Anthony Weiner, the brash congressman from New York City, resigned this past Thursday, after it was revealed that he sent photos of himself, and sexually yearning text messages, to several women.
Weiner did not step down because he broke any laws, or because his desires made him behave in stupid and dishonorable ways, or even because his constituents turned against him. He stepped down because the media was going to flog the story until he did.
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So here we are, citizens, back in the kingdom of the Starr Report, that sad realm where the Fourth Estate, in its desperation to enthrall and thereby profit, abdicates what the antique moralists among us might call a conscience.
For the past two weeks, actual grown-up Americans have risen from their beds and put on their grown-up clothes and driven their grown-up cars to their grown-up offices and pretended, collectively, that the most important event occurring on earth was not the possibility that the United States will default on its debt, or the mounting evidence that our planetary climate has gone kaplooey, or even any of the three and a half wars in which we are, as a nation, mired.
No, the big news was that a horny guy did some dumb shit.
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“Horny Guy Does Some Dumb Shit.” That’s your Onion headline.
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Long ago, in a past life, I left my job as an investigative reporter for a newspaper in Miami. I had lost my faith in journalism, but I still spent a lot of time with journalists because nobody else liked me. One night, a former colleague dropped by my apartment. She was an intense young woman who had spent some years in Central America, reporting on the atrocities visited upon those small and vulnerable countries. Now she worked for a major news magazine.
We talked for a while about her new job. She seemed agitated. Eventually, she confessed that she was working on the Monica Lewinsky story. In fact, she said, she was one of the only people on earth who had, in her possession, at that very moment, copies of the secret tapes made by Linda Tripp, in which Lewinsky described her trysts with President Clinton.
“They’re right out in the car,” she said. “I could get them.”
She stared at me for a moment, with her beautiful dark blue eyes, and there was something terrible in them, a creepy desperation to include me in her sin.
I’m not someone much burdened by self-control. But I didn’t want to hear those tapes. And I wanted that woman out of my house.
***
A friendly reminder: Thomas Jefferson took one of his slaves as a lover. Grover Cleveland had a child out of wedlock while in office. JFK fucked everything in sight.
The White House correspondents knew all about JFK’s tomcatting. But they didn’t regard it as a story. It was a private weakness, or a private need, not one that rose to the level of a public interest. They were busy reporting on boring shit like the Cuban Missile Crisis and Civil Rights.
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It’s worth asking why Anthony Weiner’s indiscretions were so newsworthy, as compared to those of his colleagues. Weiner, after all, did not frequent prostitutes for kinky sex, as did David Vitter, the Louisiana Senator. Nor did he sleep with a member of his staff, then attempt to pay that staffer and her family tens thousands of dollars in hush money, as did John Ensign, the former Nevada Senator. Nor did he win high office by trumpeting his moral superiority in the realm of family values, as did both Vitter and Ensign.
Weiner’s great sin was more basic: he took pictures.
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We live in a visual era. For a story to stick in the current media environment there must be, as the TV people so charmingly put it, footage. Much of the reason our media have virtually ignored our ongoing wars is because there’s no good footage of Americans dying, or Americans killing. At least, there’s no good footage they’re willing to air.
As with so much else in the modern condition, this speaks ultimately to a failure of the imagination. Stories aren’t enough. If we can’t see it, it’s not happening.
***
With Weiner, we could see it. There it was. A scrawny chest, poignantly waxed and flexed. A pair of grey underwear bulging with
no-longer-private needs. The secret dispatches tapped out to women he’d never met, whom he didn’t really know, the words almost touching in their raw and hollow need, drawn straight from the pornographic idiom every man harbors in his lizard brain.
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Not only did Weiner supply us images and a script, he transmitted these via the new technologies, with which the old media are entirely obsessed.
These technologies have nothing to do with the traditional virtues of journalism–the dogged pursuit of money and power, the ability to explain complex chicanery in simple terms, an abiding concern for the public good. On the contrary, they’ve accelerated our most pathological compulsions: to consume data passively, to graze the Internet for stimulative distractions, to forego the rigors of moral reasoning.
Watching our Fourth Estate treat some brandidate’s latest electronic fart as “news” is like watching an insecure chaperone attempt to moonwalk at a high school dance. It’s what all the kids are doing, right?
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The technologies by which Weiner sought to assert his manhood and find a human connection – he was doing both – are the same technologies by which we are all voluntarily eroding our own zones of privacy.
What a complicated and Christian pleasure it is for us to watch someone else punished for our sins.
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The fake moralists who staff the Opinion Industry–having fueled the obsessive coverage of guys such as Weiner, generally for partisan reasons–love to then retreat from their handiwork and draw lofty conclusions about what it all means. They trot out aphorisms like, Power corrupts and It’s the cover up that kills you.
