Feb 01 2009
The Ghost Of Napoleon Chills Oregon…Portland Mayor Sam Adams Longs for Adolescents in Cowboy Hats…Who is Beau Breedlove and Why Has He Incited Lactose Intolerance?
“In politics stupidity is not a handicap”
–Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte
He had pushed too hard too fast, and by the winter of 1813 the end was near. Napoleon’s attempted invasion of Russia had weakened his army significantly and the Coalition–formed of Russia, Prussia, Austria, Sweden, the UK, Spain and Portugal–was closing in.
At Lepzig, on October 16, he lost badly and staggered back into France with a mere 70,000 troops left–a fraction of his army at its full glory. The British surrounded him in the south and the rest of the coalition closed in from the German states. He held them off for a while–winning a series of battles during the Six Days Campaign–but in the Spring Paris was finally taken.
Napoleon wanted to charge the capital and go out in a blaze of glory, but his generals mutinied. Instead, he was banished to Elba, a small island off the coast of Italy, where he was given sovereignty and allowed to retain his title of Emperor. Distraught, he attempted suicide with a pill he had carried since a near capture in Moscow years before, but its potency had faded and he survived. He built a small army and navy and modernized the mines. He stood still for a while. He quickly grew anxious, though. He was generally an anxious man.
On February 26, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte escaped Elba and sailed to the French mainland. A regiment of soldiers was sent to intercept him. They made contact with Napoleon south of Genoble on March 7. From a distance they watched as his figure danced towards them on horseback. He was one man staring down an army. He took a lengthy glance at the horizon of soldiers facing him. He cleared his throat–hawking up a great gob of spit and mucus–and spat defiantly on the grass below him. “Fuck it!” he shouted.
Like a drunk walking into a bouncer’s fist, Napoleon hopped off his horse and strode fiercely toward the crew of French soldiers. The regiment grew nervous. The drummer boy rapped out a fiery tune. “Stop playing that shit or I’ll decapitate you,” the general of the regiment screamed. “Play your bongo instead, it’s much more smoothing to my ears.” The young lad demurred and pulled a massive African cowhide drum out from underneath his plaid skirt. His percussion fell into synch with the steps of Napoleon. Despite his daintiness, Napoleon’s footsteps boomed as he shuffled towards the perplexed soldiers. When he was within gunshot range, he stopped, tossed back his glamorous long brown locks and screamed, “Here I am, kill your Emperor if you wish.”
Beau Breedlove gets milky
Instead of shooting, the soldiers responded by shouting “Vive Le Empereur!” and marching toward Paris where they retook the capital and harvested an army of 200,000. Napoleon was ecstatic, but he soon grew bored with his ascendancy and decided to shift his attentions from battleground strategery to barely legal young boys. He found a supple young page and began every morning by slowly pouring a gallon of warm milk over his blossoming pectorals. For the most part, he went with either whole or skim, but, on occasion, he opted for…Oh my God, what have I done here? I’ve mixed things up.
Napoleon didn’t meet his reckoning due to his lecherous pursuit of homosexual party boys. He was never elected as mayor of Portland after steadfastly and sanctimoniously denying allegations that he was involved with a dark, handsome 18-year old enigma with the porn star moniker Beau Breedlove. He didn’t lie repeatedly to friends, confidants and voters about his relationship with the boy–who was only 17 when he began “mentoring” him–and he didn’t use his political staff to pressure and groom the man to lie to the media.
No, Napoleon didn’t do any of these things. Napoleon came back from Elba, ruled France for 100 days and then met his destiny and was finally defeated at Waterloo and exiled to St. Helena Island–2,000 miles from any landmass–where he eventually died.
No, it was not Napoleon, but Portland Mayor Sam Adams whose pathological penchant for dishonesty was so gigantic that he felt no shame in using his own homosexuality as a blanket to shield him from rumors of an inappropriate relationship with a seventeen year-old boy.
Sam Adams and Beau Breedlove
Adams–the first homosexual elected as the mayor of one of America’s top 30 largest cities–confessed two weeks ago that he had been lying about his affair with boy-toy lover Beau Breedlove after certifiably badass Willamette Weekly reporter Nigel Jaquiss dragooned a number of Breedlove’s acquaintances into going on the record with their knowledge that Adams and Breedlove had been much more than friends.
