Narcissus Shrugged

I have done some foolish things in my life.  Odds are you have too.  And we have all done things that we would just as soon never finds the light of day.  Maybe they are not very bad things in the great scope of fucking up.  But they are things that might otherwise not reflect entirely well on a reputation for sound judgment and probity that one might hope to attain at a certain station in life.

Like sending a picture of your crotch on Twitter to some girl in Texas.  While you are married.  And a Congressman.

I never did anything that stupid.  Point for me.

I was sitting in a bar in St. Louis back during what I recalll was Bill Clinton's first term.  Like everyone else in there I was transfixed by the breaking news of the Monica Lewinsky scandal that was breaking in on the TV.  The man sitting next to me must have picked up on my Arkansas accent whenever I ordered a refill of my iced tea.  He asked me if I thought that the story might be true.

"No," I said. "Bill Clinton may be many things but he isn't stupid."  Of course, subsequent events proved me completely wrong.  He was that stupid.

At least Clinton had the basic good sense to lie about it. Congressman Weiner led off with the  plausible explanation that his Twitter account had been hacked.  But I have a pretty good bullshit detector after all these years.  And it started going off when Weiner said that he wasn't going to turn it over to the investigators to spare that the taxpayers the expense. After alleging that he, a Member of Congress, had been hacked?  I'm willing to bet that the FBI advised his office that an investigation was not an option which I'm sure started the bullet sized sweat droplets.  Because you do not want the FBI poking around if your story is even remotely hinky.  I refer you again to Bill "I did not have sex with that woman" Clinton.

But what really sent the ole bullshit detector into the red zone was when Weiner stated that he could not say for sure that the image that got transmitted to the girl in Texas was indeed not of him in his skivvies.

I am not a Congressman.  Having said that, there are no pictures of me in the Jos. A. Bank jockey shorts that I favor.  Nor will there ever be.  If anyone ever shows you an image that purports to be me in such scant attire, it is not me.  It might be Congressman Weiner.  But it is not me.

Which leads one to the inescapable question: What kind of an idiot what do something like this?  Isn't being a powerful elected official who happens to be married to a beautiful woman validation enough?  Evidently not.

My take?  Leave it to the Democrats, his wife and his constituents to deal with him.  I know. Nancy Pelosi has called for an ethics investigation.  Undoubtedly the Republicans will demand he be turned over for the criminal equivalent.  Please.  From what I can tell Weiner's behavior, though disgusting, unseemly and juvenile, was not a violation of any criminal laws.  Let this be between his constituents and his wife.  If they can live with it, I can live with it.

Here's another good question for the folks in his District.  Presumably they sent him to Washington to represent them on the major issues of the day.  Health care, the national debt, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  And Congressman Weiner has time to send texts and pictures to some young woman in Texas whose only mistake was contacting an elected official she admired? 

Earth to Anthony:  She admired you for your positions as a public man.  She did not like you as a person.  And now she probably thinks, with some justification, that you are a creep.  Well played.

But back to Bubba.  Weiner would have been better off to haul off and lie like a damn rug.  Just like Clinton did.  Coming clean is just marginally useful as a matter of tactics as he is probably now realizing to his infinite chagrin.

What he should have done was enlist his wife in the defense.  Really. He should have put her up in front of a mic.  And she should have said:

" That doesn't look like my husband's crotch.  Actually, Anthony is much smaller than that."

Bet she would have done it.  Most of the women I know would have done it.