But the Weiner saga resonated, fundamentally, because it was about loneliness and sexual desperation and the way in which our private anxieties can be conveniently relocated in a public scandal. Not a lot of us can afford to pay high-priced hookers, or pay tens of thousands of dollars in hush money. But we’ve all surrendered to more homely forms of temptation.
I wonder how many of the reporters who took part in Weiner’s downfall have ever sent a sexually yearning text message? Or taken a photo of themselves in a state of arousal?
I know I have. Have you?
We all leave evidence of our need. It’s what humans do.
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When this evidence threatens to surface, we lie.
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We are forever telling the world the same two stories about ourselves. One is about the person we want to believe we are–wise, compassionate, upstanding. The other is about the person we know ourselves to be – petty, cruel, sexually destructive. The best of our literary art arises from the collision of these two stories.
But journalists don’t like to admit to such literary inclinations, so they have to pretend that something else is going on, that they’re engaged in the dissemination of actual news. It’s a tough job, ma’am, but someone’s got to do it. Can you imagine what would happen if we weren’t out here guarding your children?
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Now it’s time to talk about fallout. What will the fallout be? It’s one of those dependably disassociating “news” words. Now that we’ve destroyed a guy’s life, let’s step back, as if we’re just innocent and thoughtful bystanders, and assess the damage.
The immediate impact, politically, is pretty clear. Weiner was one of the few legislators who stood up to the corporate kleptomaniacs who now dominate the policy discourse of this country. He spoke in blunt terms about the ways in which the rich seek to impose their will upon the rest of us.
His elimination will make it that much easier for the powerful interests aligned against common decency to practice their black arts. Our political culture will be further sapped of its capacity to solve our common crises of state.
Winning!
***
The more profound impact will be in our growing confusion over what really matters to us as a people, and whether we can put aside the childish forms of titillation and dishonesty which hold us back from genuine moral progress.
Joan Didion, in writing about the Lewinsky scandal, noted that most Americans didn’t want that story told. They understood that the President had done some untoward things in the private realm. But they were more concerned about the things he did in the public realm, which effected them.
It was the media who rolled out the Lewinsky scandal, and who kept pumping time and money and fake emotions into it, as if it were a new product we desperately needed in our lives.
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But we didn’t need it–not then, and not now. What we need is mature and ethical governance.
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Weiner himself is gone, off to the pillory. He is sure to return to us soon enough, in the pinstriped cloak of a pundit, the bruised grin of an ironic cameo. For those of us left behind, the question remains: what can we do? How can we put an end to this kind of crap? The answer is pretty simple.
Stop gazing at the Weiner.
This is how it works in America right now: you vote with your attention and your money. You do it every day, whether or not you mean to. Every single time you give in to your worst impulses and click on a link that involves gazing at a Weiner or listening to a phony candidate tell lies (or even getting teased for telling lies), every time you choose to indulge in a “story” that you know has no real moral impact on our governance, you are taking part in the degradation of this country.
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When I say you, of course, I mean I.
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The goal of the media in late-model capitalism could not be more transparent. They are an industry. Their agenda is profit. All they want is your ears and eyeballs, on behalf of the sponsors. If you click on sexual hi-jinx and hairstyles and corporate propaganda, that’s what they’ll keep serving up. They will do so to the exclusion of those stories that might illuminate the growing perils of our species, and their potential remedy.
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I think now (for whatever reason) of my grandfather Irving Rosenthal, who believed that all men and women should share equally in the bounty of our planet. He recognized the unlikelihood of this ever happening, given the prevailing greed of his homeland. Still, he remained convinced that a daily investigation of The New York Times might yield some elusive cause for hope.
I can only imagine what he would have said last week.
So much suffering in this world and I’m going to waste my time staring at some schmuck’s putz?
***
History will look back upon this moment with mirth and great sadness. The Weiner affair will be seen as yet another parable about our sexually neurotic and lonely population, unwilling to face up to its adult challenges.
But we write our own history. We need not service our devils. It is possible that Americans can and will grow up, that we will demand of our Fourth Estate an honest accounting of our condition.
They’re not going to get any better until we do.
47 responses
Boy, that needed saying; thanks for putting it out there. Now if only everybody would read it and act on it….
Of course, most of us know we ought to be spending our time learning about more serious subjects, but we also know when we open the menu that we ought to choose that chicken and rice dish over the double bacon cheeseburger with fries. But just look around the restaurant and see what’s on the plates.
Things do need to change, but until society reaches some collective level of disgust at the news we’re consuming, or until we come to believe that continuing this way will somehow bring us immediate and devastating harm, I just don’t see that change happening.
News is now judged for its entertainment value rather than it’s import. And, as stupid as it sounds, I guess we find weiners more entertaining than economics. Sigh.
Weiner’s great sin was more basic: he took pictures.
