early and awful

David Wu Is Taking His Tiger Suit and Going Home

Oregon congressman David Wu is an extremely lucky man, in a way. Under normal circumstances, the allegations against him — that he engaged in some kind of non-consensual sex act with the 18-year-old daughter of a “a longtime friend and campaign donor” last Thanksgiving — would have set off a media frenzy. But everyone has been kind of distracted by this debt ceiling brouhaha, so Wu’s sex scandal has largely fallen by the wayside. (Also, because he’s from Oregon.) Still, he is facing an impending House Ethics Committee investigation, and after previously announcing that he wouldn’t run for re-election in 2012, Wu decided to cut to the chase and resign as soon as the debt-ceiling crisis is over.

Before the current accusations came to light over the weekend, Wu, a seven-term congressman, was best known for two other unflattering incidents. During his 2004 campaign, Wu essentially admitted to attempting to rape his ex-girlfriend in 1976 while both were students at Stanford. And in the closing weeks of his 2010 campaign, Wu’s behavior — which somehow involved a weird string of e-mails containing photos of Wu dressed in a tiger suit — became so erratic that staffers tried convince him to seek psychiatric help, and kept him hidden during the final days before the election. He was, truly, one of a kind.

Rep. Wu resigning following sex allegations [MSNBC]

David Wu Is Taking His Tiger Suit and Going Home