Let’s all calm down just a little bit.
No one, at this point, questions that Weiner did some dumb stuff, starting with sending a tumescent-if-covered picture on Twitter without realizing it’s not as secure as he apparently thought. No one questions, now, that Weiner was getting a little strange on the side, at least electronically, or that he was apparently picking twitter followers of the feminine and toothsome variety to approach. Should he resign? I’d just as well he didn’t; he’s been a complete jerk, and the longer he stays the longer he provides an example pour encourager les autres. And whether Huma should stay with him is entirely their business.
So let’s be real clear I’m not saying “give him a pass.” But listening to the conservasphere today, I’ve heard him called a “pervert”, and “a stalker” who was “randomly sending pictures of his penis to young girls”. So let’s back up just a bit.
Is he a pervert? Well, there’s an old saying that the declension there is “I’m adventurous, you’re kinky, he’s a pervert.” Since we’re talking in third person, I guess that makes him a pervert. But one of my best friends, someone I know from acting, runs a legal phone sex service; guys pay her and her employees to talk dirty. If Weiner is a pervert, he certainly has a lot of company in his perversion — look in the back pages of most any weekly newspaper.
Is he a stalker? Not in any reasonable interpretation of the word. He was carrying on electronic flirtations that were to all appearances voluntary on both sides. Had he exceeded these women’s bounds, they could block him instantly — hell, Jay Rosen blocked me on twitter because he kapt tweeting dumb things I could refute in 140 characters. You can block anyone at any time. If you just stop following smoeone, they can’t send you direct messages any more. This isn’t Bill Clinton asking an employee to “kiss it” — much less some of the other things that have been reported about Clinton.
I haven’t seen anyone suggesting that he was randomly sending unexpected pictures. Everyone who has talked about this appears to be saying it was part of a flirtatious conversation. Nor are these women all that young. No, sorry, a 21 year old is a grown up, completely capable of making her own decisions, certainly a sexual being and in today’s world probably not sexually inexperienced. Even a 19 year old is a legal adult — sure, as Stacy McCain says, he would be angry if he learned his 19 year old was having hot conversations with a man Weiner’s age — but what father is really comfortable thinking of his daughter as a sexual being? And one of these “young women” — the blackjack dealer, who Jason Lewis was all outraged about on the radio this afternoon — is 40 and apparently carried on this phone-and-facebook dalliance for most of a year. Similarly with the people who have been saying Weiner is an “exhibitionist” and put him into the same category as a guy in a trenchcoat flashing schoolkids.
Well, when I was overseas years ago, my then-fiancee sent me some fairly racy pictures, and I wrote some pretty torrid letters. If everyone who exchanges racy pictures with a current inamorata is an exhibitionist, there are sure one helluva lot of them.
The point is: what Weiner did was dumb enough, and arguably immoral enough, and his lying afterward embarrassed his friends and family and his political allies and supporters. I don’t blame Kirsten Powers a bit for wanting to kick his ass. But some of the things people on the right are saying about Weiner are as maliciously untruthful as the repetition of the things about Sarah Palin saying she could see Alaska from her house, or that she personally hunts wolves from helicopters as blood sport.
I get the “this is just about sex” angle, Charlie. I really do.
Of course, Weiner lost that defense the nanosecond he claimed he had been “set up” and he doubled down on this malevolence, when he allowed to be blamed and PARTICIPATED in the fraud that this was a vast right wing conspiracy.
I’m going to part company with your notion that a 21 year old girl or a 19 year old girl or a high school girl…who has become “experienced” in sexual matters…is now fair game for a married, sitting Congressman to target for his escapades.
He is the adult in this situation and while “complete innocence” may be brushed aside because “we all know” how “experienced” 19 year old girls are these day…simply doesn’t cut it as an argument for me.
It’s creepy. And while we have grown up in an “anything goes” atmosphere…”none of our business” society…there ARE still SOME lines that can be drawn without being a schoolmarmish prude, I believe.
Porn stars and photos of one’s genitalia over the internet to people one has not met may be Charlie Sheen cool or Tiger Woods frolic, but a sitting Congressman could be put at genuine risk to more than HIS private loss, making this a dangerous games for third parties.
The fiction that was presented here was that non-leftists were to BLAME for this, and they were attacked on that same blogosphere you address today.