I was a big defender of his, and of this very notion, until Weiner admitted to one particular thing which changed my opinion of this case completely, and that was that Weiner sent these pictures to women who hasn’t asked for them. If this had simply been a case of a politician flirting with someone he didn’t know in real life and she (or he) were flirting back and these pictures were a result of that flirting, I’d say (and did say when I thought that was the case) that it’s some pretty ridiculous stuff to get worked up over unless you’re married to him. But sending pictures of yourself in various states of undress to someone who has never suggested that they’d be interested in seeing them is the equivalent of flashing them.
Excellent piece! I saw this headline and thought, “Oh, great…” But you hit the nail squarely on the head.
A really inspiring meditation on the issue, and on the new responsibilities we face, given what corporate interests deduce about us based on where we click.
finally, thank you.
Fantastic words. Poetically eloquent, gravely accurate. You are a true patriot. Please continue to fight the good fight.
Gee, I thought it was because he kept lying – without blinking, with such aggressiveness that made the media, his friends and colleagues, first trust, then question his way of not answering the yes/no questions they posed to him. His aggressiveness and evasiveness caused the media to dig deeper. It was his baldfaced, blatant and in-your-face lies that did him in. More than a few of his former colleagues believed and trusted him. At first…
There may not be any ‘moral impact on our government,’ but it sure says something about the man. If he was my husband or the man sending unrequested photos to my daughter, I would not be that forgiving.
I tip my hat to you, Steve. Loved this. Well, in a sad, knowing way — but you get what I mean.
Hey Tina —
Anthony Weiner ISN’T your husband. He’s a congressman from New York. He was elected to govern. The entire point of my piece was that a mature democracy makes this distinction. I wouldn’t want to stand by Thomas Jefferson’s actions as a man, either. He owned slaves and slept with one, etc. Yeah, he lied. About a personal matter that should never have been framed as a “news story.” Sorry to sound frustrated, but you’re falling into the mindset of a lazy and prurient media…
I agree a mature democracy makes this distinction as well, Steve. But, when someone’s behavior steps outside his elected mandate, then I question his motives, especially when it comes to 17 year old girls. However, what I object to in government, and in our society are the passes we give so easily.
Sure, forgiveness is awesome and I think our personal lives aren’t anyone else’s business. But, when you become a politician, your life really is held to a higher standard than that of behaving badly. I also think we want our politicians to be better than we are. We elect them for so many things in addition to our self-serving interests.
Does that include behavior that is considered outside the lines, or is that the new norm? This is where I get confused. I totally agree with you on a mature society and such…but where do we draw the line with things like corruption and bad behavior? That’s what I’m addressing – lies and more lies regarding bad behavior. Isn’t our behavior, public and private, who we are?
Tina,
I’m not suggesting that we “forgive” Weiner. I’m suggesting that we let him do his job, and, if he has moral failings (as he obviously does, as we ALL do) UNLESS they impinge upon his elected office, we let him take those up with his conscience, his family, his God. It’s just not our business. The only reason his lies became “our business” is because the media wanted to make some money. We pay them to sit in judgment. It’s a corrupt arrangement.
On a brighter note, I totally appreciate your reading the piece and responding so thoughtfully.
I think you’re missing the real connection between the seemingly prurient “distraction” of the Weiner story, and the larger, inarguably more important issues facing our nation and planet. The connection, as I see it, is this: with problems this dire facing us, we are all, whether we admit or not, looking for a hero, someone big enough to pull us out of this mess. A friend of mine who was saddened by Weiner’s downfall, referred to him as a “giant-slayer.” He was one of the few politicians who seemed to be a sufficiently strong force of nature to be able to effect real change in the world. And I think what’s driving the frenzy around his downfall is precisely that: the hero took a fall. He proved himself to be a messy, flawed human being just like the rest of us.
Steve, First off, I apologize for going off topic. I get your point and agree with you -the press holds way too much power on what we read and pay attention to, on almost every level. That’s why it is important to read things we don’t want to read…to get another POV. I love your pieces and the way you think, regardless of whether I agree or not, which for the most part I do.
I think the press went to town on him more so because he ‘kicked them in the face,’ and they wanted to get even. Yes, he lied, as they all do, but he was so icky in his handling of it. As if beating them down with his aggressive rhetoric and avoiding the simple yes/no questions would suffice. I think a lot of people were glad he got caught in the press and congress!
My initial point in responding was to call attention to the lies and blatant corruption on all levels that we accept as part and parcel of our elected officials. Am I off course to want better from them so I can hold myself a little higher? I want trust and honor and all that in my life, as well as in those I elect.
As a side note, I’m a bit sensitive right now; I’m flying to Wisconsin in a few minutes. My son is getting married this weekend; I’m feeling a bit weepy and all that goes with change.
Love, trust, commitment, honesty and honor – all that we hold dear in our personal lives, why not in our public lives? That is also who we are.
