The Louvre, the ballroom, and Graham Platner’s tattoo

By Alfred P. Doblin

Friday. No one in charge of security at the Louvre apparently ever watched Ocean’s 8. No one yet has suggested the East Wing of the White House was demolished to make way for a replica of the old flagship Bonwit Teller store, not a ballroom. (Old New Yorkers will understand) And it seems no male Democrat running for the U.S. Senate in Maine can keep his shirt on.

There is a lot of serious things happening around the globe, so it may be surprising that the lack of shirts in Maine is on my list, but the story has legs… and torsos. Sorry.

This bare-chested tale begins with Graham Platner. He’s a progressive Democratic, supported by Bernie Sanders, who is trying to unseat the Republican incumbent, Susan Collins, who’s been in the Senate since 1996. When I first heard the story, I was a bit confused. A video of Platner had gone viral. He was dancing at his brother’s wedding 10 years ago. He was in his underpants. Nothing else.

Platner was lip-syncing to a Miley Cyrus song. I believe it’s “Wrecking Ball” which could tie us back into the demise of the East Wing, but I digress. With Platner, the song title was prescient. The old video revealed he had a tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi symbol. Platner claims that when he was a Marine in Croatia, he and his equally drunk buddies got tattoos and gravitated to skull and crossbones and that was all there was to it.

People may accept that part of the narrative. But it’s hard to believe that more than a decade of stripping later, the possibility that the tattoo was a symbol of Hitler’s Schutzstaffel never came up.

Leave aside the judgement of stripping at your brother’s wedding, other things have been revealed, as well. Platner’s history on Reddit of crude, misogynistic, racist, and homophobic posts also have come to light. The slurs against LGBTQ people are particularly graphic and offensive. Platner spoke to The Advocate about them and admits they are indefensible.

He says he is not the same person he was back then. I hope, for his sake, that is true. The men and women who serve in our military step-up to do something most of us would not do. I respect that. And I respect his admission of struggling with the demons that followed him out the service.

Yet, he says that much of what he posted was just designed to get a rise out of people; he never believed some of the outrageous things he posted. So, he said them for attention? For followers? Does that make it better?

As the fallout from the tattoo continued, Platner promised to have the tattoo removed. He did not, but rather, had it covered up. Sadly, he cannot cover up, so there I was watching CNN at lunch on Thursday as the anchor explained that a large image of a man’s bare chest on the screen was not gratuitous. It was news.

Platner revealed his new tattoo: a Celtic knot with a spread-eagled dog. Or something like that. It’s not very attractive.

If the Maine story couldn’t get odder, I found a re-posted post in my X feed by Jordan Wood. He’s running for the same U.S. Senate seat as is Platner and Maine Governor Janet Mills, who is also looking to unseat Collins. In Wood’s post, he is lying shirtless in bed with his baby daughter on his chest. A lot of dads have shirtless photos of themselves holding their babies. I’ve never quite understood why.

Wood’s post highlighted that he, too, had a tattoo, but he knew what it meant: it was the symbol for the Obama presidential campaign.

It’s important to remind yourself that these are Democrats trying to bring a more relevant, serious approach to government. We have primaries to sort out who is who and what the electorate wants. Platner is leading by a wide margin in a recent University of New Hampshire poll. The folks in Maine will have to figure it out.

But why do we have to know what it on these candidates’ chests. When did this become relevant? Platner’s Reddit posts are enough for a serious conversation on its contents, and also, on the effects of PTSD. I don’t know whether that can excuse Platner’s past conduct. I remain troubled by anyone claiming what they posted online was never reflective of what they believed, but rather only a gimmick to get attention.

That’s not a credo for leadership; it is a good line for a stripper. Listen to the sage Miss Mazeppa in Gypsy, “You've gotta get a gimmick, if you want to get ahead.”

Jordan Wood’s shirtless post was reflective of that mantra, as well. He saw an opportunity. His tattoo is on his arm. He could have just flexed in a T-shirt to make his point. But that wouldn’t have garnered the same attention as the shirtless photo with his daughter. He got people’s attention. OK. That was a minute. Now what?

With all that is happening or not happening in Congress, to quote the fictional President Andrew Shepherd of The American President, “We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them.”

We have serious problems, but we are consumed by so much that is not serious. Shiny objects are everywhere, and we dart from one to the other. No wonder jewel thieves could drive a truck with a ladder to the side of the Louvre and steal millions of gems in broad daylight. Or that a section of the White House could be demolished in days. Or that Democratic candidates for a U.S. Senate seat in Maine have made a splash not over progressive policy, but pectorals and body ink.

As I wrote at the top of the blog: Friday.

Until next time, Alfred with a P