Adams had consistently claimed that he served as nothing more than a mentor to Breedlove, who was a legislative intern in Salem in 2005 when the two met. Breedlove, now 21, stuck to this story as well until reaching the breaking point in a somewhat cryptic yet revelatory text message he sent to Jaquiss stating: “I can’t say anything. I’m sorry. I’m scared. If the story goes to print without me saying anything, I’m worried I will look like a scumbag. If I do say anything, then Sam’s fate is in my hands.”
When one of his early mayoral opponents Bob Ball–who is also gay– raised questions about Adams relationship with Breedlove in 2007, Adams was especially self-righteous in his denials. “If this had come from the right wing — and it probably will now — that would have been one thing. But to come from another gay man is something more hurtful. It plays into the worst deep-seated fears society has about gay men: You can’t trust them with your young,” he told the Portland Mercury in September of 2007.
The Portland news media–unable to find any evidence of the suggested impropriety–backed Adams up and attacked Ball for what they considered to be “slurs” on Adam’s character. Adams ascended to the Mayor’s office with ease and rumors off his relationship with Breedlove died off until two weeks ago. Then, at a sit down meeting with Willamette Weekly reporters–during which he not only continued to initially deny the allegations but even accused one of his accusers of attempting to rape Breedlove(audio here)– Adams finally gave it up.
Breedlove, who had been eluding the media for weeks, sat down with the Oregonian a week later and–between striking provocative pictures with his newly adopted German Shepherd Lolita–admitted that he and Adams slept together after he turned eighteen and shared a passionate kiss in Adam’s car and in the bathroom of city hall while he was still seventeen.
The fallout was predictable. The Oregonian and a number of Portland newspapers–including the gay publication Just Out–called for Adams resignation, while a cadre of Adams loyalists urged him to stay in office. The mayor underwent a week of soul searching–taking long walks over the Burnside Bridge at midnight wearing nothing but his horn-rimmed glasses and a lime-green trench coat. Beau Breedlove bought a new Cowboy hat, and a coterie of literary miscreants in Eugene, Oregon suggested that the mayor be banished to Elba.
Then on Sunday, January 26, Adams declared that he was staying in office. Since Oregon law requires at least six months pass before a public official face a recall, it appears Adams will stick around for a while regardless of the fact that he’s still under investigation by the Attorney General for potential sexual misconduct.
Here at P and F, we’ve been steadfast in our support of gay rights over the years, and while we find it a bit disconcerting that Sam Adams robs the cradle, we’re not immune to the charms of young, nubile flesh ourselves. But this scandal isn’t about sex; it’s about the pathological lying and abhorrent misconduct that Mr. Adams engaged in to cover his tryst up.
It’s about a man with a messianic sense of self-righteousness so grotesque that he began to believe his own mythology– that he was a victim of hate and prejudice– when in fact he was a political benefactor of homophobia and used its specter to mask his own misdeeds and weaknesses.
However, in the midst of his duplicity, Mr. Adams has achieved something that only a few heralded politicians in history can claim. He has banged an intern, lied about it unflinchingly for years to thousands of people, disparaged the character of those who correctly accused him of impropriety, been revealed as charlatan and then had the guile to not relinquish the power he commands.
Bob Packwood is envious. Mark Foley gives his props. Larry Craig is dying for an autographed picture. Bill Clinton….well yesterday he referred to Adams as “a chip off the old block.”
And Napoleon. His ghost still rots in St. Thomas. He died there. Some say it was from stomach cancer, others suggest the British poisoned him with arsenic. Regardless, he salutes your gusto Mr. Adams. He thinks you’re a hell of general. He believes you have the potential to be a tremendous autocrat.
February 2nd, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Wait, Politics and Funk is back?
Oh, right, the story. Um, well…. hm, I can’t say I’d throw Breedlove out of bed for eating crackers if I happened to be the first gay Mayor of Portland, but then, that’s probably one good reason I’m not the first gay Mayor of Portland. He should have come clean at the first opportunity, like Governor Roy Romer did after being caught smooching his Secretary. Romer survived without a major scandal, and Sam Adams probably would have been able to make this all blow over by owning up immediately.
February 3rd, 2009 at 12:24 am
Your goddamn right Politics and Funk is back! If Beau Breedlove was eating crackers in the collective bed of our editorial staff we’d be very upset.
February 3rd, 2009 at 10:13 am
What if he shared the crackers with your editorial staff, and they were that really good kind of crackers they sometimes have at fancy parties and fundraisers, the ones that are really buttery and almost melt in your mouth? Would you still be very upset?
Come to think of it, why does the editorial staff have a collective bed in the first place? Wouldn’t bunk beds make more sense?