Hi Steve. Thanks for articulating my feelings on this matter so succinctly. You refer to the two stories we tell ourselves and everyone else–who we are and who we want to be, and to an extenct, I agree. I guess we diverge at the crossroads of hope and context. Or maybe we don’t. Maybe that’s what you were saying about AW all along. Mostly, I’m good in a crisis. I’m calm, rational. A few times, I’ve failed. Tremendously. But those few failings shouldn’t cross out the times I’ve succeeded. I’m both and all. And the same holds true for AW–and any other politician or public figure. I think Tina was trying to ask where the line should be drawn on these private, moral matters. A politician who knocks up his staffer isn’t a story, I agree. But does it become a story when that same politician indtroduces legislation to amend reproduction rights in his state? Does his or her personal motivation matter? Or, are the two exclusive? Maybe I’m over thinking. And the staffer could probably abort in another state anyway.
Unfortunately, we live in a society that grasps at it’s violent, survivalist origins at every turn. It’s easier to beat someone over the head or fuck them into submission than it is to reason with them, and we have an educational system that reinforces that brute mentality K-12. And, as you point out, an industry of media still claiming it’s Grand Pappy’s roots of objectivity and ethics. They figured it out, people would rather be numb with irrelevant superficiality than face the harshness of our increasingly complicated society. Especially since we’ve gone Global and now have front row seats to real violence, real problems. I wonder how many readers of People magazine can spell Uganda? or know what fracking is? It’s too hard, and it implicates them. And who wants that? Just vote for your favorite American Idol and pray for more word vomit from Steven Tyler. And more ass shaking from J. Lo. But it’s symbiotic, too, you can’t deny that; the majority want the ass shaking, not the political fall out of a regime change in some unspellable African country. Unless it occurs in a Leo Dicaprio movie.
My concern is always this: Can it be changed, or must these two human conditions co-exist simultaneously? And, if possible, how do we give our angels an edge? At least when it matters.
Anyway, thanks for writing this. I enjoyed reading it.
AS
Very well said…the ultimate last word (sic) on the Weinergate thing. I wrote a similar piece a few weeks ago, but without the sharp long term insights of this one. (https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150626528570112). Congrats!
Fred Moramarco
There seems to be some nostalgia in this piece for the great days of JFK where he could grab any woman in arm’s reach and there was no recourse (legally) and no interest from the media on his “private” matters.
I don’t watch any of the 24 hour news shows so perhaps I am less jaded by their gross approach to journalism, but I do want to know when someone in elected office sends unsolicited “sexts” (sorry I hate that word too) and then lies aggressively about it. Not that I would automatically disqualify him/her from doing political work, but bad judgment MATTERS and it is better to get caught early, before you are mayor of NY or running for president and learn some boundaries.
Otherwise you end up with DSK. Back in the day when the press gave the good ol’ boys their privacy what would have happened to an immigrant chambermaid and her accusations of sexual assault? Twenty bucks, the afternoon off if she was lucky and a pat on the ass on her way out the door.
I was sent a link to this article by friends with whom we had a long discussion about the AW case. You have put to print what I wanted to try to say but couldn’t put together in words. Thanks.
What you point out so well is that we all have failings – but do those failings mean we should give up on trying to do good and lead. I just wish that everyone else would acknowledge that we all have a self-righteous streak that I find just as unattractive, silly, and sad as AW’s sexting antics.
Hi Steve,
I liked your piece and in large part agree with you. However, I also agree with Tina, in that, lying about who one is does not beholden me to candidate -no matter how much I might have appreciated his platform before the lie. I think, in the same way you call upon us (the American public) to put an end to the wasted time of focusing on morals versus actual political issues, our elected officials too should tow the same line. If Weiner had come out and said “I will not discuss such personal aspects of my life in the media” or “yes, I have urges and get lonely and sometimes those desires cause an error in judgement but I have proven myself through my voting record…” or any other honorable response versus his tirade and “cover up” – he too would have acted as a responsible public not feeding the “frenzy” of the story. His response and how he handled it, is what dramatized it. Francois Mitterand was once asked on camera if he was using State funds to keep his mistress in an apartment, his response was basically -yes and what of it – the story ended there. So I guess what I am attempting to convey -not so eloquently as you – is that if you are going to be an elected official, if you are going to make those choices, then own them and stand by them – or stand by your recognition of a mistake. I work for government, I have to think about every email and text I send. Have I exercised error in judgement? Yes, and I am willing to stand by each of those choices. Yes, we lie about affairs – but when its out its out. Therefore, I think our leaders could also lead the way in ending their participation in the ridiculousness of how it is all handled and “aired”. Other than that, I totally concur. 🙂
Great piece, well said. It is lovely to be able to stand back and see things for what it really is!
Hi Steve Almond!
Here is a column written by J. Angelus Dust that expresses many of the same sentiments about Mr. Weiner and other cheaters as yours. I thought you might find it interesting. I think his hits a little bit harder, and on this subject in particular, I want a lot of hitting instead of reason. Especially if the critique is pure! Especially if that hitting is coming at the expense of Andrew Breitbart’s pudgy middle! But I really liked yours too!
http://tinyurl.com/3zwhyqt
Well said, Steve! A copy of this should be sent to every journalist and journalism student in America.
