The Zong

San Franciscans have had a few good days to digest the juicy gossip-turned-reality about our very own Mayor “Player” Newsom and his sexy misdeeds. As far as I can tell, everyone seems pretty much aight with it. Especially the ladies, many of whom probably wouldn’t mind a little roll in the sack with G-New. Although they evidently want a new wardrobe even more.

You know who I really think is a moron? C.W. Nevius, that’s who:

When the Gavin Newsom scandal broke, most of us assumed the public reaction would be a no-brainer. Sleeping with a married woman? How do you think that would play with wives, girlfriends and single women in the Bay Area?

As a Newsom staffer told a Chronicle reporter, there goes the women’s vote.

Nevius then goes on to express shock that this wasn’t the case, as if a politician schtupping someone else’s wife was basically akin to him being a rapist. He also actually thinks this entire thing affects Newsom’s re-election chances, which makes him a double-moron. He brings up the “Man Code,” like all straight men in this city belong to the same fraternity or something. Here’s some S.F. Fish Wrapper journalism at its very best:

It seems that what is at work here is another case in which women are from Venus and men are from the mysterious, dark side of the moon.

“There is a code that men live by,” says family therapist Tracey Gersten, a woman. “Women may not know about it, or they may pooh-pooh it, but it is very real. I think if you put a group of men in a room, they’d have no trouble putting a man code together.”

They certainly didn’t have any trouble coming together on this one. When I wrote a column earlier this week suggesting that many San Franciscans were ready to let the mayor move on, my e-mail box filled up with men who disagreed. So did The Chronicle’s voice-mail system. Most of the men who called to react to this week’s scandal were upset with the mayor, while most of the women weren’t.

Sounds like a real scientific poll. You’re telling me that your “e-mail box” didn’t fill up with people writing in to agree with you? I’m shocked!

My e-mail box is filled with advertisements for pills that are supposed to make my penis an even bigger dick than Gavin Newsom, but the feedback I’m getting from the guys I know seems pretty consistent: Sure, it’s terrible that he slept with his best friend’s wife, and you can bet your ass that no wife of mine is going to be joining me and Gavin for a game of Boggle ™ anytime soon, but it’s not like he just fucked every wife in the city, so if he can get Muni running better I’ll probably vote his womanizing ass back into office and hope that he settles down with a nice girl one of these days.

I think that the idea of a universal Man Code is great for selling beer and marginalizing homosexuals, but if there’s a violation of code here then it’s surely better referred to as the “Friend Code,” that whole “Bros before Hos” thang. I surely won’t ever have an affair with my any of my friends’ wives, girlfriends, and probably not any of their mothers, but that’s because I’m not a politician with a ruthless disregard for personal loyalty. As it is, I do think that this was a gigantic dick move on the part of the mayor, but the only thing it really affects is my opinion of his decision-making capabilities when it comes to women, and lord knows I can’t really give anyone a hard time about that.

My real problem with this is Newsom’s response. It’s nice that he apologized and admitted what happened, (when was the last time you heard any politician say “Everything you’ve heard is true”?) but now he’s going the extra mile and entering an alcohol rehab program, which I thought was something only conservative pedophiles and gay evangelist sex-addicts did nowadays. It’s true that he probably ruined his best friends’ life, and I generally think that people who cheat on their spouses are pretty crappy, but the truth is, I want young and charismatic politicians that I support to fuck around as much as they want, or at least as much as their spouses will let them.

Politicians don’t have to be nice people to do their job well, and they certainly don’t live in the world that most of the rest of us do, so if they want to screw up their own marriages because it makes them feel more powerful and confident to get blown by an intern or to nail a dreamy starlet in the Oval Office, then I say go for it, and I don’t mean just male politicians, either. If, God forbid, Hillary Clinton is our next president, I hope she gets a whole lot of extramarital ass if it gives her the confidence she needs to kill all the terrorists and balance the budget.

So the grand revelation in all this is that Gavin Newsom sometimes thinks with his dick. I think that, as long as he doesn’t govern with it, San Francisco will probably be alright.

P.S. - Dear Gavin: friendship’s off, brah.

- M.G.