Let this be yet another warning to politicians that the social media will getcha. This time, Instagram is the culprit, so at least he’s getting busted on the hippest of tools.
Currently running for governor, Attorney General Doug Gansler got snapped in a picture of a beach week rager in Delaware over the summer. Gansler says e was stopping by the house, which he rented for his son’s senior week, to talk to his kid. But the obvious drinking going on around him, coupled with Gansler’s outspoken opposition to underaged drinking, has tongues wagging in talk radio, local and national news.
When asked about the controversy, Gansler gave an answer only a Democrat in a one-party state could give:
“Assume for purposes of discussion that there was widespread drinking at this party,” Gansler said in the article. “How is that relevant to me? … The question is, do I have any moral authority over other people’s children at beach week in another state? I say no.”
Gansler later struck a more contrite tone:
Under scrutiny for his presence at a party where teens said there was underage drinking, Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler said Thursday that in retrospect, he should have done more to intervene.
“Perhaps I should have assumed there was drinking in the home, and I got that wrong,” Gansler said of stopping by the party briefly and then leaving. He said not investigating whether teens were drinking “was a mistake I made.”
Sometimes it is difficult, he said, to know how to do the right thing as a parent.
Well, first, it defies belief that he didn’t imagine there was drinking going on at a senior week beach house party. Frankly, he knew that when he rented the house, and I’m surprised a lawyer in state politics would get his name involved in lease-signing at all for that reason. But I’m also not too interested in criminalizing every minute of a parent’s life. I tend to want to cut someone some slack as long as it doesn’t look like they’ve come for the twerking. Of course, being a politician who preaches against underaged drinking changes the amount of lenience citizens are willing to show.
