My heart sank with news of Weinergate. I actually believed Rep. Anthony Weiner when he said his Twitter account was hacked, I mean, his name is Weiner, it's too predictable. But it was just confirmation that humans are incapable of resisting the temptation to capture our image naked or in flagrante.
Perhaps this behavior is rooted intrinsically in nature, something akin to a child's delight at first discovering their toes, they simply can't stop showing you them or the pleasure that males experience the first time they make a fart joke, and 40 years later, they're still just as amused by flatulence. In fact, we're not the only species that exhibits fascination with looking at genitals. Recently we learned that even the elegant, intelligent bottlenose dolphin, when given a mirror, checks out its teeth and then maneuvers to get a better look at, you guessed it, their privates. Given dorsal fin operable flip cameras, will dolphin porn be in our future?
We clearly face a Promethean dilemma, having to equip ourselves with technology beyond our wisdom to self regulate, presenting some inventive techie with an entrepreneurial opportunity. Let's call it the OOGLE App.
The OOGLE App takes Gmail's Goggles one important step further. While Goggles is intended to prevent you from sending emails you might later regret by presenting the late night emailer with a series of math problems and limited amount of time in which to solve them, the OOGLE App will prohibit you from sending digital messages where the skin-to-clothing ratio is more than considered acceptable for your current station in life. OOGLE will be downloaded onto all devices registered to elected officials, and for the rest of us mere mortals, purchasable and calibrated on a sliding ethical vulnerability scale from, say, "sitting president," "family values platform political candidate," "elected official," all the way down to "porn star," and "former child actor on probation, looking for comeback." Those at the bottom of the scale will be encouraged to send salacious photos to increase their media exposure, so to speak.
Facial recognition technology will be adapted by OOGLE to include genital recognition. All private parts of legislatures will be registered so any random device that photographs said officially recognized hoo-hahs will immediately replace the offending appendage by similar shaped and sized objects: pick axe, bath scrubber or toothpick. OOGLE will pose simple questions that any sitting government official should be able to answer easily.
Sample questions:
How many days between Rep. Chris Lee emailing shirtless photos and his resignation? (Trick question, it was the same day.)
How many days between the publication of Gov. Mark Sanford's illicit emails and his resignation. (Another trick question, he's still in office, he only sent terrible love poems, not explicit photos over the internet.)
Johnny Reid Edwards (no question needed, just the name should be deterrent enough).
Personally, I don't have a moral problem with Rep. Weiner; what disturbs me is his profound lack of judgment as a lothario. Can he really be counted on to craft winning strategies with those holding opposing points of view while failing miserably to score points with the opposite sex? The women he sent pictures too weren't very pleased, and that's not surprising. Anecdotal evidence suggests that out of context, the male genital is jarring; unless you're going full DAVID, the intelligent seducer heeds the words of Sarah McLachlan and devotes his energies to "building a mystery." If Hollywood is any guide, female nudity titillates, while male nudity provides comic relief. Even Ashton Kucher's perfectly toned posterior was photographed purely for laughs in this year's laugh-less No Strings Attached. Evidence the perennially shirtless Matthew McConaughey's Gucci perfume ads -- he's in a tux.
The economics make sense. Whatever the price point of the OOGLE App, it's gotta be far less than hundreds of thousands if not millions (if Eliot Spitzer is any example) Weiner will be spending on legal fees. On top of that, the international market is booming -- only last week, six Turkish officials were forced to resign after sex tapes hit the media. Larry Page, please get your peeps working on this, cause it would be really cool if it were called Google's OOGLE.