My last post lambasted lame and lascivious men. Less than a month later, Washington has yet another powerful man worthy of pillorying--the willful, woeful Wiener, representative from New York. Now exposed (pun intended) as a titillated tweeter and foul Facebooker, Wiener refuses to resign, despite his admission of guilt and tearful apologies. At the current count, as many as six different women have claimed online exchanges with the politician, whose prurient predilection for sexting and sending "studly" photos of himself is an unmitigated disaster for the Democrat. This from a forty-six year old married less than a year ago. If Wiener was a horny high schooler caught in the internet act he would be sent to the principal's office. Instead we have a middle-aged man with compromised principles desperately clinging to his office.
It's hard to imagine what lunacy and stupidity possesses a smart guy like Wiener to engage in such juvenile behavior. Maybe being a Jewish Brooklyn boy, he was channeling his inner Alexander Portnoy, a' la Philip Roth. Whatever his motivation, it's clear he exercised precious little restraint, gallivanting through virtual escapades with college students, single moms and blackjack dealers, none of whom he knew personally. The evidence reveals Wiener was a compulsive attention-seeker, eager for any cyber coital contact he could find. It would have been less creepy if he'd had a garden-variety fling with an intern. The congressman posits his real world fidelity as a defense, hoping the public will forgive his computer habits. Memo to Wiener: sending pictures of your bulging boxer shorts to strangers is tantamount to violating your marital vows, as well as betraying your constituent's faith in you.
The worst aspect of all the shenanigans is Wiener's repeated lying about the incidents, fumbling through a prevaricating news conference last week and, one assumes, initially assuring colleagues it was all a prank. How is it that a grown-up doesn't comprehend the transparency of the worldwide web, where much of our personal histories are documented and dispensed at the click of a mouse? Wiener's ship is sinking fast; Republicans, naturally, are calling for his resignation and Democrats are distancing themselves from him. Wiener's digital delusions of grandeur as a "hot," popular politico have been replaced with reality-- he's the nerdy, gross classroom kid with cooties we don't want to catch.
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My first impression is that you are too kind in describing him as intelligent...he obviously has no common sense, and since intelligence sits upon that, he is a hot-headed balloon with a human shell beneath also filled with 'hot'-air that pops-up in all the wrong places.
ReplyDeleteRumor is that 'Chuckie' Schumer,his mentor has recently maddened that Weiner is taking-over all the cameras, shadowing 'Chuckie's' ego, which is at the core/get-him of Anthony's demise.
No wonder our Country is viewed as culture-rotten with Hollywood leading the parade and Congress pulling-up the rear view of perversion. He's an ass, in the most literal sense of the language.
Enjoyed your obvious, similar posit. His constituents obviously share his disease.
Pols are a self-selecting group for this kind of stuff. Doesn't matter if they are red or blue or tea stained. Consider the mindset - getting on the phone and asking friends and colleagues for money for an election run, making lots of signs with their name in big, block letters, believing they are more right to represent than others, really believing.
ReplyDeleteThose are big egos.
It would be interesting to see the other side in the exchanges.
The foibles of men (myself included) are terribly embarrassing. Women (particularly here in Miami) wear their insecurities right on their chest - in the form cleavage articulated with plastic. And yet, here in the U.S. we don't elect more of them.
Eben, yes, Weiner is the ultimate ass. Tom, you're right on the money: ego plays the biggest role, whether you're the Terminator/Governor or a brash representative who now has an inordinate amount of egg on his face and crow to eat. Yes, we should elect more women. One hopes, and it generally seems to be the case, they are less liable to get tangled up in this sort of Web.
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