{"id":39451,"date":"2012-05-02T06:39:24","date_gmt":"2012-05-02T12:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=39451"},"modified":"2012-05-03T07:24:14","modified_gmt":"2012-05-03T13:24:14","slug":"at-the-least-wiener-displays-stunning-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2012\/05\/at-the-least-wiener-displays-stunning-ignorance\/","title":{"rendered":"At the least, Wiener displays stunning ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Heath<\/a>

Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n

Bernalillo County Commissioner Michael Wiener loaned his smiling face to the sex tourism industry \u2013 and possibly sex slavery \u2013 in a less-developed nation, and says that\u2019s no different than posing with women at Hooters here. How very American.<\/h4>\n

Bernalillo County Commissioner Michael Wiener<\/a> thinks there\u2019s no difference between posing for a photo with women who work at Hooters and those in the Philippines who may very well be sex slaves.<\/p>\n

Yes, really. Here\u2019s the written statement the Republican provided to the Huffington Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cNOTHING untoward ever happened. NOTHING. The pictures taken are as innocent as any that could be taken at Twin Peaks or Hooters here.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Forget for a minute the possibilities about what might have happened that Wiener isn\u2019t telling us. Let\u2019s take his story at face value.<\/p>\n

Wiener says he was in the Philippines to visit his 12-year-old daughter. He says he had a layover in Angeles City, at night, and took a cab into town. He says he was traveling with his girlfriend.<\/p>\n

In a city of more than 300,000 people, he went to the red-light district. He didn\u2019t say whether he knew the area was a red-light district. Here\u2019s what he was quoted by the Albuquerque Journal<\/a> as saying:<\/p>\n

\u201cI just wanted to take a quick tour. It\u2019d be like if people go to Las Vegas and they want to go to the casinos, but they don\u2019t gamble. I was just curious. I walked from one end to the other.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of a red-light district.<\/p>\n

A man who has a 12-year-old daughter living in the Philippines, a country in which human trafficking and child prostitution are serious problems<\/a>, says he was approached by an American who wanted to photograph him with scantily clad women, so he obliged.<\/p>\n

In a red-light district, he posed for a photo with women who may very well be sex slaves.<\/p>\n

At the very least, Wiener\u2019s actions show a stunning level of ignorance of the plight of people around him. He loaned his smiling face to the sex tourism industry \u2013 and possibly sex slavery \u2013 in a less-developed nation by posing for a photo<\/a> with the women.<\/p>\n

How very American.<\/p>\n

The photo was as innocent as any that could be taken with women who serve food, voluntarily, in America, for at least minimum wage and with other worker protections? I don\u2019t think so. I\u2019m no fan of restaurants like Hooters, and haven\u2019t been in one in more than a decade because I don\u2019t appreciate the way they objectify women, but it\u2019s not the same.<\/p>\n

Shouldn\u2019t women who work at those American restaurants be offended by the comparison?<\/p>\n

Sadly, Wiener doesn\u2019t appear to understand the gravity of his actions. Does he know that these women might be sex slaves? Does he care?<\/p>\n

Or are these women in the Philippines, and the women who work at Twin Peaks and Hooters, nothing but objects to Wiener? He\u2019s given us no indication that anything else is the truth.<\/p>\n

Haussamen bio<\/a>\u00a0\u2502\u00a0Commentary archives<\/a>\u00a0\u2502\u00a0Feed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bernalillo County Commissioner Michael Wiener loaned his smiling face to the sex tourism industry \u2013 and possibly sex slavery \u2013 in a less-developed nation, and says that\u2019s no different than posing with women at Hooters here. How very American.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[157],"class_list":["post-39451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-bernalillo-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}