Final (???) thoughts about Weinergate

by Ken

As Sam Stein reports today on Huffpost: "Anthony Weiner Seeks Treatment, Requests Leave Of Absence As Top Democrats Call For Resignation." My goodness, didn't E. J. Dionne Jr. just suggest -- in the column I wrote about Thursday night -- that this was Anthony W.'s path out of harm's way at the outset?

Of course we're way past the outset, and whether this can save his House seat remains to be seen. Personally, I don't care all that much, except that I seriously don't like the idea of congressional Republicans being confirmed in their too-well-founded belief that they can hound most anyone they choose out of office. But Anthony W. is a hard case to defend. And it's not as if his district is about to elect a Republican.

In all likelihood, if he chooses to tough it out he can continue being reelected from NY-14 as long as he wishes, but apart from that, his political career is over. (You might say, "What political career?") He can't run for anything else, he can't hope for any role of any responsibility within the House Democratic caucus, and in that sense even his seniority doesn't work in his constituents' favor -- there's not a whole lot he's going to be able to wangle for them in the future.

That said, there are a few Weingergate angles I still want to touch on.


ANTHONY W.'S FUTURE IN CONGRESS SHOULD
BE BETWEEN HIM AND HIS CONSTITUENTS

And at least as of Wednesday, when our local cable news channel NY1 had the Marist Poll do a poll in New York's 14th Congressional District, spanning parts of Brooklyn and Queens:


You can click on this excerpt from "the poll report, but I think you can make out the result: By a 56-to-33-percent majority, adults in the district didn't think Anthony W. should resign, with 12% undecided. Anthony W. needs to stay in touch with the wishes of his constituents as well as searching his own conscience. The rest is just noise.


NOW HOLD ON A SEC -- ABOUT THAT POLL . . .


Yesterday morning, when NY1 anchor Pat Kiernan kept reporting on the poll results, he kept repeating that "only 11 percent" of respondents believed that Anthony W. did something illegal.

"Only 11 percent"?

I realize that in polling terms 11 percent is hardly more than a statistical blip. In any group surveyed, you could probably find more than that who believe that the earth is flat, or that the moon is made of green cheese. Still, 11 percent is something, and in this poll 11 percent of respondents believe that Anthony W. did something illegal, even though no such thing has been reported, nor as far as I know has any reasonable basis for any such suspicion. I suppose this could change, but I'm aware of zero foundation for even suspecting illegality, and yet here we have 11 percent choosing this response. "Only 11 percent? I get surprisingly little comfort from that "only."


OF ALL PEOPLE, MARK F. OF FLORIDA CRAWLS
OUT OF THE WOODWORK? OK, SCREW HIM!

Oh my goodness gracious. This is truly pathetic, not to mention incredibly cynical, counting as it does on the public's feeble grasp of events and even feebler memory of same. Anybody who thinks there's anything remotely similar between the cases of Anthony W. and those of Mark F. is just plain nuts.

Anthony W. sent a shirtless photo -- not exactly high on the indecency scale -- to a 27-year-old woman with whom he had a twittery relationship, and presumably to other solidly adult women. Mark F. used his privileged government position, which charged him with responsibility for overseeing and protecting the House pages, to try to lure under-age young men into online sexual discussions that are generally assumed to have been intended to lead to actual sexual involvement, and there are grounds for believing that there were actual sexual involvements.

I don't know what the statute-of-limitations situation is with regard to possible crimes, but if there's a window there, maybe it's time to pressure the moral vacuum that is the House Republican leadership to launch an independent investigation, one that can't be controlled or even influenced by political scum like themselves -- an investigation that should certainly include the responsibility of the then-House Republican leadership for not only not pursuing but actively covering up the evidence of wrongdoing.

My guess is that even within the Fox Noise Compound there are a fair number of people having their guts up, and praying nobody asks them what they think about Sean Hannity being used to prop up a pathological sexual predator who used his government position to at least try to use the pages as his private harem. But since Mark F., incredibly and preposterously, has chosen to come out of hiding for this purpose, I say nail the bastard to the wall. If the Dems have even a halfway competent messaging machine (OK, there's no evidence of that, but even a 10 percent competent messaging machine ought to be adequate to this task), let it put together a crisp, concise, inflamatory bill of particulars aimed at making Mark F. wish he had not only stayed in hiding but had never been born.