I agree with all of this, and with the commenter who noted it was creepy that some of the women who received these messages, like the college woman who didn’t get his “just a joke” excuse, were not willing recipients. I became a big fan of Weiner’s during the health care debate, when I thought he was a great voice of liberalism, challening Obama to be even more daring. But once this story unfolded, I found it hard to be sympathetic to his colossal stupidity. (Have politicians learned nothing — Monica kept the dress!, so why should he think his pictures wouldn’t be saved?) But in the end, it was hard not to believe that he didn’t have a subconscious desire to blow his life up. Beyond the “mistake” of mistyping his tweet to make it public rather than private, it was hard to not believe he didn’t realize all this would one day become public and that his career would unravel when it did. Now I simply feel sorry for his wife and their child. He should change his name. How will that kid ever survice the taunting his/her father’s legacy has created.
Just gotta say (as kindly as I can) that I find the direction here so disappointing. We’re sitting in judgment of a flawed guy, which is the easiest thing in the world to do. It’s what the media preys on. The idea that the media are serving some kind of heroic function by “outing” Weiner’s prurient behavior (thus saving other women from the trauma of receiving nasty pictures) strikes me as dubious. These are rationalizations for what amounts to rubbernecking. Weiner was a schmuck. That’s easy. We all get that. It’s not the point.
Steve,
You’re forgetting one monumental thing – as Tip O’Neill once pointed out, “All politics is local.” As noted with these postings, so is an elected official’s personal life when they publicly implode. We are Puritans…moralistic people and want our public servants to be better than we are, hence the high positions we elect them for – to handle our government etc.
I could care less about Weiner and his postings, though as I said earlier, does giving him a pass mean we all accept bad behavior? If you and I are accountable and responsible for our behavior, then so ought our elected officials.
Having said that, if he kept his weinie to himself, there would not be a public outcry…it is all local, no matter what we want to believe. As far as the press goes, if it’s news, they report it…rightly or wrongly. It is a judgement call and it is a way to alert the public to his escapades and lies. Did they go too far? That, too, is debatable.
Tomorrow is my big day and the only thing I’m interested in is good weather for my son’s wedding….It really is personal, after all!
Bravo to you, Steve, for another great meditation!!
Tina, I hope you have good weather for your son’s wedding. You seem like a great human. Seriously.
But I don’t think I’m getting across to you: It is not OUR place to “give Weiner a pass.” That’s not our job as citizens. Our job is NOT to pass judgment on other people’s personal failings. Our job is to elect representatives to govern us. Period. The whole idea that we the people have the right, even an obligation, to pass judgment on the private conduct of elected officials — to keep them honest — is a sick power trip fantasy dreamed up by our worst impulses and relentlessly exploited by the press. In a mature democracy, Weiner’s private screw-ups would remain his private business, until such a time as they rose to level of crimes. And he would go to work and do the job he was elected to do. The reason so many decent people avoid politics is because of nonsense like this fake scandal, the idea that being elected to public office makes your private life public property.
Anyway, mazel tov to you and your son!
All along I’ve wondered how different this would have all played out if his name was Smith.
How it would have played out if his name were Smith…how it would have played out if he had been a she and send equivalent pictures…these are two extremes.
Imagine it: a prominent gov official sends pictures of her cleavage and upward skirt shots. How quickly would she resign? How quickly would it be called for her to resign? What would be said in her favor? (or at least her position related defense, as is how I view this article–and I view it positively, btw.) I doubt so many would be quick to defend her actions. I doubt so many would be quick to disparage a Mr. Anthony Smith, similarly.
If he had of been a she – the s word would have been used in nanoseconds.
