New York Congressional figures
So… Anthony Weiner.
I admit my first thought upon seeing an image of gray underwear with a sharply defined thing was around the realm of “Why do I care?”. I admit to groaning at the name given to this — “Weiner-gate”. I did not want to read certain elements of political hackery that draw a blank of other party’s sex (quasi-sex?) scandals and misdeeds in calling hypocrisy to Team Donkey, pre-emptive or otherwise.
Mostly I admit to feeling an element of trepidation when seeing the name “Andrew Breitbart” attached to the story, because the evasiveness of Weiner’s subsequent comment told me that this was probably basically true, and this would be a legitimate chit for Breitbart to add to his ill-gotten and undeserved chits.
Seriously, if I am counting this right, Breitbart is now 1 and 3 or 1 and 4 in the “accuracy” of his partisan gets. Or maybe he’s un-defeated — the accuracy of the “wrong” ones are less important than that they got the job done — brought down ACORN, made Obama a fool for letting Shirley Sherrod go, brought NPR a hemming and a hawing– and the fact that in particular the ACORN story most Americans believe he actually had something and it’ll get played on Fox News and Conservative Radio for here to eternity. The beat goes on.
I think I read the explanation for the problem for Anthony Weiner. Weiner’s problem is that the use he has for his Congressional seat is two-fold: to position himself for Mayor of New York, and as a platform for Brash Blowhard Liberal Punditry. I suppose the former is now more problematic, but I don’t really know — but the latter is done away with (even as its purpose was to work in service for the mayoral bid) — ’tis a game, and in the Cable TV “Cross-fire” yelling match, the other side would always have the fact that they’ve seen the shape of his underwear in his penis as psychological weapon. He may have a future in politics, but his selected domain in politics will have to shift.
It could be said that to that old expression about Members of Congress being either “Workhorses” or “Showhorses”, he was a “Showhorse”, and therein lay his problem.
And I admit to groaning at some high five Internet comments that call Weiner “Jon Stewart’s butt boy”. But that’s the domain of those things, isn’t it?