This man was willing to lie with impunity. He acted like a creep, a bully, a tyrant and a scam artist.
And that was BEFORE he got caught. Maybe in the long run, none of any that matters to us after all.
And THAT’S the saddest fact to come out of this entire fiasco.
No, that’s not the point at all. It’s not the sex, it’s the lying. But let’s not lie about what the sex was, that’s all.
He’s married; if he’d do this to his wife what would he do to America?
If the point is that we’re all just a bunch of stupid bastards without any moral compass, why even get up in the morning other than to be a new age, semi-respectable equivalent of a pirate, allied with other “friends” we recognize as temporary allies until the lack of a moral compass reveals us all to be completely alone.
Do kids really need to be asking their parents why a sitting Congressmen is sending out pix of his privates to virtual sluts the same way that kid and his friends would draw a penis in class and pass it around to each other to giggle about it? Is the answer, why grow up, rules mean nothing and a wife is there to betray? Betray your friends too, the voters?
Sure, be a freak, knock yourself out – keep it private. I don’t need any billboards with Congressman Weiner’s privates on it and our “Around the Town”, free weekly newspapers already have back sections that look like a Singapore red-light district in 1870 – this is after the main article about a local corrupt city councilmen or union official.
Weiner’s a kid, about to have a kid. It’s arguable whether he screwed his wife morally more than actually; that’s not a happy situation but one that is depraved.
If Palin actually did hunt wolves from a helicopter that would still put her way ahead of Weiner since we can presume none of the wolves were actually her kids with a hide thrown over them.
Charlie, if he’d come out right at the get-go and said, “Yes, I did it. I apologize to my wife, my constituents, my fellow congresspeople, and the nation as a whole,” I’d have said, let him keep his seat as the disgrace of the Democratic Party.
But he went beyond that… well beyond. He lied, numerous times. Perhaps not perjury in the legal sense, but really… after all the lies this dimwit told, can we ever really trust him with any sort of power, even as one of 435 Representatives?
Politically, sure, he’d make a great cat-toy for the GOP to bat around from now till November 2012. But sometimes higher priorities trump politics, and I don’t want this untrustworthy liar anywhere near any of the levers of power in my country.
Genette Cordova claims she wasnt sexting Weiner and that the pic sent to her was unsolicited. There are also 2 highschool girls -veronica and betty – that originally claimed to have sexts before recanting after the scandal broke.
I dont see how you can say no unsolicited and no young women with a straight face.
So how about 15 and 16?
Er… Charlie… whatever Weiner’s real sexual proclivities (no one knows that but ANthony himself), he is one MOTHER OF A SECURITY RISK. And I write that hating upper case. I have known many intell agents in my life, as you know, and they would eat this man alive. Forget water-boarding. He has water-boarded himself and should be out of congress this minute.
He is also a sleazy misogynist. But then so are a lot of politicians.
You know, Roger, the fascinating part about even this tiny sort of defense is that people apparently don’t actually read what one writes. Like “So let’s be real clear I’m not saying ‘give him a pass.’ ” Yes, he clearly was risking blackmail, but hell, the only reason I offered for his not resigning was so we would still have Anthony Weiner to kick around. Embarrass him, investigate him, hound him, put him in stocks in the public square, I’m fine with all that, as long as it’s for things he actually did. But let’s not make shit up.
Par.ty.poo.per.
“…some of the things people on the right are saying about Weiner are as maliciously untruthful as the repetition of the things about Sarah Palin …”
If this is even true, I’m unaware of it. In any case, Weiner is a rabid far Left hack, a power-abusing scumbag, a proven liar, while Sarah Palin is a genuine American patriot. Comparing the former with the latter is rather bankrupt, and delivering a pious lecture about how the former is being treated is, well, pious in the worst sense.
Well, Morton, if you think “they did it” is sufficient moral justification, I guess I can see how you’d conclude that.
This is ridiculous. The man is a whole lot more than stupid. Stupid, lewd, immature, arrogant, disingenuous, illicit, unfaithful, and ultimately unfit to serve as a member of the congress of the greatest country in the world. Defending him only makes the defender look at best sympathetic if not encouraging of the aforemtioned traits. The liberal media needs to follow suit from the liberal establishment in Washington and separate themselves from Weiner. The only thing more shocking than the revelation that this entire story turned out to be even worse than it first seemed is that the liberal media continues to defend this deviant. Do yourself a favor; look, for once, like you have some sense of morality: stop defending the indefensible.
