I don't really have a dog in this fight. Weiner isn't my representative. But I think all the cries for his resignation are just grandstanding from both sides of the aisle.
As far as we know, he has broken no laws and engaged only in consensual relationships on the Internet. If his wife is willing to put up with this, we the publilc don't really have a say. He's a creep; but he's not a criminal, and the issue of whether he should stay in Congress or not is up to his constituents at the next election. The ethics committee might have a call on the "behavior" issue, but there's no crime here.
Now, what about this new x-rated photo that Andrew Breitbart is flogging around? Andrew Breitbart has a public record of using doctored media to smear his targets: the faked videos that brought down ACORN were used to launch his BigGovernment.com site; he posted the edited video that got Shirley Sherrod fired from the Dept. of Agriculture. Ms. Sherrod later sued him for defamation. If the only evidence is a photo from Breitbart, there's no evidence.
I continue to think that what people do in their private lives is of little consequence to their public acts. Why it should have mattered what that intern did to Clinton "under his desk" is beyond me. Clearly, the Republicans needed to "get" something on him, and this was just the only thing they had, so they pushed it as hard as they could. Newt Gingrich, whom we now know was conducting an extra-marital affair at that very time, now is seeing his own reputation besmirched (in hindsight), and his presidential campaign is foundering on "personal" stuff. "By the sword...."
ReplyDeleteWiener's behavior on the internet is of no concern to me. And it shouldn't matter to his work in the Congress. FDR, JFK, Ike, Bush I, and Clinton all had, ah, things on the side. Certainly, human consciousness is complex and compartmentalized enough to permit otherwise honest and well-intentioned men to have personal failings. An aggressive political persona may in fact be consistent with an aggressive sexuality. Who knows?