 100 days plan, and met with his education team last Friday to discuss how his education agenda relates to the work I’m doing with Portland Public Schools. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’re going to see much progress on that now.

Bob Packwood

• Offense: sexual abuse and assault, cover-up.
• Cover-up aided by: The Oregonian
• Story broken by: The Washington Post, November 1992
• Outcome: resignation in disgrace from the US Senate after a unanimous Senate Ethics Committee vote to expel him

Neil Goldschmidt

• Offense: statutory rape, cover-up.
• Cover-up aided by: The Oregonian
• Story broken by: Willamette Week, May 2004
• Outcome: far-reaching public disgrace and resignation from life as a public figure

________________________

• Offense: sexual impropriety, cover-up
• Cover-up aided by: The Mercury (whose former news editor took a job with the administration)
• Story broken by: Willamette Week, January 2009
• Outcome: ________________________________

This has nothing to do with Sam Adams being gay, obviously.

This story is about powerful men from Oregon who can’t keep their dicks in their pants, and the local newspapers who protect them.

…it’s the cover-up.

Also, it’s not about sex, it’s about power.

Randy Leonard says this wouldn’t be an issue if Adams weren’t gay.

Evidently, he never heard about “that woman.”

That’s all I’ve got to say about it for now.

Or: How to govern like a woman

On the day that Portland’s seventh-ever woman city commissioner was sworn in, Anna Griffin ran a non-apology in The Oregonian for once (or was it twice?) having called then-candidate Amanda Fritz “shrill.”

Fritz objected to this, naturally, as sexist (how many times has an Oregonian columnist called a man shrill?).

In Griffin’s completely insubstantial column Saturday [warning! Oregonian link; will be dead within two weeks], she begins with “an apology” but goes right on to repeat the original offense:

Fritz can be shrill, in the dictionary sense of the word. Her voice rises to a sharp and sometimes scary point when she’s irritated. Her tendency to nitpick and parse every last syllable and statistic might prove beneficial for taxpayers but can be… an obstacle to building consensus.

Griffin goes to some length to show her feminist cred, but in the end, she can’t rise above her own glee in thinking she’s getting away with it just one more time.

Give ’em hell at City Hall, Commissioner. Just don’t be too shrill about it, OK?

That’s right, folks, on this historical day for women in government in the state of Oregon and the City of Portland, a columnist for the biggest daily in the state called Amanda Fritz “shrill” not once, but twice, in a column ostensibly intended as an apology for having called her shrill in the past.

Hey, why not go ahead and call her hysterical, too?

I can appreciate that Griffin is trying to be humorous, in the mold of old-boy newspaper columnists paid good money to crank out 15 column inches of pablum a couple times a week.

But even if she were any good in that role, what purpose does it serve in the age of electronic media? Her column won’t even be easily available after 14 days, so who cares what Griffin writes in the rapidly declining Oregonian? (This blog entry, gods and goddesses willing, will be available in the archives as long as there is an Internet.)

Fortunately, Amanda doesn’t care what they say in the ol’ fish wrapper. She didn’t want me to write this. She thought it best just to let it go. She’s probably right, but there are a number of lessons here.

One lesson is about the waning relevance of the Big City Daily and the limited range of voices they publish.

A more important lesson is about women of substance, especially those unafraid of appearing feminine, who seek and attain power, and the higher standards by which they are judged when compared to men (or to women who act like men). Griffin clearly doesn’t get this, or can’t articulate it if she does. She mumbles through a few paragraphs about Condoleezza Rice and Hillary and Oregon’s political women, but somehow fails to say anything of substance vis-à-vis Amanda Fritz’s election as a woman who did not play the good ol’ boy game to get elected.

She got elected on her own terms, with massive popular support in a very crowded field of men — all without acting like a man.

I supported Amanda in part because she is a woman, and because she thinks like a woman. We need her attention to detail, and I want her to take stands on principle, even if it blocks consensus. If you call that kind of passion, conviction and steady ferocity shrill, you need a better thesaurus.

It’s a well known fact around Portland that an inch of snow can shut the town down. So what happens when we get a series of storms over two weeks dropping over a foot of snow and ice? Bedlam.

A lack of equipment, which is usually only needed once a year or less, is compounded by a lack of strategic planning and tactical expertise. While in other major cities efficient snow removal is a political issue that makes or breaks politicians and high-level bureaucrats, in Portland we have the Marion Barry approach. His infamous snow removal system? The sun.

In Portland, we depend more on the jet stream to swing back north, bringing us warm, wet Pacific storms like the one currently looming, threatening flooding as it melts off several inches of snow and ice.

But while we wait for the flood to clear the snow and ice, the city has been shut down to various degrees for two weeks.

So, who’s in charge?

There’s TriMet, running public transit across three counties and several cities, at the mercy of the various state, county and city transportation agencies for snow removal. They kept the blue line light rail running, but shut down the yellow and red lines for various periods during the storm. All bus lines had significant delays, and many routes were canceled completely for days. Their Web site at least had reasonably up-to-date information, as did electronic reader boards at transit stations.

Metro picks up the trash, but their Web site offers no information on delays of trash pickup (already interrupted by the Christmas holiday). Are the trucks running today? Our cans are in the snow bank by the curb, waiting.

The storm caught Portland during during the final weeks in office for mayor Tom Potter. You can’t expect much from a lame duck mayor, but where’s Sam Adams, incoming mayor and, notably, current commissioner of transportation?

You might expect a reassuring message to the citizen’s of Portland in the midst of the worst winter storm in decades. Instead, we hear Adams paraphrased on our hysterical (in both senses of the word) TV news that there are no snow chains available in Portland. With the sight of snow flakes striking abject fear into the hearts of Portlanders, that’s not the kind of message you want to send as a leader.

(Here’s a funny parody of our local television “storm team” coverage).

The exceeding rarity of this much snow on the ground may excuse a certain amount of chaos, but there are many things Portland could do better, even with its limited budget and its small, aging fleet of 50 snow plows. Sure, it costs money to be prepared for the occasional winter storms we get around here, but what’s the economic cost of shutting down the city for two weeks?

Mainly we’re lacking leadership and communication. What’s the plan, who’s going to implement it, and what are we going to do if it doesn’t work out? If this were any other city, the 2008 Christmas Storm would be considered Sam Adam’s first test of leadership… and he would be getting failing marks.

What’s going to happen if we have a real crisis, like a major earthquake? Will we have leadership, or is it every fool for himself in Portland? The way things have gone over the last two weeks, I sure hope, for the sake of us all, that the Adams administration isn’t presented with that kind of leadership challenge.

(The cat won.)