"First of all, the kid's going to grow up in Gracie Mansion. So I'm going to say, 'Kid, don't complain.'"
-- Anthony Weiner on what he's going to tell his young son about the sexting scandals that have made his father into a national laughingstock and embarrassed his entire family
And there you have it.
If the all-consuming narcissism and mind-boggling lack of any sense of shame weren't enough to make you not only refuse to ever vote for Anthony Weiner but to openly, hostilely detest him as a human being, this should seal the deal. Nothing Weiner has ever done has been about anyone but him, about his naked ambition and his invariably self-serving goals.
I'll give Weiner this: He's one of the most transparent politicians America has ever seen. He's made it perfectly clear that the end will always justify the means -- or excuse the mistakes -- and that as long as he gets what he wants, who cares how he did it or what needed to be overlooked to make it happen? What's worse, for those wondering about Huma Abedin and the ways she seems to be enabling this asshole, now you know exactly how he's pitching the whole thing to her: It doesn't matter how many dumb little fangirls I send pictures of my dong to because unlike them and everyone openly mocking you right now, you're going to be the first lady of New York City, living in Gracie Mansion, when all of this is over. So what if I had to break a bunch of eggs to make you a gilded omelet?
Except that she's not going to end up living in Gracie. None of them are. If he continues his delusional campaign, come election day Weiner's going to be exactly what he is right now. He's going to be a national punchline, only with the added humiliation of watching himself and the family he's shamed go down in flames.
"Democrats have not only refused to hold Republicans accountable for the double standard, but they have joined with Republicans in piling on with the demands that Anthony Weiner had to resign even as David Vitter stays in the Senate... Anthony Weiner, who was not accused of corruption, who does not appear to have done anything illegal, who does not even appear to have had sex with any of the women with any of the people with whom he had scandalous talk and picture-taking, for him a line was drawn... If the key to ending somebody's career is not the severity of their bad behavior but rather how much press coverage you can generate about any level of bad behavior then congratulations, Democrats. In an era of unhinged, ideological, big money conservative media that is wholly and admittedly divorced from the precepts of journalism, in hounding Anthony Weiner into resigning ... you have just fed and unleashed this beast against yourselves, probably for a generation."
-- Rachel Maddow
I think that Weiner resigning was probably the right thing to do given the circumstances, but that's just it -- given the circumstances. As Cenk Uygur, much to his credit, points out perfectly in the above clip, the Weiner scandal was sure to be a distraction for the Democrats for a while, but only because they'd allow it to be. I still maintain that eventually everyone would have moved on, but I can't help but think that the Republicans likely would've forgotten about it long before Weiner's own party did -- because as we all know, nobody knows how to do the job of their political adversaries for them like Democrats. This is the issue I've had with the Dems since day one, and it's something I've written about over and over again: they have no idea how to pull together, circle the wagons, fight to the death and stay on message the way the Republicans do, which is why the GOP tends to kick their collective, self-defeating ass again and again. There really is no better example of the vast difference between Republican internal politics and Democratic internal politics than the fact that David Vitter is still in office and Anthony Weiner isn't.
The Democrats have always been their own worst enemy -- and they just go right on proving it.
Between Maddow's perfectly tuned outrage and this little item from yesterday -- touting yet another bullet-meet-foot "revolt" by liberals at Netroots Nation against Barack Obama -- it's time to once again bring back a piece from late 2009. It bothers me to no end that this sucker holds up so well.
"With Friends Like These..." (Originally Posted, 8.21.09)
"So progressives are now in revolt. Mr. Obama took their trust for granted, and in the process lost it. And now he needs to win it back."
-- Paul Krugman in an editorial in today's New York Times
I'm not one of those people who listens to right-wing radio, even occasionally, looking for something to piss him off. If I wanted to make myself angry for no good reason, I'd call my estranged wife -- or maybe put on a Phish record.
That said, I was flipping through Sirius XM radio a couple of days ago when I stumbled across the America Right or "Patriot Radio" channel. The show that happened to be on at the time was something called The Wilkow Majority (I'll give you a minute to shake your head at the right's ongoing and obligatory need to cast itself in the most muscular terms possible) hosted by a guy named Andrew Wilkow. What separates Wilkow from the rest of the crazy-come-latlies out there in conservative radioland is his belief that he's, well, a punk.
I'm not kidding.
Both Wilkow and his producer, an at one time faux-hawk-sporting kid named Nick Rizzuto, have gotten it through their heads that they're the personification of the right's new school -- and that the new school they represent also happens to be the logical next step in the evolution of punk. They've even started a website called "Conservative Punk." If this sounds fucking laughable, believe me -- it is. Do yourself a favor and don't think too hard about trying to fit the square peg of punk rock culture into the round hole of unabashed capitalism and conservatism; I tried for awhile and it only made my head hurt. Jello Biafra and Henry Rollins are turning over in their graves at this ridiculous conceit and they're not even dead yet. You almost have to give credit to the right's lack of shame when it comes to attempting to co-opt some of the better trends of the left while forcibly trading off its own misdeeds, clumsily trying to shove them under the banner of its enemy and hoping that no one notices how full of shit the whole notion is (Hitler was a leftist, racism is a liberal ideal, etc.).
Needless to say, neither Andrew Wilkow nor his remora, Nick Rizzuto, is a punk. To twist a somewhat legendary phrase: Boys, I grew up with punks. I was good friends with punks. I was a punk (and according to some, still am). You're no fucking punks.
The reality is that, after taking a quick glance at his website, Wilkow looks like he could be just about any other right-wing talking head. This is especially amusing when you consider the fact that he is actually quite a bit younger than the usual suspects and yet still looks like your basic perpetually middle-aged white guy who hasn't been blown since college. I guess that's what being Sean Hannity's hand-picked protege does to you. (Now's a good time to once again remind you that a guy who counts his introduction to Hannity among the greatest moments in his life also considers himself an up-the-establishment standard bearer of punk rock's new blood. You've gotta be fucking kidding me.)
All very easy shots at Wilkow and his show aside, though, I have to admit that while listening to him for a few minutes the other day, he made a surprisingly good point -- one that I sort of made here earlier in the week. I guess we're both on the same "Punk Rock Manifesto Weekly" mailing list.
The Wilkow rant in question had to do with the tendency of liberals to seemingly revel in martyrdom and self-sabotage -- their propensity to almost embrace their roles as losers and to be able to snatch defeat from the jaws of even the most assured victory. The crux of his argument was this: The Democrats have near-complete control of the government right now -- from the White House to the Hill. Legislation-wise, they can accomplish practically anything they set out to, and yet they're somehow content to bitch, moan and blame Republicans for standing in the way of progress when in reality no one's completely blocking their path. Worse than all of that, and this is something Wilkow didn't broach but I will: Liberals can't help fighting amongst themselves. It's as if it's ingrained in their DNA to never completely agree on anything. And we've all seen how well that strategy works when it comes to pushing through an agenda or, you know, winning elections.
A couple of days ago I published a piece decrying the Democrats for not being willing to take off the gloves and get their hands a little dirty when it comes to battling the Republican noise machine trying to thwart them at every turn. My point was that there won't be much solace in being able to say, "Well, at least we stuck to the ideals that make us better than the GOP automatons," four years from now if nothing got done and a Republican president is back in office. I'm not saying that there can't and won't be disagreement and dissent; I'm saying that in order to get the job done and give Barack Obama the clout he needs to move his agenda forward by leaps and bounds, there has to be, to a large extent, a united front to face the consistently united front staring you down from the other side of the aisle. To paraphrase The Godfather, as far as outsiders are concerned, you never take sides against the family.
Sure this is slightly robotic and seems to stand against everything left-wing America stands for, but guess what? It fucking wins.
Sometimes you've gotta look at the big picture -- and if there's anyone who can't seem to do that because they're too busy picking every little thing apart just to prove how intellectual, analytical and multi-faceted they are, it's liberals.
First of all, let me state unequivocally that Krugman's a genius; he's one of the smartest people around, and his views are always worth listening to. Let me also make it clear that I'm not suggesting that any side of the political spectrum let its leaders get away with anything and everything. The good of the nation should, for all intents and purposes, trump the good of the party. My argument is that the battle lines are so clearly drawn these days, the alternative for either party is so far removed from its own desired reality for the country, that each side has to be willing to accept that a big picture victory, even a partial one, is infinitely better than a complete loss. The Republicans realize this; the Democrats seem not to. Krugman's editorial, which takes President Obama to task for supposedly betraying the progressive base that helped put him in office, is a perfect example of the self-defeating splinter cell tendency of left-wing politics. Yes, Barack Obama seems to have slipped comfortably into a more middle-of-the-road stance than much of the left-leaning electorate would've liked, but make no mistake: a New York Times editorial from one of the leading liberal voices in America declaring that Obama has lost the support of progressives and now has to earn it back accomplishes nothing aside from doing the job of Republican strategists for them.
An editorial like Krugman's is every conservative's wet dream -- because those on the right know that any well-publicized dissension within the Democratic ranks makes Obama look weak and proves their point to those on the fence: that even when the Democrats have what they need to run the government their way, they can't make it happen. They can't seal the deal, despite having everything on their side.
As Wilkow said, they're born losers.
Right about now, the Democrats need to take a hint from a recent song by Green Day: Know Your Enemy. At the very least, know who he is.
Of course, Green Day actually have something in common with Andrew Wilkow: They're not real punks either.
That's okay, give it a year or so and he'll realize that that light at the end of the tunnel was always from the cable TV studio where he'll be hosting his own show.
By the way, I stand by my statement that he could've ridden out this scandal if he'd wanted to. If he had truly dug his heels in there likely wouldn't have been much anyone could do to break him loose, and eventually the press, his congressional counterparts and America itself would've just said screw it and moved on to something else.
That said, resigning was probably the right thing to do.
"Every time a male politician acts like a rooster there's a spate of commentary celebrating the moral superiority of women. The New York Times reacted to Weiner's humiliation with a classic of the genre, opining that 'busy working women don't have time to cheat,' and quoting a feminist professor saying, 'women run for office to do something, and men run for office to be somebody.' Look, ladies, it's a zero sum game. Takes two, you know."
As with the quote from "Thinker Mom" Vicki Larson a couple of days ago, this one is offered without commentary, the interjection of relevant recent personal experience, or any other statement that might contain an often derogatory word that describes a female dog. Only this time that derogatory word would be directed at someone besides the author of the article, if you get my drift.
I swear, every time this horrid creature shamelessly injects herself into a new sex scandal, I'll bring this piece back. Every single time.
"Burn the Witch" (Originally Published, 4.15.08)
I'll make this quick.
I may spew a little venom here and there on this site, but believe it or not, there are scant few people in this world I truly despise. I'm not talking about the kind of people who annoy or mildly irritate; I'm talking about the ones whose mere existence just infuriates the shit out of me; whose lack of any discernible contribution to humanity makes me want to take a fucking hostage; whose voice alone can shatter my spine like glass.
Among this highly specialized group of horrid, worthless shitbags -- I'm not sure anyone is more thoroughly contemptible or patently offensive than Gloria Allred.
Cut from the same cloth as Nancy Grace, another feckless troll who treats the legal profession like her own personal litter-box-cum-slot-machine, Allred can typically be found wherever TV cameras are present. She's the alien queen of the ambulance-chasing high-profile lawyer set -- the sort of loathsome caricature that could only thrive in a place as morally bankrupt as Los Angeles. Over the course of her diabolically lengthy career, she's represented such celebs-via-circumstance as Amber Frey, Paula Jones, Nicole Brown Simpson, Melanie "Scary Spice" Brown and Britney Spears's bodyguard -- all the while representing, in reality, only one person: Gloria Fucking Allred. She's inserted herself into the surreal debacle that was the Michael Jackson trial. She's manipulated an all-too-willing media into doing her bidding, which always involves beaming her gruesome, opportunistic ass into every home in America in what would seem to be a concerted effort to turn us all to stone.
What Al Sharpton is to race relations in this country, Gloria Allred is to both sexual politics and its legal system.
And now -- of course -- she's representing Rob Lowe's nanny.
This morning, Allred appeared with 24 year old Jessica Gibson on NBC's Today show to do her copyrighted "Angry Mom Whose Innocent Daughter has Just Been Victimized" routine. For those of you lucky enough to have not heard a fucking peep about this case, Rob Lowe says Gibson is a trash-talker who exploited his family's goodwill; Gibson says Lowe sexually harassed her while she was caring for his kids. Honestly, who gives a crap either way?
Gloria Allred, of course.
Her performance this morning was pure theater -- pure Gloria: She held Gibson's hand like a supportive best friend; contorted her face into a steely grimace while shrilly heaping irresponsible invective at Lowe; wouldn't let anyone else get a word in that might counter her carefully rehearsed indignation; looked like she was always one involuntary impulse away from digging into Gibson's neck to drink her sweet, young blood. The only thing missing was a fucking trapeze act.
The good news is that by allowing herself to be preyed on by this wicked witch -- by accepting the shiny red apple of a big money settlement that was no doubt offered so seductively -- Jessica Gibson has all but ensured that she'll lose in court. Sure, she'll get a lot of free press, but in the end, thanks to Allred's unholy puppetry, she'll get a few bucks from posing for Playboy and eventually be known as 2008's Darva Conger.
"When looking broadly at the Anthony Weiner–Huma Abedin union, we have to wonder if the coupling of a Jewish American man and a Muslim woman of her pedigree was fostered by love or by a socialist political agenda."
The serial idiocy of the Washington Times is always good for a laugh, but this column is seriously the most ridiculous thing you'll read all day (and, astonishingly, that includes the Vicki Larson piece posted a little while ago).
(Update: The Washington Times has taken the piece down, saying that it's now "under review." Salon saved a copy of it here.)
"Attractive men don't make the best husbands, according to researchers. They don't put as much energy into their long-term relationships, aren't as supportive of their wives, and they tend to lie and cheat more, too. In other words, they are better cads than dads... We'd be smarter if we sought out guys who are uglier than we are because researchers have found that couples in which the woman is hotter than the guy are happier than if the situation is reversed... So, now that (Huma) Abedin evidently has (Anthony) Weiner's good genes, she can either stick it out another few years or split from Weiner now, before their unborn baby will have memories of the divorce, and while she's still young and attractive enough to snag another mate. This time, she should go ugly."
Offered without commentary, the interjection of relevant recent personal experience, or any other statement that might contain an often derogatory word that describes a female dog.
You're never gonna believe it -- no, really, I mean, who could've possibly seen this coming? -- but Anthony Weiner is checking himself into rehab. The exact reason, no one knows and, let's be honest, barely matters.
Believe it or not, this latest development more than anything else that's happened so far in this completely by-the-numbers scandal makes me think that Weiner needs to go away and not show his face anywhere near a position of power for a while. Yeah, what Weiner did was colossally stupid, but I was with him as far as the argument that he should be allowed to let the people of his district decide his fate. Trying to cheat that fate, though, by hauling ass off to treatment as the pressure mounts against him -- because he knows full well that no one's going to try to oust him as long as he's "sick" and if he can make the case that none of this was his fault -- is something more than just dumb; it's craven cowardice, bald-faced opportunism, and it shouldn't be tolerated. Tweeting naked pictures wasn't a symptom of some sort of disease that he needs to get help for -- it was just an asshole narcissist loving the fact that he could regularly stroke himself to all the attention he was getting from hot co-eds who wouldn't give him the time of day if he were nothing more than Dr. Weiner, DDS, from Boerum Hill.
But if you believe Weiner, once he gets out of rehab and can presumably claim that he's "clean," he's not going anywhere but back to Capitol Hill. And really, why shouldn't he? Why should Anthony Weiner heed all those calls for his resignation, the ones coming from the GOP and from his own party's leadership, if he doesn't want to? Morally and ethically, sure, he's damaged goods and the scandal may be political kryptonite to him for a while. But Weiner understands something that inexplicably seems to escape the millions of other people who happen to also be living in the year 2011; coincidentally, it has everything to do with the nature of the very social networking tool that got him into so much trouble.
People will forget -- and they'll forget quickly.
Weiner knows that all he has to do is ride out the rapids for a little bit and eventually the waters will calm because, quite simply, our collective cultural consciousness will move on to something else. Our psyches have been trained by the hyper-fast nature of the modern media not to dwell on anything for too long; as the speed with which we can connect to each other increases, our attention spans naturally decrease. Weiner understands this very well because he was availing himself of a form of communication that forces us to think only in 140 character fragments when he got busted. He slipped up precisely because he was moving too quickly, reacting unconsciously, doing without thinking; he hit one wrong key on a keyboard and accidentally sent a picture of his crotch out to the entire world. Imagine that, the kind of power each of us can wield without even thinking, with the push of a couple of buttons and within the span of five seconds.
But that's exactly the point: The more it becomes commonplace to think -- or not think -- this way as a society, the less of an impact anything will have. The news cycles grow shorter, our cultural ADD becomes more pronounced and intractable, our ability to fixate on anything for too long vanishes.
Wait a little while and everyone will forget about the Weiner scandal. The first sign of a new, shinier car that drives up the block and the lapdog press will go after it and all but ignore the one they've been relentlessly chasing for the past couple of weeks. America as a whole? Hell, a lot of us have already moved on from Weiner's escapades, chalking them up to business-as-usual in the swamplands of DC and going right back to our lives or to whatever next big thing is on the verge of grabbing our national attention. Maybe it'll be the new Rebecca Black -- who went from nobody, to Twitter-mocked laughingstock, to huge star, back to nobody in the span of a couple of weeks. Maybe it'll be Golden Voice Homeless Guy -- who went from desperation, to revelation, to sensation, to inspiration, to investigation and vilification, also within the span of a couple of weeks. Story arcs that used to develop over weeks and months now take mere days.
Again, Weiner knows this.
He just has to hang on and make it through this patch of rough weather. If he can do that he'll be fine. And not to worry -- it won't last long.
"I think it's unlikely that Mrs. Weiner doesn't give a shit, for the record, but there are wives out there who don't give a shit about their husband's online activities—as well as wives who engage in online sexting, texting, flirting, and Tweeting themselves. And one day a sex scandal is going to break and instead of playing the stoic victim, a la Mrs. Vitter and Mrs. Spitzer and Mrs. Clinton, the wife is going to join her 'disgraced' husband at the press conference and they're going to announce that they have an open relationship. And Megan's head will explode."
-- Columnist Dan Savage, lambasting Megan McArdle and pundits like her who deign to speak for and express convenient solidarity with Anthony Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin
Basically, in a column in today's Salon, M-Liz asserts that this week's Anthony Weiner prick-slip -- the one brought to you by Andrew Breitbart, during an appearance on the Opie and Anthony show -- was surprising for the most part because it revealed that shock jocks are still on the air in 2011. If you believe the column, guys like Opie and Anthony are well past their moment as a tolerable cultural anomaly and a desperate grab for relevancy like the one we supposedly witnessed earlier this week proves it in spades.
That O & A's core audience won't care one bit what someone like Mary Elizabeth Williams thinks is so obvious that it isn't even worth expounding on. Likewise, that most Salon regulars probably don't wake up every morning and catch the latest O & A gags is also not something worthy of discussion. Not to single myself out as special or anything, but I've gotta be one of the few who actually does really like both M-Liz's high-minded wit and O & A's low-brow stupidity; there's a place, and an audience, for both in this world and I think it's ridiculous for anyone to make the argument that one side of the equation somehow isn't fit for public consumption. In other words, I'm taking the slobs' side on this one -- because while M-Liz is right in saying that a radio show that occasionally pulls juvenile on-air pranks and which caters to America's overgrown adolescent guy community shouldn't survive if it doesn't, ironically, evolve, she's wrong when she says that shows like that haven't evolved. Many of them have, quite a bit. Just because she doesn't "get it" doesn't mean others don't, or that their opinions don't count, or that the overall joke isn't funny.
Opie and Anthony aren't everyone's brand of vodka, but they're not trying to be. You don't like what they do? The solution is as old as indignation itself: don't listen. Complaining about it from on-high is as tired and pathetic as the genre you're ineffectually railing against.
I was going to add this on to the earlier Breitbart post as an update, but it really deserves its own slot. You know why Breitbart isn't a real journalist and never will be? Do you need further proof that he's a loathsome, unscrupulous turd and nothing more, regardless of how vehemently he may demand professional and personal respect?
Well, how about this: The "X-rated" picture of Anthony Weiner that Breitbart has been boasting about, the one he called his "insurance policy?" It's now apparently leaked online. How did it get out, you ask? Because this morning Breitbart was doing a guest spot on the Opie and Anthony show -- the latest stop on his victory lap -- and he proudly flashed the picture to the show's crew; he apparently carries it around on his iPhone like a trophy, the post-modern digital-age scandal equivalent of his quarry's head on the wall above his fireplace. Needless to say, someone on the show either surreptitiously or right out in the open snapped his own picture of the picture and put it up on Twitter. Voila, what is allegedly Anthony Weiner's erect, naked cock is now available to anyone with access to the internet (in other words, anyone on earth).
I want you to imagine for a second any other journalist in America -- any respectable gatherer and disseminator of news and information -- being so fucking mind-blowingly juvenile as to show off a picture of a U.S. congressman's penis just because he happened to have it. Yeah, Weiner screwed up by putting it out there in the first place, but can you even fathom the notion of, say, Bob Woodward gloating over the spoils of an investigation -- particularly one that took a high personal toll on an elected official, his family and, arguably, the country -- to the point where he revealed them to the crew of a fucking shock-jock radio show? The word "unethical" doesn't even begin to cover it, although at this point I'd expect nothing less from a bottom-feeding douche like Breitbart.
For the record, I've never held back when it comes to my appreciation for the Opie and Anthony show. I started listening to it years ago on WNEW in New York City and I'm a regular listener now that it's on Sirius XM; it's a funny as hell show and the guys who host it are for the most part whip-smart. The only time I tune out, though -- well, besides whenever terminally unfunny Rich Vos is on -- is when they start talking politics. This is because, while Opie tends to stay out of the way and Jimmy Norton is at least balanced in his views, Anthony is tyranically reactionary to the point of being intolerable. For a bright guy, he's an almost unimaginably laughable stereotype: a white multi-millionaire man-child who stalks around his mansion on Long Island fetishistically carrying a gun on his hip just in case one of the welfare queens he blames for taking all his hard-earned money -- that would be the money he makes working 4-hours-a-day -- breaks in and tries to kill him. He's like Howard Hughes, right down to the paranoid racism, if Hughes had never actually created anything worthy of a legacy. Again, funny as hell guy, but completely batshit when it comes to his far-right politics.
My point is that the O & A crew had a hand in circulating this picture -- the one that neither you, nor I, nor anyone else really needs to see, since we all kind of got the point -- but they're not the ones truly to blame here. They're shock-jocks; they're paid to push boundaries, indiscriminately ridicule, and basically be overgrown adolescents. They never claimed to be worthy of anyone's trust.
But Breitbart? I thought he was a journalist.
By the way, if you want to see the unedited photo it's not hard to find. I'm not posting a link to it here, though. Do your own heavy lifting on this one.
Update: Breitbart, as expected, is placing the blame squarely on the O & A show crew: "This is the first time that someone surreptitiously grabbed a photo of it. This is a complete breach of our arrangement that the photo would not be made public. It was a complete violation of trust," he said during an interview with, of course, Fox News.
Right. Except that, as I said, a shock-jock radio show isn't expected to abide by any personal or professional code of ethical conduct. Breitbart, if he truly considers himself a journalist, is. But the temptation was just too much for him; he had to show the other kids on the playground the dirty picture he had in his pocket so they could all have a good laugh about it and he could be the big guy. Breitbart is either being thoroughly dishonest about this or he's just flat-out stupid, neither of which should surprise anyone either way.
I really do love Breitbart; you can always count on him to show his true colors. Just three days ago he was demanding an apology from Anthony Weiner and now Anthony Weiner -- who's by no means innocent in any of this -- is within his rights to demand an apology from him. And everyone else can go right back to regarding Andrew Breitbart as what he is and has been from the very beginning: a fucking low-life.
"To be clear, the picture was of me, and I sent it."
-- Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York
As someone posted on Twitter not long ago, Weiner's startlingly candid and long-winded news conference that just mercifully wrapped up was the kind of thing we usually see in movies -- not in real life.
And as somebody else posted on Twitter, Weiner saying, "I apologize to Andrew Breitbart" is going to be Breitbart's ringtone for the next couple of years. Obviously it's unfortunate to have to admit that Breitbart -- who, make no mistake, remains an unscrupulous turd -- got this one right, simply because it gives him back a shred of credibility in these kinds of matters from here on out that I'm still not sure he really deserves. My argument about Breitbart will remain that even if he hadn't received confirmation that what happened actually happened -- as well as a public confession from Weiner -- it wouldn't have stopped him from at least partially pushing the story. But for now, there's no way around the fact that Breitbart uncovered what he essentially said he uncovered. It doesn't make James O'Keefe or Shirley Sherrod go away -- but he wins this round and gets to claim vindication.
What remains, then, is whether or not the public believes that what's been admitted to is worth calling for Weiner's head. (I really can't believe I just stooped to that.) I stand by my statement last week that I don't care one bit what Anthony Weiner does in his private life and his sexual proclivities are his own. He posted pictures of his penis on Twitter? That makes him, admittedly, really stupid. He sent them to younger women? Well, who the hell would you think he'd be sending them to? He didn't break the law, though, and his being exposed as a bit of a freak doesn't also expose him as a hypocrite, considering that he's never been one of those guys professionally staking out the hyper-religious moral high ground, preaching chastity or purity or whatever-the-hell as policy or in his personal life.
For the record, I really am tired of public "sex scandals" -- particularly ones where there was nothing unlawful involved -- further diminishing our cultural discourse in this country and distracting the already easily distracted and titillated dingbats in the mainstream political press. And I can't stress intensely enough how this belief is in no way a sudden reaction to the fact that I happen to like Anthony Weiner. Yes, the occasionally sordid sexual escapades of our elected officials are a breeze to point and laugh at, but reacting with shock to the notion that somebody is capable of infidelity or enjoys, quite frankly, getting laid as often and as creatively as possible is just laughably puritanical. People fuck. It's what we do. As I've said before, practically as a career lately, we're human and human beings are inherently flawed creatures; looking for reasons as to why people in the position to cheat actually do cheat is a fool's errand. And the more power someone has, the more likely he or she is to use that power to get laid. Jesus, you think nebbishy Anthony Weiner -- who probably got his ass kicked all over his Brooklyn elementary school playground growing up -- wasn't thinking the entire time he was coming up in politics and apparently whaling on his pecs, "I'm so gonna finally get me the college pussy that was denied to me in college"? Make no mistake: If a 25-year-old is what he really wanted out of life, he probably shouldn't have gotten married and tried to settle down as a family man, and what he's now done to his wife and family is unconscionable. But to be shocked, exactly, that he let his dick get him into trouble? You're kidding me, right? Cue the cut to a caveman sitting on a rock somewhere saying, "Ugh, me know what it like, man," as a woman hits him over the head with a club while pointing at naked drawings of him on some other woman's cave wall.