Jordan, if your idea of a “sense of morality” is to think its immoral to be defending Weiner against false accusations, then I’ll pass thanks. I’m not even a Christian and I know that “bearing false witness” is a sin.
Meagan Broussard wasn’t asking him for pictures, beyond the “Me” photo he sent, proving he was really Representative Weiner. But he sent them anyway. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the same as flashing someone on the street. I don’t care if she was willingly in that conversation to that point, she didn’t ask to see his wiener, but he was more than happy to show it to her. Maybe she continued the conversation because she wondered just how far he’d go… Maybe she was gathering evidence to fry him.
Moral of the story: just because she was still receiving his texts doesn’t mean she approved of what he was sending her.
I’d also point out that it was at the point where he sent her the nekkid dickpic that she spoke to a friend asking what she should do. It was the friend who sent her to Breitbart.
So it’s pretty clear that she didn’t approve of the things the congressman was sending her, was grossed out by them, and thought the world should maybe know what a grotesque little worm Weiner is.
Further, he wasn’t just showing off his junk in private (which would be akin to putting on a show for your lover in your bedroom), the now-famous crotch shot was PUBLIC. So, yeah… that’s flashing, because it hardly matters who the intended recipient of the crotch shot was — it went out to the whole world. So that alone is reason for him to go.
Now, you can argue all you like, but it’s pretty clear to me he was sending things unsolicited to women who didn’t want to receive them. (Heck, he sent the one image out to the entire world wide web; doesn’t matter if it was accidental or not.) Maybe not all of his sexting buddies were unwilling victims (Weiss and the porn star were obviously thrilled to be engaged in their sexting relationship with him), but that doesn’t mean every woman he sexted wanted to be on the receiving end of his wiener.
Oh, and btw. We have Broussard, Weiss, the porn star, and now the woman in GA who all were saxting Weiner starting sometime in the past eleven months. Didn’t he say it was six women, and most of them were before he was married? Maybe he defines “most” differently than the rest of us do…
I’m not going to say sexting is teh evul or anything, but a guy who’s pursuing that many women (and lord only knows how many more that haven’t come forward and may never do so) has a very serious problem and undoubtedly could use some psychiatric help with his issues. On that basis alone, he’s unfit to serve.
I get that Weiner’s tweeting sexually explicit photos, etc is not illegal, and that the couple of women named (so far) are of legal age.
But Weiner is a member of the US House of Representatives, he is a Congressman. I think that should count for something in judging his actions. There should be some little expectation that a man in that position will behave with dignity, at least in public. Tweeting is public, and so is Facebook, and Blogging. It seems he spends a lot of his time maintaining these (to me) weird relationships, one wonders if he has had time to do his day job, which is being a legislator.
Yes, he lied (and I can’t blame him for that, except it is so easy to get caught, and he should have known that.) But he did more: he tried to involve Andrew Breitbart in his ‘hacking’ story.
It will be very interesting to see if he is re-elected in 2012. If the electorate return him to Congress, then it will be a very sad day for the Republic.
It was right to hound Weiner until he told the truth, but now I’d think that continuing to hound him is objectively in the Democrats’ interest, since it distracts from more serious issues:
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/06/07/fanniegate-gamechanger-for-the-gop/
Of course I am not suggesting that Weiner’s pictures should not be brought up again if and when he stands for reelection.
About Palin….suppose she had sent one of her many facebook fans a personal message picture. Let’s say she was simply in a nightgown in the picture with one of her kids in the room and not trying to be risque. What do you think would be the reaction if the person that received the pic gave it to a liberal blogger?
Jesus, Charlie, way to ignore reality.
Some of the people he was “in contact with” through Twitter were underage. Meaning under 18. He admitted in his crocodile-tear laden press conference that he hadn’t bothered to confirm any of them were actually adults, and the people who had been tracking his behavior for months (a year? longer?) say they specifically warned underage girls about him.
And if that’s actually proven, in a court of law, then by all means, let the keelhauling begin. Until it is proven, or until he’s indicted by the House Ethics Committee (yeah good luck on that one, the House Ethics Committee is FUBAR)I’m with Charlie. Beat up on him all you want for the things he’s admitted he’s done, but let us refrain from “Making Shit Up.”
Pat