Who doesn't love a sex scandal? The public is titillated. The self-righteous get to bloviate. The people who can't stand the self-righteous get to self-righteously denounce them. The offending party eventually capitulates, acts like a dog with skunk smell on 'em, and everybody gets to feel morally superior.
Too bad we don't have one. Pics of someone wearing their own underwear? The old Sears Roebuck catalog was more lewd than that. Steve Benen puts it in perspective:
On the Political Sex Scandal Richter Scale, I’m still not altogether sure why this even registers at all. Given what we know, Weiner shared adult content with women he met online. They were adults and the interactions were consensual. He didn’t commit adultery (Ensign), he didn’t hire prostitutes (Vitter, Spitzer), he didn’t solicit anyone in an airport bathroom (Craig), he didn’t pretend to be someone else in order to try to pick up women (Lee), he didn’t abandon his office for a rendezvous with his lover (Sanford), he didn’t leave his first two wives after they got sick (Gingrich), he didn’t have a child with his housekeeper (Schwarzenegger), there’s no sex tape (Edwards)...He’s not even a hypocrite — Weiner has never championed conservative “family values,” condemning others for their “moral failings.”
Rep. Anthony Weiner's problem is the lame cover-up. If he hadn't lied about his adolescent pastime of sexting for a week, this little piffle of a scandal would have blown over long ago.
All these scandals look stupid in retrospect, this one more so than some. Hormones can cause people to do the dumbest things. This has been true for awhile. See historical examples such as King David and Mark Antony, and personal examples, such as the members of your own family.
Maybe we should offer members of Congress a class in technology so they won't make rookie mistakes like this one.
Posted by: lillianjane | June 07, 2011 at 03:35 PM
Yes, a social media workshop on how to engage with others without being a pusillanimous jerk.
Posted by: John Petty | June 08, 2011 at 07:58 AM
He's a grown man and knows the rules. It's probably a good thing this stuff came out before he decided to run for mayor.
Posted by: Hypatia | June 08, 2011 at 11:58 AM