This is what I don't get:

[PCIntern]

Back in the Pleistocene era when I was a young dentist fresh out of school, I knew that the quickest way to total professional destruction was to date your patients. Sure, it is a great way to meet chicks, and sure many of them seem like they would be attracted to you, and sure you're closer to them in a matter of a couple of minutes than anyone other than their prom date may have ever been, and sure there's no shortage of single women out there...BUT...

In fact the only reason that she would be within three football fields' distance from you is that she broke a tooth/needs a cleaning/ is in pain/has swollen gums and is there for professional advice and treatment when necessary, treatment for which she, or someone else, will have to pay money. It does not matter if she looks like Raquel Welch or Sophia Loren or Bo Derek (showing my age I suppose), she's not there to get picked up. Or maybe she is and then you REALLY have a lot to worry about, because, unless you look like Robert Redford or Clark Gable or Leo DiCaprio, she ain't there for your good looks and sterling sense of humor, believe-you-me.

Now if you mutually agreed that you DID want to date, then you would have to dismiss her from your patient population and effect a transfer to another dentist with whom you may have a professional relationship, but not a concomitant personal relationship. This all makes good sense, since what's more important: the date or the career?

So it would seem that everyone in a position of authority and imbued with the public trust should feel that it would be inappropriate to act in such a manner that one could lose one's job, one's license to work in a given business or profession, or worse, even a criminal legal problem involving drugs, Mann Act violations, or intoxication of all varieties. So the question really becomes: if you are a public figure or a community person wherein your success is directly tied to your reputation, then why would you entrust a complete stranger with the ability to utterly and totally destroy you? Well, you probably wouldn't if you stopped for one instant and thought about it. If one sent messages thru Craig's List which read "so-and-so (real name) is looking for a hot time with such-and-such (a variation of the norm), then it would not be long before that individual would run out of money just sending the radiographs of all the patients to other dentists.

So the question comes down to: Why TF would a Congressman whose stands and extroverted pronouncements are an anathema to the RW in this country, do this? I leave it to the therapist who is going to have to deal with him and his family for a long long time.

[Shagbark Hickory]

1. What if I accidently posted some wild and crazy DU thread to my company's facebook twitter thing by

mistake instead of on DU?

That's not supposed to happen.

To answer your Q, he was having a little fun just like the RWers like to have fun only he didn't intend to get caught or offend or inconvenience anyone. But he did.

Life's a bitch. He did it because he's a human being and human beings make mistakes every once in a while.

[PCIntern]

2. He used his own name, for crying out loud...

for all that everyone is hiding here on the Intertubes, you would think that a guy like this would not want people to know...and as far as the women involved are concerned, what would be the fun of doing this with him if you couldn't talk about it??

[Shagbark Hickory]

3. Like I said...

people make mistakes.

And by the way, half the time you can google someone's username and find out all the stuff they're signed up for and eventually find out their email address and dig even further and you find their name and number posted in a craiglist ad or some linked-in profile.

That's why I try to pick a different tree for every forum :)

[PCIntern]

4. You're right...some "mistake"...

sheesh...

I understand your point...it's just that he had a lot to lose and very very little, if anything, to gain from this.

[Shagbark Hickory]

11. I have a lot to lose and very little to gain by wasting time posting on DU.

It actually costs me a great deal in productivity.

Why oh why do I do it?

[PCIntern]

12. You know,

my wife tells me that daily...she is not fond of the fact that I'm here posting.

[Shagbark Hickory]

13. OK well some people get the same kind of pleasure from chit chatting on twitterbook.

Or the same kind of pleasure dogs get from chewing on bones.

The riskiness of it must be an incredible high for someone like Tony who had a long way to fall.

[housewolf]

5. Because power and sex are so closely related

It's like bees to flowers. With the exercise of power, the ego inflates and the individual thinks that they are all-powerful, can do anything and that the basic rules of life don't apply to them. It's been happening forever. It's something our society doesn't educate people about.

[gateley]

9. You're right on. I've been thinking that so many of these

high profile people do such stupid things, they're not dumb, they're just skewed by the power and sense of, what?, invincibility? I'm thinking that if they were an accountant in a small firm, they'd be much more circumspect if they were engaging in stuff like this. We human beings are funny animals. Very complicated. :shrug:

[Ruby the Liberal]

6. Ego, power, and a sense of invulnerability mixed with a dash of

being a 14 year old in a 46 year old body.

Sorry, guys, but (most) women aren't like men when it comes to stimulation. "You said boobies!" /beavis&butthead

I may not speak for the majority, but your junk has a function - it isn't visual.

:)

[PCIntern]

7. That's why they call it 'junk'...

:hi:

[monmouth]

8. And with the immature thinking, like a juvenile, he evidently did this

when the wife (Mommy) was not at home. Dear god I do hope she was not in the other room...sigh. To PC, I am envious of your patients and the laughs you must have. I had a great dentist also, he would wait until my mouth was filled with all the good stuff at his disposal and then hit me with a good "Priest and Rabbi joke." I miss him.

[PCIntern]

10. thanks! and we do have a good time here at times...

I wish I could have videotaped people's conversations with me during the Recount in 2000. It would have made a great film...