Politcal Sex Scandal, Gender aside, same old story

[tygerarmy]

Link

So the tables-turned, she-cheated-on-him political sex scandal we've all been waiting for has finally arrived, albeit across the pond. The fortuitously named Iris Robinson -- and here's to you, etc. -- is a 60-year-old member of Parliament from Northern Ireland. Robinson not only had an affair; she had an affair with a teenage boy.

Middle of the article has some pretty good paragraphs

As sex scandals go, this one is a trifecta. There is the (super)cougar aspect. Anne Bancroft was playing a 40-something Mrs. Robinson seducing college graduate Benjamin Braddock in "The Graduate." This Mrs. Robinson was 59 when she started sleeping with a 19-year-old. She had known Kirk McCambley since he was a child and she patronized his father's East Belfast butcher shop. As he was dying, the elder McCambley asked Mrs. Robinson to look after his son -- "She made sure I was okay," Kirk McCambley told the BBC.

There is the hypocrisy bonus: Mrs. Robinson, an evangelical Christian memorably described as "fire and brimstone in a Laura Ashley package," liked to pronounce on the government's "responsibility to uphold God's laws" and described homosexuality as "an abomination" comparable to -- get this -- pedophilia. Her husband seconded that assessment. "It wasn't Iris Robinson who determined that homosexuality was an abomination, it was the Almighty," Peter Robinson said.

Of course, the Almighty had something to say about adultery, which even got its own commandment. Given her new emphasis on Christian forgiveness, Iris Robinson might rethink her smug dismissal of Hillary Clinton: "No woman would put up with what she tolerated from her husband when he was president." What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson?

[secretsquirrelsock]

Another hypocritical fundie-for-votes politician caught being a hypocrit?

In other news, fire is frequently hot.

[The Lazy One]

A British friend of mine told me about this, and all I could think about was "Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson..."

[dasfuchs]

heh, same old same old it seems. It's always the god worshipping nutbags that get busted for sex scandals

[mistermuncher]

Few bits o' background for y'all, given this is, more or less, my neck of the woods.

Iris is known of old to be a nasty, spiteful bigot of the highest order. The reported remarks on homosexuality occurred in Parliament, she repeated them, and stood by them, to the Belfast Telegraph that week, but when the fuss kicked up about them, she claimed that she'd been misquoted. Misquoted in the official Hansard transcript, no less.

Now, these remarks didn't receive massive attention at the time, but soon afterward, she was a guest on a god-awful, allegedly topical radio show, in the aftermath of a young gay fella getting an unmerciful beating. Her remarks were surrounded in the usual fluff of "it's not me saying this, it's God", but they boiled down to "Yeah, they shouldn't have beaten him up, but being gay is so very, very wrong". Obviously, that didn't go down all that well with anyone, but she followed it up with an offer of conversion therapy from "a lovely psychologist" who was a friend of hers.

Understandably enough, this wasn't long in building into an almighty shitstorm, which brought the Parliamentary statement back into the broader public's view. With the caveat she was only echoing the bible, she reiterated Homosexuality to be an Abomination a few days later. Questions were asked about the shrink she spoke of, stepping outside what's medically recognised as an actual illness and all, so he also went into damage limitation, insisting it wasn't part of his real work, only his hobby, so to speak. This caper left a bad taste in people's mouths, and I'd imagine that now it's been revealed that her playing away was happening more or less at the same time, I'd imagine it's not fading any.

But the meat of the affair, and why it's a major political deal is this. She wasn't merely getting a quick boff off the young chap in question. There was money and favours on the line. The young fella was trying to secure financing for a café in a public park. A park that was within Mrs Robinson's council constituency.* The building was owned by the same council. Firstly, she managed to procure cheques for 25 grand each from two local property developers to give to McCambley, making sure to get a 5 grand cash kickback off it. Next, despite sitting on the committees and such which decided who would win tender for the café, Robinson failed, on a number of occasions, to declare her financial ties to McCambley's bid, which ended up being the only one accepted by the council.

When the affair went south, though, she started to demand the money back, to repay the people she'd got it from**. She wanted it back as personal cheques to herself, before changing her mind and wanting it made out to her Sister-in-law's Church. There's a lot of toing and froing...

Now, things get properly dark, if indeed, this is true. Her husband had somehow become aware of the financial diffs his wife was in, and made efforts to square it all up with her creditors. He was aware that the money had went to the Café, and she'd been part of the tendering committee for same. Despite his obligations to declare the wrongdoing here, he instead took the option of saying nothing and ploughing on. It's a while after this that Iris, apparently consumed with guilt, allegedly tried to off herself.

Now, I'm not going to cast any aspersions as to how true or false that claim is. What is known is that the alleged attempt occurred at midnight, and by the time her aide arrived that/next morning, he met her husband heading out to work and no doctor on the scene. There's footage of him in the parliament, and he's not exactly in bad form.

This was all kept quiet until a couple of weeks back. The aide mentioned above finally threw the head up at the various subterfuges he was becoming embroiled in, and spilled his guts to a BBC reporter. Having been alerted ahead of time by a request for a comment, Peter Robinson was on the News that night, making a statement that his wife was having mental health issues, suffered from depression, tried to kill herself et al. This was the Wednesday(I think) evening. The local blogosphere fairly crackled with anticipation of what was happening, and what all this related to, the investigation by the BBC and what it covered. There was talk of injunctions and bans on reportage. Out of nowhere, though, the BBC shifted the schedule around and got the program out that thursday night, allegedly in the face of incoming injunctions to prevent it's broadcast in the originally proposed time the following Monday.

Now, apparently, Iris is away getting sorted out in a psychiatric facility, and Peter is carefully avoiding any ties to the pretty clear circumvention of anti-corruption law by his wife and his own failure to report same. Currently, local bush telegraph holds that another member of the party is in for a major, major shock when he gets a look at the papers this weekend...


*Iris holds, or held, three distinct jobs. She was a Borough council, a member of the NI assembly and an MP in Westminster. Between herself and the good hubby, who was similarly multi-jobbed, they were drawing down the guts of £600k a year.

**In the interim, one of her benefactors has died, and by all accounts, her intent was to keep the cash and donate it to a church.

[ironbite]

British politics are weird.

Ironbite-we should introduce you to American Style Democracy...AMERICA FUCK YEAH!

[Whore of Spamylon]

Jan 15, 2010 13:24:14 GMT -5 ironbite said:

British politics are weird.

Ironbite-we should introduce you to American Style Democracy...AMERICA FUCK YEAH!

Oh man, I love you Ironbite!

[IanC]

Sweet, sweet karma.

[banjaxed]

Jan 15, 2010 13:24:14 GMT -5 ironbite said:

British politics are weird.

Ironbite-we should introduce you to American Style Democracy...AMERICA FUCK YEAH!

Aren't all politics at their core just weird?