[New Republic] In an article on The New Republic today, journalist Marin Cogan details some of the sexual advances female reporters in Washington, D.C. must field from even the most rainmaking of our elected officials. Nodding toward a House of Cards episode that broached the subject of fraught journalist-source flirtations, Cogan writes that colleagues of hers have been hit on by fundraisers, lobbyists, think-tank brains, and beyond, some of whom were wearing wedding rings whilst trying to get laid.
But one of Cogan’s scandalous recollections stands out from the rest, both for its main star—a “high-profile” congressman—and for the clues it provides:
House of Cads
The psycho-sexual ordeal of reporting in Washington
These are the stories you don’t hear, in part because they don’t occupy the fantasies of the mostly male scriptwriters of Washington dramas and in part because women reporters are reluctant to signal to any source—past, present, or future—that they might not be discreet or trustworthy. Such stories tend to fall on the spectrum somewhere between amusing and appalling. Sometimes they reach the level of stalking: One colleague had a high-profile member of Congress go out of his way to track down her cell-phone number, call and text repeatedly to tell her she was beautiful, offer to take her parents on a tour of the Capitol, and even invite her to go boating back home in his district.