Sorry, didn’t mean to “disappoint” anyone by having a different opinion. We get your point (it’s not that hard to get): Our prurient interests helped created a media frenzy that drove Weiner from office and moral perfection shouldn’t be the litmus test for leadership. But I don’t completely agree that’s what happened here. If there was election this fall, Weiner may very well have been able to hold on and get reelected because, as everyone knows, most polls showed the majority of his constituents didn’t care about this scandal. I think Errol Louis at cnn had a good description of the perfect storm Weiner fell victim to: a slow news cycle, an abrasive personality that gave him no support among a Congressional district that was willing to rally behind more flawed characters likes Charlie Rangel, and behind-the-scenes maneuvering as New York is on the verge of losing a Congressional district. It seemed amazing to me that, in my view, the morally self-righteous Republicans like Mitch McConnell didn’t come out against David Vitter the way Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman-Shultz piled on against Weiner (maybe that’s a gender, not political party issue). I think your column and comments are great prods, but I’m not sure they’re even entirely necessary. There are plenty of examples of the electorate looking past scandals to re-elect leaders whose policies they agree with – Barney Franks and Gerry Studds from Massachusetts being the two examples most often cited. And hey I reserve my right to stand in moral judgment of anybody I feel like, and I wouldn’t begrudge any one’s right to use their own moral compass, if they chose to, when they step into the voting booth. (That’s the beauty of the one-person, one-vote system, isn’t it?) To my earlier point, I’m just fascinated by the almost Shakespearean urge for self-destruction that was on display here. It reminded me of Gary Hart urging reporters to “Follow me around” if they didn’t believe he wasn’t having an affair. It’s hard to feel sorry for someone who destroys their career when it looks like it was their own – conscious or unconscious — impulse to do so. I can’t feel much sympathy for someone who gets eaten alive in shark-infested waters if they jump in when everyone can see the dorsal fins circling the boat. To your larger point, I think we have made progress in recognizing that leaders don’t need to be morally perfect. In the 60s, the civil rights movement probably would have been derailed if Hoover had released the evidence of King’s affairs. But I think we have made some progress on that issue in 50 years (Martin was right: the “arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.”) I think people are far more willing to see that leaders can be flawed (because we all are) – that’s why Bill Clinton is still so popular in certain circles, and why we can re-elect someone whose partner ran a prostitution ring out of his condo (Barney) or had a consensual affair with a 17-year-old Congressional page (Gerry). Maybe the one virtue we still expect, though, is honesty. In another example of the cover-up is worse than the crime, what would have happened if Weiner had come clean from the beginning (a la Letterman & Hugh Grant) instead of the silly excuses about hacking and then someone getting a hold of pictures of him in his underwear. A speech in which he confessed love, admitted his ego and media attention had gotten the best of him and convinced him he could compartmentalize his life, and then a promise to get help and come back with a full focus on serving his constituents – either with or without resigning from Congress in between – might have enabled him to ride this one out better.
Well done article, Steve! Thank you!
IMO, no matter what one thinks about politics or morality or even that he basically screwed up–all of this is not the point. The grand elephant in the room is the state of our news media. That it has disintegrated into a pathetic little “voice piece” serving corporate interests. So-called journalist now prey on finding “news” based on pettiness, gossip, sexual titillation, and assorted levels of brain stem thinking. Those “journalists” have mortgages to pay and mouths to feed. I get it. So, it’s up to us as individuals and Americans to wake up our frontal lobes and “vote” with our attention and dollars on news of substance.
So thanks again, Steve, for stimulating our frontal lobes.
We seem to forget that the same thing happened to Eric Massa. Strange that these non-issues were foisted on us by the media – also strange that these were 2 outspoken Democrats from usually republican districts. Coincidence?
Weiner’s actual sin, not the one the media are harping on, but the thing he really did wrong, is sexual harassment. Sending unsolicited sexual pictures and messages to women is sexual harassment. And that’s something that needs to be said.
Also, “effect” is not a verb.
Steve,
It is unrealistic to expect constituents, or employers of any kind, to overlook the character of an elected official. When you choose to elect or not vote for a person…you are passing judgement on that person. When voting for someone who sits in office, someone who is placed in a job by the public to create and pass laws which have direct implications on the public that put them there, both the character and skill of the person is considered. The nature of an elected official’s job, their actions-their votes- in turn also pass judgement on society e.g. where they allocate funding, votes related to various civil rights, the degree of severity for a given crime, etc. For this very reason, the public scrutinizes the character of the elected official. Character includes personal acts. I agree the media and public in this country go way too far in pointing fingers and have bastardized both what is news as well as what their role is in reporting news. It is repugnant to prey on the weak. However, to give every weakness, every indiscretion a pass creates a society without a full understanding of the meaning of the word trust. Those that fail should not be villainized and attention should not be focused on their weakness. That is beneath a good society. That does not mean those that make mistakes because they are weak should be allowed to pass unfettered either. For me, even though it is no one’s business, even though the media should not be reporting or asking such questions, it is how Wiener handled it….not his act of committing the indiscretion that has brought him to his current fate. So although the media may overstep the lines of good journalism, they are not responsible for Wiener’s demise and the public’s role is to elect officials worthy of governing them. To overlook the character of the person is to abdicate, completely, your role in a democracy.
Nicole,
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.
I agree with you on this much: “even though it is no one’s business, even though the media should not be reporting or asking such questions…”
That’s as far as I’ll go.
Weiner constituents should absolutely assess his character — as an elected official. Not as a lonely, desperate dude. His friends and family can assess that stuff.
The idea that “character” is some static property that applies to everything a person does strikes me just not true. People contain multitudes. In some realms, they show great character. In others, they show poor character. Weiner showed great character as an elected official. As a private citizen, he did not.
Do you really believe that people “abdicate, completely, their role in democracy” if they fail to make judgments about the private affairs of their elected officials?
That’s shocking to me.
But again, people get to disagree in this country. Respectfully.
