Since the blog Gawker revealed that GOP Representative Chris Lee sent a racy photo of his shirtless self to a woman on Craigslist, thus providing the catalyst for his resignation from Congress, many have wondered who the female was.
On Thursday, we learned her identity.
Her name is Yesha Callahan, a 34-year-old single mother who works for the University of Maryland. For a set of reasons that seem to boil down to just plain boredom, Callahan put out the now-infamous Craigslist post that she was looking for someone who didn't look like a "toad."
What's great is that the fact Lee's white and Callahan's black has gone without conversation, and just may provide evidence that seems to fly in the face of the findings of a U.C. Berkeley study on online dating and race, to be released within weeks.
The study says that "In online dating, blacks more open to romancing whites than vice versa." And the lead author, UC Berkeley psychologist Gerald Mendelsohn, said "Whites more than blacks, women more than men and old more than young participants stated a preference for a partner of the same race." And from his preliminary findings, it's an 80 percent chance that would be the case.
Professor Mendelsohn (who give a nutty reason to back his study's conclusions that blacks are more likely to go after whites online, saying that blacks want to be a part of the "dominant racial group") didn't talk to the Republican Congressman Lee.
It was Lee who went after Callahan via her Craiglist post, which explained that she was an African American woman (and "black / Irish"), so her being black was an attraction for the GOP Conservative white male.
Take that Professor Mendelsohn!
What's so great about this otherwise rather sad story of the rapid downfall of a young Congressman is that it not only defies how some view American society, but fits my observations about how we've changed: a lot of Americans just don't care about race and those that do are more often than not treated as if they're cavepeople - which they are.
Now that we've got the race issue out of the way, - sort of, because it's still worthy of lengthy conversation, we can get back to the issue of Callahan and Lee.
Since Callahan "came out," she's been the focus of more than a little nasty commentary. Over at Gawker, commenters were obsessed with her 34 years of age (and all because she told Gawker she could pass for 24) as if that's a sure ticket to a death sentence. (34 is not "middle-aged and you should read Yesha's great blog post on this issue.)
Meanwhile, the 46-year-old Lee, who stepped down faster than it took LeBron James to announce he was going to The Miami Heat, went into hiding, but his wife is talking.
Michele Lee, 44, (a real looker, which makes you wonder what's going on between them) said they would try and work things out by taking a trip to the Florida Keys. The DailyMail UK reports that she's crushed and his father's "enraged" at the situation and the photo.
(Wait. What's his father got to do with it? Is Dad really just angry that his white congressman son used a popular website to arrange a hook-up with a black woman, and has to talk? Geez."Enraged?" Give me a break!)
The real problem is Chris Lee doesn't seem to have enjoyed his life. Otherwise, he'd not have resigned so quickly. But he did.
Lee was looking for a way out of his current existence, subconciously created an escape hatch, and jumped through it.
Now, he's almost a free man. And the rest is based on to what degree Chris Lee loves and wants to be exclusively with his wife.
Stay tuned.
And keep Dad out of it.
On Thursday, we learned her identity.
What's great is that the fact Lee's white and Callahan's black has gone without conversation, and just may provide evidence that seems to fly in the face of the findings of a U.C. Berkeley study on online dating and race, to be released within weeks.
The study says that "In online dating, blacks more open to romancing whites than vice versa." And the lead author, UC Berkeley psychologist Gerald Mendelsohn, said "Whites more than blacks, women more than men and old more than young participants stated a preference for a partner of the same race." And from his preliminary findings, it's an 80 percent chance that would be the case.
Professor Mendelsohn (who give a nutty reason to back his study's conclusions that blacks are more likely to go after whites online, saying that blacks want to be a part of the "dominant racial group") didn't talk to the Republican Congressman Lee.
It was Lee who went after Callahan via her Craiglist post, which explained that she was an African American woman (and "black / Irish"), so her being black was an attraction for the GOP Conservative white male.
Take that Professor Mendelsohn!
What's so great about this otherwise rather sad story of the rapid downfall of a young Congressman is that it not only defies how some view American society, but fits my observations about how we've changed: a lot of Americans just don't care about race and those that do are more often than not treated as if they're cavepeople - which they are.
Now that we've got the race issue out of the way, - sort of, because it's still worthy of lengthy conversation, we can get back to the issue of Callahan and Lee.
Since Callahan "came out," she's been the focus of more than a little nasty commentary. Over at Gawker, commenters were obsessed with her 34 years of age (and all because she told Gawker she could pass for 24) as if that's a sure ticket to a death sentence. (34 is not "middle-aged and you should read Yesha's great blog post on this issue.)
Meanwhile, the 46-year-old Lee, who stepped down faster than it took LeBron James to announce he was going to The Miami Heat, went into hiding, but his wife is talking.
(Wait. What's his father got to do with it? Is Dad really just angry that his white congressman son used a popular website to arrange a hook-up with a black woman, and has to talk? Geez."Enraged?" Give me a break!)
The real problem is Chris Lee doesn't seem to have enjoyed his life. Otherwise, he'd not have resigned so quickly. But he did.
Lee was looking for a way out of his current existence, subconciously created an escape hatch, and jumped through it.
Now, he's almost a free man. And the rest is based on to what degree Chris Lee loves and wants to be exclusively with his wife.
Stay tuned.
And keep Dad out of it.
