Admit it: The first time you saw the shirtless pic of now-former Representative Christopher Lee, you thought, âWhen did Gary Condit start hitting the juice?â Lee scores the middle-aged-man trifecta: a head full of hairâbut none on his torsoâand abs you can bounce a quarter off. Heâs like a distinguished version of the Bowflex guy. Or Peter North. Only with the sharp-eyed gleam of a sales executive.
In other words, heâs what every politician and TV talking head in America wishes they looked like.
Yet I come not to bury Chris Lee, but to defend him. Sort of.
Gawker justified running the story which ended Leeâs career by saying that his support of âDonât Ask, Donât Tellâ and a ban on federal abortion funding means heâs comfortable âwith publicly scrutinizing othersâ sex lives.â Right. Only, for one thing, âDonât Ask, Donât Tellâ is about staying deaf, dumb, and blind to othersâ sex lives; and abortion isnât about sex. But the big problem is that Chris Leeâs sex scandal doesnât have any sex. Or even sexy talk.
(The weirdest part of the affair is that Leeâs emails couldnât be more safe for work. Clearly, the congressman didnât study the Mark Sanford Manual of Style. The movie version of the Christopher Lee Story doesnât even earn a PG-13.)
However, there ends the brief for Lee. Because if the particulars of the incident donât create a hypocrisy problem, the general contours of it should set off all sorts of good-government alarm bells.
Because public officials appear uncomfortably shirtless often enough. But cruising Craigslist is something else altogether.
Have you ever seen that place? Itâs page after page of âads,â most of which seem to be spam or come-ons from hookers. And the ârealâ ads? Hereâs one on the D.C. Craigslist from the other day, with the heading âMature Men Need Fun 2â:
Gallery: Shirtless Pols

SBF-F/F 6FT LOOKING FOR MATURE MEN ONLY, RACE OPEN WHAT AM I LOOKING FOR??????? WELL THAT DEPEND'S. LETâS TALK . CAN SEND PIC. AND TELL YOU MORE.
Another one is demurely slugged, âThereâs a banana in the oven...?!â And those are from the respectable ârelationship-seekingâ part of the site. Over in the âcasual encountersâ section itâs much worse. (I recommend Grant Stoddardâs field report on the subject.) Trawling Craigslist for sex is a dignity-destroying, time-sucking slog. Lee must have spent hours click-click-clicking on ad after adâCraigslist has a notoriously miniscule yield rate. If he absolutely had to commit adultery and lie about his identity, then Leeâs timeâby which I mean the taxpayersâ timeâwould have been better spent on AshleyMadison.com. Or whores. I hear we have them in D.C. That guy over at CNN could probably have hooked him up.
In the end, Lee resigned three hours after his shirtless pictures appeared, which is some kind of land-speed record for surrender. (The French army is shocked how fast he folded.) So the really interesting question is, why? Mark Foley was harrassing interns while drunk and he held out for 24 hours. Larry Craig was soliciting gay sex in a public bathroom and he hung in there for two years!
We may never know Leeâs full story, but my guess is that there were two factors in his decision to split. First of all, nobody sends topless photos of themselves to strangers on the Internet once. Thatâs just a fact. Science. Who knows what else is out there? For all we know, thereâs an Xtube channel with videos of Lee doing role-play tentacle porn with Alphaharlot and the Mets mascot. His resignation effectively closes off this avenue of discoveryâand on behalf of a grateful America, let me say thank you, Mr. Lee.
But thereâs an even better reason for the one-and-a-bit term congressman to head for the hills. Cornered by a Fox News reporter, Lee pleaded, âI have to work this out with my wife.â And boy, does he. Because Lee also happens to be one of the 50 richest members of Congress, with a net worth close to $9 million. Iâm not an expert on New York state civil law, but I believe that the starting position for divorce settlements where the husband is caught going after tail on Craigslist is âhalf.â
So Lee has 4.5 million reasons to do everything in his power to get right with Mrs. Lee, and if the cost of that is a second term in Congress, then itâs a bargain at twice the price.
And I, for one, hope those two crazy kids work it out.
Jonathan V. Last is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard and blogs at JonathanLast.com.