You could call it a learning experience, a far cheaper lesson for the rest of the world than for Ray Lam, a Vancouver political candidate who withdrew his nomination after racy pictures of him surfaced on Facebook.
Lam says the photos were on his private account, and those vetting the candidate hadn’t discovered them. If so, one of Lam’s “friends” must have leaked them. Links to Lam’s profile appeared on the campaign website.
Voters interested in learning about the 22-year-old candidate–yeah, looks like BC’s National Democratic Party nominated a guy still waiting for his car insurance to go down–had no problem finding photos of Lam in raunchy, college-party-like situations: one with Lam squeezing a young lady’s breast; another of him depantsed, one male and one female exploring the contents of his tightie-whities.
Well, it could have been worse. Vancouver could have found out about Lam thirty years from now when it would have been far creepier. A lot of today’s older politicians are probably glad Facebook wasn’t around when they were in college.
So what do we learn from this?
- Not every politician is a genius.
- If running for office, or vying for any job for that matter, either set your profile to private or remove lewd photos of yourself.
- Ask your friends to do the same.
- Yes, it was funny at the time. Yes, everybody’s got oats to sew. But it’s like that lower back tattoo you got on Spring Break—sooner or later you’ll just want to cover it up.
- Don’t write anything down. No photos, no videos.
