Anthony Weiner not sure if that's his weiner.Follow

Sorry, I'm only half in this thread. Haven't paid any attention to Weinergate, and my head's all stuffed up from some kind of cold. I'm probably not making sense.

Just kind of playing devil's advocate. I don't think I'd immediately assume that it'd impact ability to do their job, though I could see it being a tiebreaker for whether I'd personally vote for them.

Or something like that. I dunno. My head hurts.

Edited, Jun 7th 2011 5:12pm by Eske

I don't care if he lies to me about things that I have no business knowing because they're his personal business. Being a political officer neither requires one to live like a saint or air their private life for the world to see. We vet them thoroughly enough as it is.

Arguably we're the lesser people for insisting that we know something we have no right to know. Then we're going to chastise him for a disingenuous answer?

If nothing else, it's unrealistic to enforce these kinds of expectations, and punishing people for information that we shouldn't have in the first place only breeds an inconsistent and unjust system where only the rare person who gets caught has to pay. Hell, even if we're going to pursue allegations only when it's convenient, we may as well turn political officership into an opt-in witch hunt. The adultery rate is above 50%, and I doubt you'll get nearly that many confessions or "that's none of your business"s if we ask all of our elected officials. We'll easily be able to assume that half of them have lied to the American people, so it's only a matter of finding out which ones did!

This kind of insubstantial scandal just needs to stay out of the media altogether. If I were the one in front of the press that day, I'd have told them they should be ashamed for stooping to the levels of the tabloids just to get a scoop.

Ok. But in this case, he sent out a tweet with a picture of his undie-wearing groin, which was seen by hundreds of people, most of whom were following him because he's a member of congress. You can't just disconnect one from the other.



We don't really vet them that well, but the point is that he aired his private laundry (pun intended) for all the world to see. It's not like his political enemies went digging through his email and twitter account looking for stuff. He sent it out. All on his own. If nothing else, it tells us he's a freaking idiot and maybe that should disqualify him from holding office.



At the risk of repeating myself, we didn't "insist that we know something we have no right to know". He sent out a picture of himself. To the public.



Again, we didn't dig into his personal life. He broadcast it for the world to see. And I don't think it's unreasonable at all. What's the saying? Little lie, big lie? Someone willing to cheat on his wife is unlikely to refrain from cheating in other areas of his life. As someone mentioned earlier, it also opens said person up to blackmail. He's clearly willing to lie to prevent the truth about what he did come out, what else is he willing to lie about?

We give our elected officials the power and authority to make decisions on our behalf. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to act in a way deserving of the trust we place in them. Representatives have the ability to do things behind closed doors which we cannot know about. So when something like this happens, it tells us that this person can't be trusted. He can't be trusted to not abuse his position with regard to hitting on women behind his wifes back, so why trust him with things of much greater value?




I thought you said we vetted them? We don't do that, though. Do we? But that doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye when things like this happen. When we elect representatives, we give them our trust and we hope they don't misuse it. That only works if we punish them when they do, right? That's why we have to hold them to those higher standards. No one's demanding a witch hunt of everyone in office. But neither should we ignore events like this.



He sent the tweet. He put this "in the media". Not the other way around. No one broke into his private belongings and rummaged around looking for something incriminating. He sent this out into public view. I agree that it's tabloid stooping for the media to do the former, but it's irresponsible to ignore such things when they are dropped right in front of you.


There's an interesting double standard here as well. I don't recall you (or most people on this forum) saying that the media should be ashamed for all the snooping and digging they did into Sarah Palin when she was selected as running mate in 2008. Never in my life have I seen such a scramble of tabloid level journalism aimed at a single person, yet not one peep of "this is a bit too far" from you then. So the media should have ignored a sitting member of congress who tweeted a picture of himself in his underwear to a woman who wasn't his wife publicly, but it's all fine and dandy for them to interview friends of her son to see if he smoked some pot at some point.

Strange line you're not drawing there.

No. He didn't resign. He just told his constituents that if they have a problem with his actions not to vote for him.

And why is that a story? Because we made it one. Try to keep up.

If he had accidentally posted any mundane personal detail/picture and deleted it, no one would have cared, and it still wouldn't have been their business to pry into it. They did because they have a fascination with ****** because we're Americans and penises are scandalous even though half of us have one.

Not much of a story. The coverup is more of a story, and even that doesn't really deserve any real airtime.

Hell, even any "serious" post in this thread that isn't a thinly veiled ***** joke is more than this deserves.

I think it's a great story for a tabloid. I'd prefer if professional journalists stick to stories that matter.



By George, I think you're getting it! It's a story because people find stupid **** that is none of their business interesting.



You just keep telling yourself that. Do you know nothing about people's perception of politicians? Maybe some running joke about how dishonest they all are?



Me, personally? Because you'd be dead wrong. I don't think any of those things have been anybody's business. Granted I don't actually mind if Republicans catch political flak for it, particularly considering their likeliness to run on campaigns of morality, but I also truly don't think it should be news. If blatantly hypocrisy is there, then maybe a quick comment and move on. I'm actually remarkably consistent in my position that it's good if Republicans get media heat but Democrats don't, but I don't pretend it's fair. I just accept that Republicans, particularly ones like you, have that same philosophy, and rather than attempt to transcend such a blatant hypocrisy, I take a rather more Machiavellian approach to the matter.

So yes; good when it happens to Republicans, and bad when it happens to Democrats, but generally not news or any of our business either way.

"Assurances"? It's a fact. There's 435 members of the House of Representatives, of which Weiner is one.

I've no argument that it was stupid, he was stupid in his denials and that he should ultimately face his voters. Moe's statements about "leaders of the nation who panic" deserved to be tempered with the reality that Weiner's ability to damage anything (beyond his own reputation) by acting in a panic is very minimal.

"Politician."

Rep. Weiner is a junior member on a single committee (Energy and Commerce). You're correct that one member doesn't equal another but Weiner is definitely in the lower tiers of influence. If, say, Mrs. Pelosi was Twittering off photos of her cooter around town and reacted the same way to this revelation, I'd see a stronger argument for "failed leadership".

Of course, had this not happened who knows where Weiner would be in 5-10-15 years.

Not anymore.

Edited, Jun 8th 2011 11:53am by lolgaxe