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More damage done to the young interns
By JON HOORNSTRA
You have to wonder if some men seek political office as a way to fulfill their middle-age fantasies. Could it be they regard public office in Sacramento or Washington as "candy stores" filled with 20-something females?
That seems to be the common denominator that connects 50-something guys like Gary Condit, Bill Clinton and even San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales. In spite of their wives and their public personas of professional rectitude, these guys just couldn't keep their hands off the young girls.
It was especially annoying last week to see a smiling California Congressman Gary Condit on TV slither into a hearing room chair in the Capitol. What could he possibly have to smile about? Perhaps he smiled because he's alive, which seems unlikely for Chandra Levy, the former intern from Condit's hometown of Modesto. Not only did he talk with Levy during an internship at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, but he also talked her right into his bedroom in Washington, D.C., while his wife and family worked in Sacramento for Gray Davis. What a guy.
Of course, we wouldn't have known anything about this slimy behavior except that Levy disappeared May 1. When officials turned to Condit for answers, he took a page from Bill Clinton's playbook and lied to his staff, the police and the public about his relationship to Levy. But the truth came out and Condit admitted the relationship had been personal and intimate.
Condit's reputation is now in shambles. Polls in his congressional district indicate voters may pull the plug on his career in November. And the damage done by Condit extends to his family. According to the Los Angeles Times, his wife must now wear a disguise and use alleys and backdoors to avoid the press just to do ordinary things like grocery shopping.
We may never learn what happened to Chandra Levy. But interns who play with politicians, or allow politicians to play with them, gain little or nothing. Clinton, for example, left the White House with a presidential pension and other perks. But Monica Lewinsky, the intern who served as his Oval Office playmate, now lives the life of a second-tier stereotype bimbo-celebrity, on-call for such TV programs as Entertainment Tonight. What a life.
Some people dismiss all the fuss over politicians and their interns as much ado by nosey busybodies. But they would get an argument from Dr. Mary Lamia, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in the Bay Area.
"There's almost always eventual disappointment in affairs," Dr. Lamia said, "because they are based upon a fantasy, not reality."
Young women, she said, sometimes get confused and think the power of the person with whom they are having an affair is their own, when, in reality, that's an illusion.
Dr. Lamia is even more concerned over recent trends in sexually transmitted diseases, or STDs, and behavior influenced by Clinton and Lewinsky.
"There seems to be an increase in the number of middle and high school age boys and girls engaging in sexual activity, particularly oral sex," Dr. Lamia said.
She notes that the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), which causes genital warts, is now a common STD. It is a cause of cervical cancer, as well, and may be transmittable orally.
"If that is not enough," Lamia continued, "we know that cross-infection of type 1 and 2 Herpes viruses is thought to occur during oral-genital sex and syphilis and gonorrhea can be transmitted orally as well."
Recently, researchers took DNA samples from patients with genital warts and found that more than one-fourth of them had the virus on their hands, Dr. Lamia reported.
"The kids are well aware of what Clinton did," Lamia said, "and he made it OK for them."
Internships shouldn't be defined by people like Lewinsky, Clinton and Condit. Internships are about mentoring people to prepare them for something more, something better. The word mentor itself comes from the Greek mythological character, Mentor, a friend to Odysseus and a teacher to his son, Telemachus. Loyalty, friendship and teaching were the key words. Use, abuse, seduction and self-gratification were not what Mentor was about.
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Cupertino, California Since 1947
