Politician rapped over latex glove pose

from yahoo

Thu Mar 29, 8:32 AM ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German politician who helped to topple Bavarian premier Edmund Stoiber has been attacked by her colleagues for posing in latex gloves for a magazine.

Gabriele Pauli, a 49-year-old local politician in the Bavaria-based Christian Social Union (CSU), is featured in Park Avenue magazine wearing the long, black gloves.

Her outfit is otherwise conservative but it did not stop extensive German media coverage on Wednesday of the photo shoot.

"Politics needs to have a certain degree of respectability and Ms. Pauli has damaged this," Norbert Geis, a national member of parliament in the CSU, told the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung paper.

"Her behavior is beyond the pale. She has brought this on herself," said party colleague Peter Uhl.

Pauli, who also wears a wig in the pictures, lashed out at the magazine for placing the photographs under a headline reading "Sankt (saint) Pauli." The term is well known in Germany as the name of a Hamburg red light district.

CSU leader Stoiber, who narrowly lost the 2002 election to former Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder, said he would stand down in September after 14 years as state premier following a snooping scandal centered around party rebel Pauli.

Pauli said Stoiber's office tried to obtain "information about lovers and alcohol consumption" to use against her.

The conservative CSU is the sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU).