The most aptly-named man in Washington, D.C. finally admitted to what the even the dumbest amongst us already knew, yesterday, and made a crying spectacle of himself on national television. Anthony Weiner did, indeed, shoot little beefcake photos of himself all over the internet to various women (he says six, but that’s probably no closer to the truth than his insistence that he was ‘hacked’ by right-wing hit squads was). He also admits to some telephonic heavy breathing, which is a vision that has firmly burnt itself into my mind's eye, much to my distress.
The entire apology/self-crucifixion production became surreal when Andrew Breitbart , the man accused of being Weiner’s ersatz hacker just happened to be in the neighborhood, and at the behest of the drooling press took over the event, demanding an apology while informing us that he has even more pictures of Weiner in even more compromising positions. This suggestion makes me fervently hope that my infected mind’s eye will do me a great favor and go blind before those are ever released.
There’s much talk amongst the flapping rectum class on television about Weiner’s ‘political future’. Only in America, and most annoyingly, only in New York, could a Congressman so obviously mislead the public, dissemble so unbelievably brazenly about the facts of his misdeeds, make a public penance in which he has to follow the man who’s been wrongly accused of wronging him, still consider it possible to have a career. Only in New York could such a man, who has a Congressional Ethics hearing or two in his future, probably an irate wife who can’t wait to rape him in the divorce trial (if she doesn’t divorce him after this, even if there’s no actual sex involved, she’s a retard), be considered worthy of having a Political Future.
Sadly, Congressdouche Weiner stands a better than even-money chance of being re-elected as things are now, barring some new revelation that one of his phone/e-mail playmates was underage, or a foreign spy. If it should turn out that one of Weiner’s phone friends was another man, the people of his district – where IQ is measured by that quaint expression ‘room temperature’; after all, they’ve already voted for the most insufferable asshole I’ve ever seen in my entire life six times, so they must be the cream of the crop, stupid-wise – even that wouldn’t stop them from voting for Congressman Chronic Online Masturbator.
Some would see it as an opportunity to vote for the first apparently bi-sexual member of Congress (so far as we know). That’s how liberal they are; voting for Weiner is a badge of courage.
Besides, here in New York we’ve come to expect that out elected officials are criminals, serial adulterers, or sexual deviants, vis-Ã -vis Rudy Giuliani, Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson, Eric Massa, Chris Lee, and now Anthony Weiner.
Hell, Charlie Rangel never met a tax he didn't write the regs for that he wouldn’t happily dodge, and he’s still in office.
I watched this sorry spectacle yesterday, and wanted to puke. The first vomit-inducing portion was the part where Weiner said “I will not resign”, which I thought was absolutely outrageous. Just a few weeks ago, a New York Republican (Chris Lee) resigned from office after being caught doing the same exact thing that Weiner has done, and there was no week-and-a-half of lying involved, there were no false accusations against a journalist, there wasn’t a ten day ordeal of press conferences where we’re arguing over the meaning of ‘certitude’, and the man in the crosshairs flounders in lawyerly language like Shelley Winters floundered in the flooded ballroom of the Poseidon Adventure.
The second thing that made me want to expel my lunch at terminal velocity was the use of the word ‘apology’. Weiner said ‘apologize’ or ‘I apologize’ what seemed to me to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 times. He apologized to his wife, his family, his staff, his ’constituents’ (i.e. the brain-dead legion that would have pulled the lever for him so as to keep the hot-and-cold running food stamps and Section-8 housing flowing, unless he’d admitted to child rape or tossing puppies into a wood chipper), Andrew Breitbart, but at no time did it ever appear to me to be sincere. Perhaps that’s because I have an instinctual dislike for Weiner that rivals the hatred between cats and dogs, or maybe it’s a by-product from having to listen to him lie out of both sides of his mouth, and his rectum, simultaneously, on ever subject under the Sun for a decade-plus.
Weiner claims to take ‘responsibility’ – another word he used profusely and unbelievably -- for what he’s done, but he truly hasn’t. Had Weiner a responsible bone(r) in his body, he would have resigned yesterday. That’s what responsible, truly sorry people do. Then again, he’s a democrat, so there you go; democrats are neither responsible, nor hardly ever sorry about anything.
Anthony Weiner didn’t ‘apologize’ profusely yesterday because he’s genuinely sorry. He’s apologizing and paying lip-service to accepting responsibility because he’s been caught. He’s apologizing because he got caught in such a stupid way, doing such a stupid thing. He’s apologizing because it’s part of a ’damage control’ operation, and the public relations experts told him that it’s time to come clean and at least appear to be contrite (note, however, that Weiner only ‘comes clean’ after irrefutable evidence is suggested of his guilt. Without it, he would have continued this charade for years to come). That series of apologies you saw yesterday was not of a penitent man, baring his soul to the world, begging forgiveness.
That was a man who’s come home drunk at three in the morning, smelling of perfume, lipstick smeared on his collar, and the used condom still stuck in his zipper, begging his wife to unlock the door, pleading ‘Honey, can't we talk this over?’.
Men, as a rule, do things because they can, or because they want to. Scale Everest, split atoms, fly to the Moon, or fuck the secretary with the big tits, and many of them never actually stop to consider the implications or consequences of their actions, especially where the sex drive and ego are concerned. We are biologically hard-wired to take risks, to ignore doubts and fears, and screw everything that moves. Nature made us this way, and it’s only a very smart or dedicated man who is able to control his baser urges.
