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Back in the Pleistocene era when I was a young dentist fresh out of school, I knew that the quickest way to total professional destruction was to date your patients. Sure, it is a great way to meet chicks, and sure many of them seem like they would be attracted to you, and sure you're closer to them in a matter of a couple of minutes than anyone other than their prom date may have ever been, and sure there's no shortage of single women out there...BUT...
In fact the only reason that she would be within three football fields' distance from you is that she broke a tooth/needs a cleaning/ is in pain/has swollen gums and is there for professional advice and treatment when necessary, treatment for which she, or someone else, will have to pay money. It does not matter if she looks like Raquel Welch or Sophia Loren or Bo Derek (showing my age I suppose), she's not there to get picked up. Or maybe she is and then you REALLY have a lot to worry about, because, unless you look like Robert Redford or Clark Gable or Leo DiCaprio, she ain't there for your good looks and sterling sense of humor, believe-you-me.
Now if you mutually agreed that you DID want to date, then you would have to dismiss her from your patient population and effect a transfer to another dentist with whom you may have a professional relationship, but not a concomitant personal relationship. This all makes good sense, since what's more important: the date or the career?
So it would seem that everyone in a position of authority and imbued with the public trust should feel that it would be inappropriate to act in such a manner that one could lose one's job, one's license to work in a given business or profession, or worse, even a criminal legal problem involving drugs, Mann Act violations, or intoxication of all varieties. So the question really becomes: if you are a public figure or a community person wherein your success is directly tied to your reputation, then why would you entrust a complete stranger with the ability to utterly and totally destroy you? Well, you probably wouldn't if you stopped for one instant and thought about it. If one sent messages thru Craig's List which read "so-and-so (real name) is looking for a hot time with such-and-such (a variation of the norm), then it would not be long before that individual would run out of money just sending the radiographs of all the patients to other dentists.
So the question comes down to: Why TF would a Congressman whose stands and extroverted pronouncements are an anathema to the RW in this country, do this? I leave it to the therapist who is going to have to deal with him and his family for a long long time.
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