Ruminations on a Weiner

Think of a two sided coin. That's what I think about with the current demise of Congressman Anthony Weiner's career. Let's look at one side of the coin.

On one side we have the deposed narcisscist. A young man as politicians go,(45) he is done in by his own juvenile antics. Why in the wide wide world of wonder didn't he realize that twitter, photos, and texts can be gotten ahold of in this voyeuristic society of ours. I had high school kids capable of tracking down photos sent from a cell phone. There are people out there that do nothing but look for these kinds of stories. You send a picture thinking it's just a private creepy moment between you and Carlotta, also send along some creepy dialogue with the pictures but what is to keep Carlotta (the recipient of your "package") from offering the pictures to a scandal rag (magazine) for money or maybe seeking notoriety for herself by calling Andrew Breitbard and saying boy do I have story for you.

Simply put, none of us can get away with much of anything these days and the higher profile job you have, the less you can get away with. Don't believe me? Ask Tiger Woods, John Edwards, Newt Gingrich, Eliot Spitzer and a dozens of others. So that tells me, deep inside Anthony Weiner is self destructive. Someone that has to sabotage his own efforts. I saw many students in my classes work hard, be on the verge of success and then find some way to do themselves in. Time to see the therapist Anthony (but I mean a real one) not the Lindsay Lohan kind.

In truth he is still young (politically) and can mount a come back as I believe Eliot Spitzer is doing now. People will soon forget his dumb move because soon enough someone else in the limelight will do something even dumber. 2 years from now he could still use his political smarts and speaking skills to get back in the game. But he does have to change his ways. He has to figure out why he did himself in and fix that. Anymore photos of his scrot (or worse) and he can forget politics altogether and begin applying to the Tom Cruise School of Bartending. Thank your lucky stars Mr. Weiner that you are forty five and not sixty. If you were sixty it would be game, set, match!

On the other side of the coin is this. Why do we, Americans, continue to labor under the foolish notion that our elected officials have to be squeaky clean perfect people in order to do their job? Have we always had this belief that elected officials were (are) holier than everyone else? Thomas Jefferson had a long relationship with one of his slaves. Ulysses Grant was an alcoholic president. Look, JFK had lots women on the side and he was the ruler of Camelot. Robert Kennedy the icon of virtue had a hot and heavy with Marilyn Monroe and at a time when he was married with a station wagon full of kids. Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Charlie Rangel, and scads of others. These are people we are electing, not robots. People can not only be weird they often are weird.

Think back to your young adult years, any skeletons there? So just because some people are smart enough, speak well enough, schmooze well, BS with the best, and claw their way up the snarky ladder of politics doesn't make them impervious to doing dumb things. We have to separate out the job they do for us from their own personal shortcomings. If I said it once I said it a thousand times, the American people mostly don't care who you are screwing while in office as long as it's not them. Let's get off the Anthony Weiner is the worst human being on the planet thing and just accept that he did something really, really dumb, dumb enough to give himself his own termination notice. Maybe he'll grow up and finally become the leader he had shown promise in becoming. It's a toss up.