I find it astonishing the things that people will get upset over. This photo is Carmen Kontur-Gronquist, mayor in the 500-resident town of Arlington, Oregon. The residents are so angry about this picture from her MySpace page that they’re issuing a recall petition against her (essentially trying to get her removed from office). But she’s indignant. Her answer to the question of whether she would resign:

“That’s my personal life,” she said. “It has nothing to do with my mayor’s position. I’m not going to change who I am. A lot of officials have a personal life, and you have people in this community who have nothing better to do than scrape up stuff like this.”

Right answer. Why would anybody care what a mayor is doing in their own time? It’s none of their damned business. Why don’t they get a life of their own? Maybe there just isn’t enough going on in this little town of Arlington. We see this a lot with candidates for office in general; they’re expected to have squeaky-clean personal lives that everybody’s mother would approve of. I’m sorry, but that’s just unrealistic, and certainly unfair to expect. A candidate for office should be treated like a candidate for a job position: their personal lives are not up for public audit.

In any case, I think the townfolk look like idiots now, and Ms Kontur-Gronquist comes out of this looking pretty good (if you know what I mean).