ELECTION 08: Last tango in Bartlesville, Alice, Arlington and Kansas City

First, a quick reference praisee of the Super Tuesday candidates, simply because it’s fun:

Democrat:
Barack Obama – senator for Illinois, attorney, definitely not a Muslim,
Hillary Clinton – senator for New York, attorney, enduring wife of legendary jazz saxophonist

Republican:
John McCain – senator for Arizona, war hero, romantic whiz
Mike Huckabee – governor of Arkansas, Southern Baptist minister, bass guitarist
Mitt Romney – governor of Massachusetts, businessman, possible owner of magic Mormon underpants
Ron Paul – congressman from Texas, tenacious, down with the kids

With all the shock and awe surrounding Super Duper Tsunami-tastic Tuesday, News Hour thought it might be nice to take a look at a quartet of stories from the lesser echelons of American politics – the mayoralty.

Kansas City (city pop: 447,306) mayor Mark Funkhouser is facing a recall election, of the kind that replaced California governor Gray Davis with the Gubernator. Apart from having a name possibly too great for politics, Funkhouser is accused of ‘stubborness, inflexibility, and lack of political sensitivity’ in his hiring of a white supremacist – just one of six points of contention. In his defence, Funkhouser cites Martin Luther King as one of his heroes, claiming that the doctor was also a stubborn man and so nixing the anti-racists at the same time. Strangely, the good doctor’s name is absent from his list of heroes on MySpace. Mr Funkhouser would like to meet Kofi Annan and Bill Clinton – and, as Missouri is holding its primary today, lets hope the saxophone star drops by to sing him a song. As it might be his last chance.

The town of Bartlesville, Oklahoma (pop: 34,748) recently ousted mayor Brad Nikkel for ‘dressing improperly’ and missing several meetings. Reports state that the meeting concerning his dismissal was fit to bursting with members of the public, and an overflow room with a video link had to be set up. Nikkel is a builder, and denies he ever said he would wear a tie when in office – claiming that he never saw himself ‘as a coverboy for GQ’. Such was the mayor’s laidback attitude to the situation, that he even abstained on a vote as to whether or not he should stay in office. Parts of the crowd, which had to be silenced by police, was said to have ‘cackled and shouted’.

This casual attitude to dress is reflected in the deportment of Arlington, Oregon (pop: 524) mayor Carmen Kontur-Gronquist, who published photos of herself in ‘racy lingerie’ (if lingerie isn’t racy, surely it isn’t doing its job?) on MySpace. The Mayor claims that her rivals are using the revealing image as a political crowbar. The picture was taken on one of the city’s fire engines, three years before she became mayor. (Weave your own story from that one.)

“That’s my personal life,” she said. “It has nothing to do with my mayor’s position”, Carmen claimed to raised eyebrows, illustrating a similar point to our old friend Anna Ciriani.

The final story, which many readers may be familiar with, is the recent ousting of the mayor of Alice, Texas (pop: 19,010), for stealing her neighbours’ dog. So desperate was Grace Saenz-Lopez to keep hold of the canine, that she reported the hound missing after having sent it away to her twin sister’s house for safekeeping. Fortunately for the dog, whose name she had changed from Puddles to Panchito, police were quick to see through her ploy.

It’s worth noting that all of these stories have kicked off this year, and required little digging. One wonders what it would look like if you totted up all the scandals in the last ten years and plotted them on a map. Whose face would the pattern resemble? When News Hour has more time on its hands, a project surely beckons.

Previous mayoral status of candidates:

Obama – no
Hillary – no
Edwards – no

McCain – no
Huckabee – no
Romney – no
Paul – no
Giuliani – yes

WIKIWATCH: Teachers and porn stars – The difficulties of public and private

It was interesting to see how the papers treated yesterday’s story about a British teacher, Sarah Green, who had been caught on YouTube in a saucy, Carry On-style video designed to promote builders’ clothing. Perhaps most remarkably, the increasingly super soaraway Telegraph chose to splash the story on page three, complete with a whopping great picture. However, her ‘antics’ (for they seem relatively tame) pale into insignificance when one considers an example from Italy, that boot-shaped nation of hot-blooded lovers.

Last November, Italian teacher Anna Ciriani was (again) exposed as Madame Web, a prolific internet hardcore porn star with any number of videos, pictures, etc. As with our unfortunate Stockport teacher, Ciriani’s double life was first discovered by her secondary school students five years ago, on the interweb (one wonders what their parents made of that: ‘So you found this how….?’). Ms Ciriani insisted that she was the image of professionalism at work, always modestly dressed and with no clues to her alter ego. Known as the ‘porno-prof’ in the Italian newspapers (and you thought it was just the English language world that was bad at that sort of thing), she marked out her territory with clarity:

“My behavior at school has always been professional and irreproachable… I am a normal woman, with my family and my work as a teacher. I am (also) looking for transgression and sex.”

Fair enough? The overlap of work and life is always tricky, but when teachers are intended to serve as role models you can see their point. (On the difficulties of managing public image, see this differing version of Coleen McLoughlin’s biography on Wikipedia. This is the original.) Still, the reaction seems positively understated compared to the ongoing furore over the rubbish strike in Naples, where effigies of government figures were burned in the streets. Imagine the smell. One wonders if a strike mooted in London’s Southwark would provoke a similar response in Britain. Burning effigies of Ken Livingstone, anyone?