Hope the wedding went well,
sa
Steve,
I agree with you on 99% of this. I think that the way the press favors personal scandal over the stands politicians take on issues like the economy, tax rates, military intervention, education–the list goes on for miles–is disgraceful, and I think that our political system would be a lot more effective if people cared less about whether or not their elected officials were engaging in conduct that a majority of people engage in at least once in their lives (cheating on a significant other) and more about what stands they took on issues that actually affect our day-to-day lives.
But i don’t think you can call this particular example a private matter because of the specifics surrounding it. If Weiner had been having phone sex with these women, that would have been a private matter. If he’d been meeting them in person, though surreptitiously, that would be a private matter. But he wasn’t doing that. He was engaging with them in a public forum, even though he was trying to do so in a private manner. Setting aside for the moment the fact that he was doing this uninvited–and that’s a huge thing to set aside–Weiner forgot the first rule of electronic communication, which is that nothing is ever truly private.
And Twitter is perhaps the least private of all the social media formats, since about the only way you can limit who sees what you write is to protect your tweets, and if you’re a public official using the forum as a way to get attention for your accomplishments or arguments, then that sort of makes protecting your tweets counterproductive. Weiner didn’t have his privacy invaded in this case. He made it public the second he sent those messages in a public forum, even if he didn’t intend to send them in a public way. I don’t really care if he was sending dirty pictures of himself to other people–that’s between him and the people he was sending them to and his wife–but I don’t think we can really characterize this as a private matter when Weiner didn’t keep it private himself.
Character is an important trait for public officials, Nicole. No one is denying that. However, I urge you to consider the hypocrisy at play: Senator Weiner gets hounded by the media and is called out by fellow Democrats for his sexual cyber-antics. He leaves office. By comparison, Senator Vitter only gets slapped on the wrist for his indiscretions with prostitutes even though he ran a campaign on “moral family values.” Vitter is still in office.
Steve reveals a great point about the nature of our society’s news aggregation. Weiner’s story became more “newsworthy” when images were supplied and countless media outlets ran it–forever burning their pixels in the minds of Americans. All that we have of Vitter’s diaper fetish is a Madame’s account with no image to validate its veracity. So, while I’m very thankful we’re not privy to such graphic imagery of Vitter, I’m disappointed he was taken off the hook as a result.
One question Steve,
Can you separate the writer from the works he or she writes? No one could have written, “My Life in Heavy Metal,” the way you did. We do not separate Martin Luther King or Mahatma Ghandi from their works, however flawed their personal lives might have been. Could Ghandi have written “Mein Kampf?” I doubt it, at least not with the fervor and hatred that permeated the book and made its author famous. (sorry to use this….)
In a perfect world there would be an ability to separate, but we would also elect perfect leaders…. As it is now, our world is not perfect, rather it is individual, perforated, racist, honorable, hopeful, despicable…bumpy and sloppy all at once. We are human and strive for the best in ourselves and our leaders. We look to others for inspiration and all things good.
My contention is Weiner’s denials and blatant lies – until he had no choice but to own up to his behavior. AS an aside, I spoke to a state supreme court justice over the weekend. He said Weiner’s downfall was all about the political; he had no friends in both congress and the press. When the press got hold of the story they ran with it, to get even with the SOB. Had he cultivated friendships and allies, he would not have found himself on the front page and so alone, both politically and personally. Community and Tip O’Neill’s mantra holds true – Politics is local (and personal.)
“What does this say about the man?”
I think we all try to separate our leader’s personal/private from public scrutiny and are successful most of the time…but not always.
The issue is plain and simple. When someone steps over the bounds of some kind of inappropriate PUBLIC behavior, then all of us are allowed to question his moral fiber… If he kept his private life private, there would be no discussion. The onus falls back on Weiner, as a public figure and as a private person.
BTW, The wedding was awesome! You got the name wrong, but not the moment. I thank you from the heart.
Hi Steve,
The wedding wasn’t mine it was Tina’s. To be clear, no I do not believe you abdicate your role in a democracy if you fail to make judegments about the private affairs of elected officials, as you described my words. It wasn’t Wiener’s photos with which I took umbrage, it was his response to getting caught. What I was attempting to explain was my thought that when you fail to take into account the character of the person – which to me was shown in how he handled the difficult situation of being caught – when you base your assessment solely on whether a candidate votes your way, you’re failing to be a responsible citizens in a democratic government. There is a balance of decisions to be made and black and white is rarely found in this world and is definitely scarce on the Hill. Therefore, my elected officials have to balance campaign promises, party platforms, and personal advancement with “the best thing to do under the circumstance and information at hand for all the American people”. That is information we as the public aren’t always privy to. Under those circumstances, I prefer an honorable man casting a yes or no and not one who casts the vote on his own self advancement or other selfish needs. I prefer instead to know that the official I elect is a man of integrity in how he has cast a vote and therefore is a vote with which I can be confident was the best decision based on the situation. I do not find that a character that lies and throws tantrums because he got caught in a situation of poor discretion is capable of such difficult decisions. For that, I do judge him. At that point, he is calling all those women liars, lying himself, claiming a security breach -that someone hacked his account and ultimately himself creating a media drama. It is the action of overlooking such displays of poor character, in consistently dismissing such behavior because the official votes to support my issues, that is when one abdicates their role in a democracy and displays an apathy in scrutinizing such situations because our own needs are served. Under such circumstances it would not be long before we would find ourselves in a democracy ruled by one character type….and one that is not honorable. All the best Steve!