One caveat: I have seen outrage voiced at Mark F.'s charge that the timing of the House Dems' public airing of Foley's behavior was politically motivated. This is dangerous, because this charge is true, isn't it? It was, wasn't it? Wasn't it known by one and all that Master Rahm Emanuel sat on the incriminating information just as long as the House Republicans did, waiting till it was too late for Republicans to get Foley off the ballot in Florida -- and inflicting as much electoral collateral damage on GOP congressional candidates as possible? There isn't any doubt about this, is there?

Of course even here there's a difference. Eventually, however cynically, the House Dems did blow the whistle on Mark F. Would the House GOP leaders ever have? They had an opportunity, after all, to lean on him -- and we know what good leaners those GOP leaners can be -- not to run for reelection. But in fact they were counting heavily on him to run and be reelected.

The thing is, if Foley thinks this in any way helps his case, he's nuttier than any of us suspected. All it says is that the House Dem leadership for different reasons sat on what it knew instead of blowing the whistle in the interest of protecting the pages, which should surely have been the overriding consideration. If Foley is arguing that he should have been crucified sooner, would anyone disagree? I don't think so. Does it help his case? Not in any way I can see. And, oh yes, does it have anything to do with Anthony W.'s case? Again, not that I can see.


WITH REGARD TO THE CHARGES THAT DEMOCRATS
HAVE BETRAYED ANTHONY W., KEEP IN MIND . . .

. . . that in those days of flat-out lying, when he was trying to pretend that he didn't know nuttin' about no pitchers twittered from his account and somebody musta hacked his account, he wasn't just lying to us the public, worse still, from his fellow pols' point of view, he was lying to them. In pol-think, lying to the public is, well, nothing at all; it's what you do to get through the day. But lying to us, well, that's just about unforgivable.

Think back to the response of Beltway Dems when they discovered that Bill Clinton had been lying to them about Monicagate -- especially the ones who had trusted his assurances that he hadn't done anything and consequently went out on a limb defending him. They felt very foolish, and very angry. There don't seem to be a whole lot of rules the modern-day pol lives by, but they do seem to take seriously the axiom that you don't fuck with your own people. If Anthony W. thought any of those people would be rallying to his defense, then maybe we should be looking into the possibility of substance abuse.

I know that as a civilian casualty, I'm not too thrilled with Anthony W.'s lying myself. And as I pointed out the other day, WNYC Radio political analyst Joyce Purnick observed that he has a history of doing bad things and then claiming he didn't until the cloak of deniability was stripped away, dating back to his first primary race for his present congressional seat, when he made believe he didn't know anything about the racist smear campaign against one of his primary opponents which suddenly materialized in the district.

I might not put it this strongly, but I think it's worthy considering the comment our friend me added to a post of Howie's the other day:

Like most people, I don't give a shit about Weiner's sex life. His personal life belongs between him and his wife.



But lying about it is another thing altogether. Nobody likes a liar. Nobody trusts a liar, nor should they.



If Weiner had any - ANY - integrity, he would have answered the questions with "None of your damned business." To me, the fact that he did what he did and lied about it, in the current insane atmosphere about sex, proves beyond doubt that he does not have anything related to the mature judgement being in Congress requires.



Yes, I know that scumpublicans are worse, much worse. That doesn't matter.



Weiner is toast. I say get the fuck out. His brazen lying has done more damage to the progressive cause than anything else in recent memory.



I am so pissed at this asshole.

I'm not foolish enough to try to top that!


UPDATE: A commenter reraises the issue of the free pass given demonstrated Republican degenerate David "The Diaper Man" Vitter, who actually won reelection to the Senate despite what everybody knew about his prostitute habit -- including the fairly disgusting details of his, er, sexual preferences. I guess I assumed there was no need to make the point once again how full the Republican caucuses in both the House and the Senate are of established degenerates, of sexual and nonsexual varieties -- not to mention the assortment of criminals and other deviants elected in this stellar freshman class of Republicans that's recharting the course of American democracy.

I stand corrected, though. The point needs to be made at every opportunity. About 75 percent of the GOP congressional membership should be offered forthwith a choice between prison and an insane asylum, and if they decline, their states or House districts should be flooded with the particulars, with prosecutions where appropriate are prepared. Just clear the scum out!

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