When you look like Anthony Weiner, the very poster child for birth control, and have the arrogance that comes with power and the fawning adulation of the press – perhaps the laziest and dumbest class of people yet discovered -- that intelligence and dedication quickly flies right out the window. Add the possibility of sex to ego and poor impulse control, and you’re headed for disaster. Facilitate the roller-coaster-to-Hell with a medium that provides (some think) a measure of anonymity and distance, and you’re talking a sure-fire atomic explosion of stupidity.
Weiner’s first mistake was to get full of himself. His second mistake was to fail to engage his critical thinking skills (being a liberal democrat, we may question as to whether he possesses any). His third mistake was to choose mediums where the possibility of getting caught was somewhat remote (although, as we all know, nothing is private in Cyberspace, and even phone bills can be quite instructive). His fourth mistake was to make a habit of it. The final mistake was to believe that he could scrub the record clean, after the fact, brazenly lie about the entire…ahem…affair…and then, after the dust settles, continue life much as he did before, maybe taking a few extra precautions but not much more.
I can promise you: even after being put in a delicate, to say the least, position by the initial discovery of Weiner’s underpants pictures, Weiner would have gone right back to Greasing the Pelican and sending dick pictures online just as soon as decently possible. It’s a compulsion; a mere routine, it all becomes a part of Life, just like the morning commute, the tuna-salad-on-whole-wheat for lunch everyday, the three-martinis after work, the evening newscast, and brushing your teeth before bed.
No, Anthony Weiner was never sorry enough to realize just what he was doing and then stop doing it; he’s only sorry that we found out what he does with his Blackberry, and the thought that the public might believe he’s Yankin’ his Crank While Texting finally got that long-forgotten-and-suppressed shame reflex to kick in.
So, what’s next for Congresscritter Weiner? Well, to judge from past sex scandals (this may be the first where no actual sex, only the suggestion of it, took place. See how the Internet and social networking are changing our lives? When a politician says “I did not have sex with that woman…” and a computer is involved, you can actually half-way believe him! Weiner might give a whole new meaning to the term ‘Palm Pilot’.), the step after admission is usually, and oh-so-painfully-predictably rehab.
Congressman Weiner may be the first famous (or is it now infamous?) Internet Sex Addict. When Weiner makes that announcement -- I'm a sex addict -- his wife will be standing right next to him (somehow, the wives must always be seen as standing by their man, even when their man is a complete douchebag. Although her absence yesterday was telling); there will be the usual rigmarole about personal reflection, ‘my Faith in God’, and ‘coming to terms with the realization that I have a problem’, but dickhead still won’t resign, naturally.
There is a Congressional Ethics Committee investigation coming. Considering that democrats usually don’t find anything wrong with deviant behavior by one of their members, it’s merely a formality. It’s a kabuki play intended to lull the public into the false belief that, indeed, Congress can be trusted to police itself, which is complete and utter bullshit given the history of Congressional Ethics Investigations of the last 40 years. Weiner will receive but a light tap upon both wrists and told to sin no more. If they’re smart, they’ll take his Blackberry and Smartphone away, and cancel his subscription to AOL (people still have those?).
Despite all the public mea culpa, despite the coming-soon orgy of putting all his psychoses on public display, despite all the talk about ‘responsibility’, deep down in what passes for his black soul Anthony Weiner still thinks he’s done nothing wrong. He still believes he’s a victim…of something…but not of hubris or stupidity. Somewhere in his tiny little mind, he still feels justified in what he has done, and can’t believe people would make such a big deal out of such a little thing (I mean the scandal, not his Little Thing, per se). He’s wrong.
We’re the victims here. A sitting Congresscritter making a casual mistake with his send options on Twitter has just told everyone in the Solar System that he’s dumber than dogshit, and ripe for blackmail. He’s just told the American public that far from his usual insistence that he’s ‘fighting for the common folk’ he’s instead spending a great deal of time taking pictures of himself in the buff, e-mailing them hither-and-yon, hitting up women half his age. His subsequent actions – trying to delete the incriminating photographs, inventing a weak conspiracy theory cover story out of whole cloth, accusing an innocent man of potential criminality, stonewalling, misleading the public and press, lying to his wife, and the Staff or other members of Congress who may have defended him – show the character, or rather, lack thereof, of the man. If he’s capable of lying about this, what else has Anthony Weiner lied about? If he’s capable of going to these extreme lengths to avoid having the truth come out, what does that say about the benefits or veracity of anything he’s ever voted on?
And finally, his Twitter Bunnies are going to be exposed to public scrutiny. Two already have. I wonder if either will make an attempt to find Monica Lewinski and ask her how her career and life have gone after she was identified as the paramour of a once-powerful man. Everywhere she goes, men probably ask her to do her famous ‘Cigar Trick’, and automatically assume she’s up for a little ‘Executive Action’ at a moment’s notice. Monica had at least one saving grace in her favor: the Internet was in its infancy, and public memory is often short. For these women, once they’re publicly identified, Weiner’s Weiner will be permanently stapled to every job application they ever fill in.
They might as well have actually done the deed for real, because for all intents and purposes Anthony Weiner has shackled each with a permanent, electronic, Pearl Necklace.
And the Happiest Man in the World Today is Arnold Schwarzenegger, because Anthony Weiner just took the spotlight off of him, at least for the foreseeable future.
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