“What does this say about the man?â€
His lies and aggressiveness did nothing to serve his constituency, but they did serve to fuel the tabloids and then some. He tried to get away with it by lying, blaming others. The Women. Of course, the women. As my mother was so fond of saying, “That’s a piss-poor excuse.”
The line of demarcation is real – public or private; it is a tried and true line, whether we like it or not. Our parents, community, other caregivers all instilled a sense of right and wrong, appropriate or not.
All he had to do was man up….
I can’t argue with Brian, or don’t want to anyway. He’s too smart. And I do hear what folks mean about Weiner’s invasions and evasions. But those only happen because his conduct — which I view as essentially private — is deemed “newsworthy.” I realize I’m being idealistic in asking for a greater moral consideration on the part of the press, but the central problem with public discourse is that people refuse to speak in blunt moral terms. Again, WE decide the sort of press we’re going to have. I’m always going to argue, therefore, that we resist private matters and stick with governance. I appreciate everyone’s take, though. I’ll keep thinking about it.
Oh, and as for whether we can separate writers from their work, my answer is yes. Saul Bellow was unkind to people in his life. That makes his books no less brilliant. My own sense is that writers are the ones who choose to edit themselves into eloquence and mercy….
Call me cynical, but if we knew everything about anyone and judged them worthy or not of their chosen occupation from that, we would not want our elected officials elected, we would not want our teachers teaching, our cooks cooking, our police policing, our writers writing. We are ALL flawed. And our particular flaws direct the course of our lives as much as our strengths. And who among us is perfect?
As far as I’m concerned all this Weiner business is just the circus part of bread and circuses – keep ’em fed and entertained.
I appreciate the compliment, Steve, and I want to reiterate that I agree with you on the vast majority of what you said. Our press chooses scandal over substance at every opportunity, and they do it in part I think because the public eats it up. I think we’d be a whole lot better off if the press stopped acting like the idea that people cheat in their relationships is somehow unusual. Polling suggests that more than half the population in both genders has cheated in a relationship at some point. Presumably that includes politicians. I’m way more interested in how they vote than whose genitals they’re in contact with, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that our country would be better off if more of the population felt that way.
And to illustrate why I think one’s marital fidelity is a bad yardstick by which to judge a politician’s competence, I offer our last 3 presidents. Bill Clinton was supremely competent, and cheated on his wife a bunch. George W Bush didn’t cheat on his wife, but was incredibly incompetent in office (unless you’re among the wealthiest in the US or own a defense company). Barack Obama seems, to me at least, to be competent at his job, and there hasn’t been hint of scandal about his marriage. That’s a small sample size, admittedly, but I could keep going back through the Presidents and I think we’d come to the conclusion that there’s little correlation between marital fidelity and competence in office.
RE: can you separate the writer [or artist] from their work?
resoundingly, YES!
http://www.cracked.com/article_18559_6-famous-geniuses-you-didnt-know-were-perverts.html
(Percy Grainger: such pretty music! Would have joined the Marques de Sade club in a split second!)
Hahahha – Love that Joyce!!!! Writers write about things close to ‘home’ either in their minds or lives…can you imagine … well, no, let’s forget about that one and move forward into the long weekend.
I will quit while I’m ahead rather than go deeper into the pit I can dig for myself. Instead today I will clean my writing room, turn up the music and finish editing the three stories that need tweaking, though none will be as interesting as those guys behind-closed-door sex/fetish lifestyles!
Anyone up for a spanking?! (just kidding, of course…)
One more thing to consider regarding our society and the people that move it…
It’s official:
Facebook and Twitter have overtaken the pornography sites as the most clicked on sites on the internet. Oh…to be compared to those oh-so-hot? porn sites….and feel good about it.
I stumbled on this site after reading Steve’s excellent essay in the January 13, 2013 NYT mag. So good I felt compelled to find out who this guy is. This discussion is one of the finest I’ve stumbled on, albeit, too late to add anything meaningful. Thanks to you all for reminding me that such discourse is still out there. My compliments to you , Steve, for both defending your position (much of which I agree with while feeling that there are opportunites for nuance, (ex., Isn’t it being judgmental to criticize one for being judgmental?) and being open in the end to giving it additional thought. And Tina, Brian and Nicole, you all didn’t simply critique Steve as much as enhance. I wish I had the forsight to discover this wonderful place much sooner.
Thanks to all.
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