Last week, I turned on Rachel Maddow’s program and watched a segment in which Anthony Weiner let her speculate, for about ten minutes, on how photos of his genitalia might have found their way onto the Internet.
Was it a prank? The result of hacking?
No. Today (finally!) we learn the truth. It was Weiner himself. In other words, for about a week he was willing to exploit the good will—and waste the time—of liberals all over the United States trying to give him a fair hearing (on the presumption that he was an honest man genuinely bewildered by where the photos came from).
And now, in so blatant a betrayal of trust, he won’t even leave office. He’ll cry like Jimmy Swaggart. He’ll say sorry. But he won’t go.
Lame. Pathetic. Depressing.
And don’t you know that Republicans will remind voters of this throughout the next year, and that there will be fewer liberal representatives in Congress in 2012 because of it?
But still he won’t go.
The perks of being in Congress must really be something. To retain them, they’re apparently worth:
- selling out your party;
- eroding public confidence in the honesty and ethical moorings of elected Democratic politicians; and
- upending the causes of liberalism generally.
Thanks for nothing, doofus.
On the other hand, men lie about sex. And, in this case, he came to his senses and fessed up relatively fast. By contrast, Bill Clinton’s sexual shenanigans—and the subsequent cover-up—definitely weakened Al Gore’s presidential bid just enough to foist on us the supreme political doofus of modern times: George W. Bush.
Still, I think Weiner ought to go. When politicians don’t step from office after scandal, acting brazen and stubborn, they coarsen and corrode the dignity of public service, and so add to public cynicism.
So, we forgive you (or, at least, I do for wasting 10 minutes of my time last week). But, with regard to your political office, you’re damaged goods and ought to scram, Mr. Weiner.
Prometheus Unbound 
I agree with everything you’ve said, except I come down on the other side. Unless he broke the law, or the investigation uncovers something worse, he shouldn’t resign. I am against resignations on both sides for what is effectively personal behavior, sleazy though it may be.
This is a close call, though, because of the spectacular amount of lying he did, and because sending those stupid and juvenile photos to a bunch of women he doesn’t know showed such horrendous judgment and hubris.
You Americans are so prude ; ) Look at Berlusconi dry-humping a traffic warden. And he is still in office: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZBYIeZzEZw
What concerns me is not the sex, but the lying. If he had said from day one, “None of your business,” then fine. Who cares? If he had said, “I’m for sexual liberation and my wife and I have an open marriage. It’s part of my private life,” that too is fine.
But he showed a capacity for deceit and poor judgement that makes him untrustworthy. And, given the hypocritical pummeling he’ll take from the ever self-righteous Republicans, he knows he’s damaged goods and that he’ll hurt his cause and party.
But he stays.
That’s my problem with Weiner.
—Santi
Why should he resign? Is he a bad congressman? If some cubicle worker gets caught outside work tweeting a cord of wood, should he resign and join the unemployment line?
So Weiner’s a horny cuss who apparently agrees that tweeting a bird in the hand is better than a bird in the bush. Oh well. That’s his wife’s problem. Not mine.
His initial reaction was to lie. Please, show me the guy who’d immediately confess to the press that he tweeted his dick all over the internet after too much (or too little) to drink. But he came forward, as it were, in… short order.
Which is entertaining, but I don’t want him to resign over it.
Is he good at his job? Period.