Dang, Dr. Woody didn't wanna revisit The Weiner, but dang, there shore is still a lot of upset and unrest over the fate of Ant'ny Weinuh, ex of the majestic Ninth Congressional District, the borough of Queens, NYC, NY, and now pariah of the Party. Much gnashing of rhetorical teeth. Many recriminations and accusations. More discord in Ant'ny's legacy...
Cast off, alas. And unleashed the cascades of reasons why he shouldn't have resigned; shouldn't have been forced to resign: the nefarious plots his resignation advances, and the charges of hypocrisy addressed to the Loyal Opposition in seeking his head, after sheltering three such ludicrously obvious pecadilloes as Ensign, Vitter, and Larry Craig. All resound throughout the blog-and-twit-osphere this day.
An admired correspondent on Zuckerberg's Folly put forth righteous screed excoriating those who "betrayed" him from the left, said it this way: Ten more real-life reasons why Weiner was slimed out of office. Ten more real-life reasons why those who kept saying that Weiner "had to go" were either ill-informed...or lying...or both."
I never said, thought, or maintained that he HAD to go; only that he was GONNA go. He was the first prominent Dim to be nailed (so to speak) for what had until then been almost universally GHOPhux transgressions. Affairs, payoffs, sexting congressional pages, ugly divorces, out-of-wedlock children, dead office assistants? The GOPhux are the first thing you think of when those things come up. Weiner's the first publically misbehaving Dim since Slick Willie, innit?
Weiner was stupid, asa well as hubristic, proud, arrogant, narcissistic, sollipsistic, and did I say already say, stupid?
He got caught. It was amplified by his prominence, the public character of his outpourings of caustic (and well-deserved) contempt on the heads of his friends on the other side. Once he lost his "moral leverage," he would forever have been a circus act in the House.
A lot of "Scouts" are disappointed. Weiner looked like a decent simulacrum for Mr. Smith or Atticus finch. But Mr. Smith was modest; Atticus Finch wasn't flashing his privates to the sales girls in the back room of the hardware store.
The biggest issue for the Ruling class is retaining what the poli-sci guys call "legitimacy." Which is, mainly, a public relations "game" (in Wittgenstein's sense of a "language game;" it's like the stock market, in tht it requires that the participants "believe in" tinkerbelle-like things.)
ReplyDeleteWith the economy in tatters, and looming financial crises which will "force" the gummint to impose austerity measures which will be WILDLY unpopular, and an election looming, the Dims--whom the GOPhux ALREADY deny the power to govern, despite their having "won" election--are desperate to present themselves as "legitimate" leaders.
Ant'ny Weiner unfortunately (for him) stuck his substantial dick into a "legitimacy crisis," and rubbed the noses of the FDim elites in it. Weiner's dick, belonging to one of the Dim stalwarts in the House, an ostentatiously forthright and public critic of the GOPhux, betrayed that.
Political officials do not threaten domestic political legitimacy when they act criminally in international affairs or the conduct of external matters. What damages them, in the "puritan" precincts of the US imagination is prurience, of which Ant'ny was was demonstarably guilty.
And don't forget, his wife is an intimate of Hillary Clinton's, and so her discomfort discommodes the Secretary of State, too. Weiner clearly demonstrated he couldn't handle it, and