Contrast how Weiner and Schwarzenegger handled their respective scandals. Weiner started out with loud denials, (which were quickly proven to be lies) then just got in deeper and deeper.
Schwarzenegger did the opposite. He issued a quick apology then, as is the accepted wisdom in Hollywood when scandal hits, dropped off the planet. He went somewhere unspecified in southern Idaho and probably will make no public statements for several months then quietly test the waters.
Weiner should have initially said “no comment,” than waited to see what happened. His predicament was made worse by him having no friends in D.C. to defend him. DM’ing an underage girl, no matter how non-sexual the messages, was beyond stupid for a Congressman to do.
His checking into rehab and asking for a leave of absence is a polite fiction. His career is over. And his marriage may be too. His wife is a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton who considers her like a daughter and Chelsea sees her as a sister. She’ll survive no matter what happens.
Why should we be concerned how a dickhead handles his oddball fantasies? How he handles it is not the real matter for concern, it is the fact that this weirdo is trying to play the mister nice guy and gain power and your support when in actual fact he is not worthy of the respect of any decent person. Duplicity and smiling patronising are not the characteristics I want in somebody who is supposed to represent me. How he handles it does not mean he is not an oddball liar.
The most telling part of the whole thing to me was the news that was leaked early and confirmed by events, that Weiner is so abrasive and had alienated so many even in his own party, that none of them felt compelled to defend him. There’s a lesson in that.
Why defend such behaviour, if that’s the kind of guy he is, who needs him, who wants him, hang him out to dry, get shot of him, he’s a liar by doing these sort of things while parading as the respectable married man, the kind of guy you can trust with your family. What does his wife feel about all this. We don’t want lessons on how to do this and get away with it in public life, root these guys out and bin them, you can’t trust a liar and a cheat. What if one of the women receiving those “explicit” text was your daughter, your wife, or your mother?? He’s supposed to be married!!
The only good that come of this is next time a Republic Senator is caught cruising for blow-jobs in an Idaho airport, a Republic congressman is caught wearing a diaper at Mississippi bordello, or a Republic Preacher is caught sniffing tweak with a fag hooker in Utah the Democrats can honestly say “hey, when are guys do this we kick ’em out.”
Me thinks thus doth protest too much, much ado about nothing, what’s really going on…!?
Our guys. Our guys. Though considering the skill sets the Dems demonstrate it’s probably an accurate “quote”.
FYI: Speaker Boehner recently forced a Republican member of the House to resign because he posted a photo of himself on craigslist with a bare chest.
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/02/09/breaking-gop-congressman-resigns-over-er-shirtless-craigslist-pics/
As to what’s really going on, I think everyone is afraid much worse photos will come out. Plus, he lied steadily for ten days
One final thought on Wiener’s wiener – we’re all well aware of the lengths the media will go to to distract the distractable but as one who at times looks deeper into these things than aught it seems a particularly insidious collusion to shut up a brash young man who’s had a lot of interesting things to say in his short career. Viewed from the lenses of a mid to late fifties semi-retired college instructor and computer “professional”, of a generation who grew up with these technologies at their fingers tips much as well grew up with television at ours his behavior isn’t that far out of the norm. I have kids in their thirties and I am at times stunned at the things they say and do across these tubes. Photographs, across the entire acceptable social spectrum, are one of them. The outrage, feigned or otherwise, is nothing more than the “adults in the house” inability to let go. The very thing we railed about at that age.
We’ll leave that he is a Jew man married to a Muslim woman, albeit a higher ranking member of the Secretary of State’s staff, to another student of insidious collusions.