Readers

Please excuse my typo in the post below. I wrote it, groggily, at 5 AM. The congressman who is the subject of the column is Anthony WEiner, not WIener. Next time I'll be more careful.

Wiener is as Wiener Does

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.