By the way, my favorite tweeted response to today's Weiner newser comes from Anthony Cumia of the Opie and Anthony show:
"I love having a job where I can send dick pics with impunity."
Amen to that.
Adding: The column this is from is actually a couple of days old but leave it to Taibbi to hit Weiner's stupidity with just the appropriate amount of blunt force:
"The truth is, if you're worth the congressional office at all, your automatic answer to any question about pictures like that has to be, 'No, that can't be me in that picture, because I'm a United States Congressman and I don't take digital pictures of my hard-ons."
I don’t want to gloat too much about Weiner. Milligan is right, it’s not like the guy is a serial killer. But as the Monday Night Football crew would say, C’mon, Man! If you want to be a national political figure, run for high office, and also have a family at the same time, you can’t be playing Russian roulette with your wife’s reputation every time you log on to your basement computer.
In other words, when you’re a certain kind of famous, there are a few things you’ve just got to give up in life –- like uploading pictures of your dick, for instance, or tweet-herding hot twentysomething women by the hundreds. Is it really that hard to find other hobbies?"
"I don’t know him that well, he has been monitoring relationships that Congressman Weiner has been having with women, young women, who claimed to have relationships with him. I’m not saying what type of relationships, but people that '@RepWeiner' follows. Girls that are quite young -- younger than the girl in question here -- talk openly about Rep. Weiner, who he follows these girls."
-- Andrew Breitbart referring to Dan Wolfe, who goes by the Twitter name @patriotUSA76 (of course) and who supposedly grabbed and reposted a picture that supposedly appeared on Rep. Anthony Weiner's Twitter account of a semi-erect penis inside a pair of underwear
The above quote came during an interview with Breitbart on CNN, an interview which opened the door to a number of significant questions that deserve an immediate answer, such as what the fuck is Andrew Breitbart doing on CNN?!
Jesus, what does this asshole have to do before the supposedly responsible press stops giving a crap about anything he has to say? CNN actually broke the Shirley Sherrod hoax story, basically blowing Breitbart out of the water on live television, with Sherrod sitting right there on the set as they did it -- and still they invite him on to make defamatory statements that he cannot fucking back up.
How do you know "Weinergate" -- as the Breitbart online Empire of Shit is breathlessly and unimaginatively hyping it -- is probably a bunch of overblown nonsense? Because Breitbart says it's a big deal. When he says anything about somebody, you can be pretty fucking sure the opposite is true. And his willingness to blindly back another no-name right-wing flunkie is likely one of those things he'd live to regret had he anything approaching a capacity for shame and sorrow.
Did Anthony Weiner send a picture of his cock to somebody on Twitter? Who the hell knows. And you know something? I don't really care. You know why I don't really care? Because Anthony Weiner never claimed to be a crusader for family values, hyper-righteous morality, forced chastity or anything else that would make it grossly hypocritical for him to be a bit of a freak. Does it suck for his wife if he really did it and wasn't hacked like he says? Yeah, actually -- but that's their business to sort out. It shouldn't be my responsibility to hold him accountable for something like that and even if I thought it to be mildly contemptible (to say nothing of stupid) I don't think it would have an impact one way or the other on how he does his job. Of course this kind of thing is entertaining and of course it's worthy of an entire arsenal of jokes -- but I'm gonna need a hell of a lot more to go on than the word of Andrew "I Fucking Lie About Everything" Breitbart before I hang somebody out to dry.
"Michele Bachmann, I don't know if she is here, I want to welcome her -- she's not, she's probably, you know, she's campaigning in Iowa and organizing in that important caucus state because she's running for president... That's really all I have for that joke."
-- Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York pretty much killing at last night's Congressional Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, DC
