Barney Frank announced his retirement yesterday from Congress after 32 years. In that time he racked up plenty of biting floor speeches, piles of bad bills, and oh yeah…he hired a prostitute to work for him and lobbied the prostitute's probation officer on official Congressional letterhead. What does the mainstream media choose to mention in their stories? Or more to the point: we'll give you one guess what much of the mainstream media chose NOT to mention.
LA Times? Nothing. NY Times? Nada. The Denver Post? They ran a syndicated article that ignores the whore, rather than the AP piece that mentions the issue.
We don't doubt for a New York minute that had Frank been a Republican Congressman, his prostitution "issue" would not only have been mentioned but would most likely make most article's lede — as it should for any politician, Democrat, Republican or Socialist.
It's not that Barney Frank was able to break the old Washington rule that you can keep your job in Congress unless you're caught with a dead girl or a live boy. His being gay had nothing to do with a scandal that should have run the man out of town. He abused his office to lobby on behalf of a criminal who happened to be a prostitute he also paid for "services."
What was most galling about the whole affair is that Frank admitted the straw that broke the camel's back was that the prostitute was using Frank's apartment for his "business." We're pretty sure most people would have seen something wrong with the situation long before that.