Is Wiener's wiener a career killer?

Weiner’s Advice on Media Management Haunts Him

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@H2O MAN,

H2O MAN wrote:

How long before this little prick resigns?

Quote:

I am imagining lining up every male politician in the country for the same conversation. First, the basics. No cheating on your spouse. Blow jobs count as cheating. No prostitutes. No soliciting prosititutes. No male prosititutes, no female prostitutes, no transgender prostitutes, no any kind of prostitutes. There simply are no exceptions to this. No paying people who are also having sex with you for anything at all, including carrying your luggage or making promotional videos. And, of course, no nude pictures, no lewd emails. This is a computer/iPhone/BlackBerry; you must consider every single thing you do with it to be public. It has a camera. You should keep the lens of the camera facing out at all times if any part of you that would normally be covered while in a Dunkin' Donuts is not fully clothed.
I could go on, obviously. It wouldn't do any more good, though, than my list of warnings for the 5-year-olds on the tempting shopping trip. Every 5-year-old who picks up a shiny mug thinks he won't break it, and every man who takes a picture of his favorite toy and tweets it out into the ether thinks he won't get caught.
Anthony Weiner should resign. He should resign, not because what he did was that bad, or even just because he lied about it in particularly stupid ways. He should resign because voters are tired of having this conversation. Because if your brother smashed a shelf's worth of coffee mugs yesterday, you are going to be punished just for touching one today. It happened to Chris Lee. It should happen to Weiner. It's not that we as a nation are unusually Puritan in our views on marriage; it's that we are tired of being taken for this particular ride.

http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor

Great plan, that men should only be in politics if they are pure.

Quote:

People, by which I mean voters, can tell the difference. Anthony Weiner has proven, in the language of a parent, that he's not mature enough to behave responsibly. He's forfeited the privilege of representing his electorate, and he should admit it and step aside.

Bullshit, that is what we have elections for. If you live in his district and are a register voter then you can cast your vote for someone other that Weiner. Failing that you dont get a say in his fitness for duty.

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As Joe from Chicago noted above, the repeated lies and attempts at the coverup caused a great deal (but not all) of the damage to Weiner's prospects. I suspect his repeated and very strident criticism's of the motives and ethics of his political opponents (as opposed merely to their actions) also added a significant element of hypocrisy to the whole sad affair. He made himself vulnerable by his inflated aspect of self-importance, ambition and attacks on the ethics of others, and did himself in through his own juvenile stupidity and repeated lies.

The Congress, the country, and even the Democrats, will survive without him.

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So so so stupid of him.

I still think it's dumb that it's such a big deal in America -- I get if his wife is pissed off, beyond that who cares -- but it IS a big deal and it was colossally stupid of him to a) do it and then b) lie about it. And the lying about it sounds like it went past stupid to something a bit more nefarious (feeding the sextee lies about what to say, etc.)

His political ambitions will take a big hit BUT I'm not sure if he's done for. He was already brash and loud and playboy-ish, this doesn't really change his image that much. He probably can't become mayor anytime too soon but the barely-reformed rake has a place in politics.

I'm not that het up about it because I didn't like him that much to begin with -- as in, not that I didn't like him, just he was someone I knew about but who didn't impress me that much. But I do get annoyed that he now has tossed his credibility out the window, temporarily anyway, and he was doing some kind of interesting things that require some credibility.

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By the way I do really wonder how many people get away with this stuff a la Schwartzenegger (until very recently anyway). It just keeps coming up with so much regularity that people do STUPID **** and seem surprised that they're caught.

Maybe there really are that many stupid people (and the stupid people who are stupid in that particular way gravitate towards politics -- validate me!!), but I do wonder how much they know off the record and then think "hey, if all these other people got away with it..."

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@tsarstepan,

Also interesting

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@sozobe,

Yeah...to me it's always:

What is legitimately of interest to the public

Does it have implications for how the person does their job

Is it illegal

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@joefromchicago,

Interesting take, Joe.

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@dlowan,

It's not illegal to have "relationships" with women old enough, but his lies about those relationships can be a political career killer.

I think Europeans laugh at Americans for our Victorian ideas about sex.

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

I think Europeans laugh at Americans for our Victorian ideas about sex.

This issue isn't really about sex. It's about repeated lies and gross hypocrisy. Weiner made his political stature by ruthlessly criticizing his political opponents for what he asserted were their inner motives and intentions (as if he knew them). He thereby opened the door to an examination of the likely intentions behind his own largely stupid actions.

Let the Europeans laugh. They certainly need a break from the reality they have created for themselves.

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This issue isn't really about sex. It's about repeated lies and gross hypocrisy. - georgeob1
True

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@georgeob1,

I believe that's what I said,

Quote:

It's not illegal to have "relationships" with women old enough, but his lies about those relationships can be a political career killer.

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@cicerone imposter,

You have said many things. I was replying to the part I quoted. Wink

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@edgarblythe,

edgarblythe wrote:

This issue isn't really about sex. It's about repeated lies and gross hypocrisy. - georgeob1
True

So...did this guy make a big deal of sexual morality?

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@dlowan,

He botched a coverup. I don't know about his sexual morality talk.

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@edgarblythe,

Hopefully someone else does.

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@dlowan,

dlowan wrote:

So...did this guy make a big deal of sexual morality?

Not to my knowledge. However he has repeatedly accused his political opponents of being in the grip of private interests, as opposed to the public interest, which he tiresomely proclaimed as his own, accusing them of deceit and hypocrisy. He also rather cynically urged the resignation of another Congressman from his state (New York), a Republican, who was (fairly recently) caught in an analogous (but less grotesque) social media misstep, but who avoided the denials and simply admitted the acts.

Are you immune from this stuff in Australia? (That's not my impression.)

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@georgeob1,

Ah...if he's condemned others for something similar to what he has done that makes it more resign worthy for me.

We're not immune, but we have generally had a much less puritanical attitude to sexual stuff and politicians. Also, the media have not, until recently, tended to carry on about this stuff.

For example, Prime Minister Hawke was well known to have affairs, and this was written about in a biography when he was in office and it caused nary a ripple that I can recall. As it happened, the biography was written by a woman with whom he was having a very serious affair, and whom he married once out of office!

Sadly, in my view, this tolerant attitude seems to be changing, and my state, for example, has recently seen its Premier hounded about a sexual relationship that may or may not have occurred, and which occurred or didn't when he was a single man.

I think this is a serious regression in Australian political life. I give neither a fiddle nor a fig about politician's personal lives, unless it affects their public duties or is illegal or they have been doing something which they have used their public position to condemn.

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@dlowan,

Not so different after all. The Puritanical bit is simply a part of the lens through which Europeans look at us. They need things like that to keep from seeing the awful mess they have made of the last few centuries. In addition, I suspect they are reflexively a bit more subservient to their ruling elites on both left and right.

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I think it sucks that a good man with some weaknesses comes off looking like a horrible person, while Breitbart, a scumbag with maybe one or two good qualities (I have no idea what those might be; I'm assuming that everyone has some good qualities) comes off looking like a good man in all this.

******* Weiner. One less voice of reason in politics if he leaves. Even if he stays, I don't think he's going to be able to still have the same gravitas after this. Why couldn't it have been Boehner! The jokes would have been just as good, but he's a phony Republican asshole so it wouldn't matter!

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Is Wiener's wiener a career killer?

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