Kudos for Menino's quest for privacy

by Thomas Keane, Jr.
Wednesday, July 9, 2003

The latest outrage from the Menino administration? The mayor tried to go to the doctor in secret.

Good for him.

Last Thursday Tom Menino checked into the hospital to get a ``growth'' removed from his back. (Some speculate the growth was House Speaker Thomas Finneran; others think it was the entire City Council.)

The long-scheduled operation wasn't on Menino's schedule. When word leaked out, the administration provided few details. Given that this was the usually dull Fourth of July weekend and there was little else to talk about, the surgery erupted into a mini-scandal. The story, mind you, wasn't that Menino was ill. Rather, it was that he tried to keep it private.

That marks a change in policy by the mayor, and a welcome one at that. In March 1995 and then in January 1997, Menino checked into Brigham and Women's Hospital for the removal of some kidney stones. To say that the procedure involved is both personal and painful is an understatement.

Still, the mayor was open about everything, allowing his doctors to brief the press and disclosing step-by-step what was going on.

And he paid for it. The mayoral kidney stones were the subject of at least 40 newspaper stories and vastly more bad jokes. There were comparisons of Menino to the kidney-shaped Frog Pond, discussion of him ``passing'' on a stadium for the Patriots and when then-Gov. Paul Cellucci came down with the same condition, Menino was described as giving ``stoney support.'' The press even held a kidney stone watch, gleefully noting in February 1997 that it had finally passed.

Humiliating, belittling stuff. Just the kind of stuff, Menino now says, that ``keeps people out of politics.''

Menino may be tilting at windmills here. Where once we regarded the personal lives of politicians - including health and sexual matters - as unsuitable for public consumption, now, it appears, everything is fair game. I think that line was crossed when a 17-year-old on MTV asked newly elected President Bill Clinton, ``Is it boxers and briefs?''

In what was one of the stupidest moves ever by an otherwise savvy politician, Clinton answered ``usually briefs.'' There is, of course, no conceivable way such information could have any bearing on politics and public policy. By answering it, Clinton in effect said that he was, in his entirety, a public person. There were no questions that couldn't be asked, no secrets that couldn't be probed and no part of his life that could remain hidden.

And a few years later, when he was impeached and almost convicted for denying he had an affair, Clinton paid the price.

The Clintons, quite clearly, still don't get it. Even though the former president expresses anger over turning a ``public person into a private pinata'' (a comment he made in May at the Kennedy Library), that hasn't stopped his wife (with her new book) nor him (he's still writing his own memoirs) from continuing to bare all.

And that's a bad thing. Partly it's bad because it turns many otherwise decent people off to the idea of public service. But more importantly, it conflates politics and celebrity. Politicians become just another version of actors and pop singers. And when politicians indulge in that cult of celebrity, too often their personal lives become the tool by which their political accomplishments and beliefs are destroyed. The proof of that, of course, is the Monica Lewinsky mess. It had nothing to do with running the country, but provided Republicans the opportunity to nearly bring down a president and largely undermine his last two years in office.

That's not to say that there are no circumstances where a pol's personal life can become relevant. For certain high offices, a life-threatening health matter plainly becomes a legitimate public issue. (Although in the case of Menino, life-threatening issues mostly are of concern to the 13 city councilors, all of whom are plotting how to succeed the man they regard as mayor for life.)

Moreover, politicians, like all public figures, can sometimes serve as valuable object lessons. Sen. John Kerry used his recent prostate cancer surgery, for example, to encourage other men to get themselves screened. Still, such a role should be a voluntary decision, not one we force upon politicians simply by dint of them holding office.

It turns out Menino's effort to keep some privacy failed - otherwise, to be frank, this column wouldn't be appearing. But his effort to draw some sort of line is commendable. I don't need to know about his growths, whether he uses sunscreen or if he takes his vitamins once a day. In a week where a 3-year-old girl was paralyzed from an errant bullet, we should be worrying about things that are more important.

Talk back to Tom Keane at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.