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Grow up and get over yourself.
He should also resign for going into rehab. He's not Lindsay Lohan.
Dan, you're as much to blame for this as anyone else. You helped make it OK for us to mock hypocrites during their sex scandals.
The scolds are just playing their cards against yours.
Off with his head.
Call me a dreamer, but I still hope he won't resign. And if he does, absolutely, he damn well better bring Diaperbaby Vitter down with him.
Have you actually read the exchanges he had with the blackjack dealer? She was so obviously faking it and leading him on. Only a 14 year-old would believe it. He should resign in shame for being so fucking stupid and gullible. Please go back to junior high, Rep. Weiner, where you clearly belong.
Should the voters elect someone else next term? Probably.
That's where this falls. As for the hypocrisy of Republicans on this issue... oy vey, no argument here. Worse than the Dems, and that's a pretty high bar.
@2 you're a schmuck. They don't care about you either, yet there you are, typing away. None of us needs to be influential just to have the right to communicate and express opinions.
About the lying thing I think everyone should get a pretty big pass when lying to anyone other then their spouse or partner. If Dan or anyone else asked me about my personal sex life I think I would be justified in lying rather then punting and admitting to some truth I held private.
DAN you can ask me anything you want about my sex life and I will never lie.
The problem with lying is that it undermines the practice of trust. When there is no implicit trust then there is no harm done in lying.
If someone expects people to tell the truth in every situtation then one simply doesn't understand what is at stake morally, or one has a bizarre understanding of the degree of trust implicit in casual conversation with strangers.
Isn't that supposed to be a get-out-of-getting-caught-lying-free card?
Weiner is one of the more energetic proponents of liberal/progressive values; you don't see many like him in office nowadays. It's a terrible shame how he mishandled this.
Millennia from now, anthropologists will report that the USA had a state deity, analogous to Roman Vesta, called "Family Values" to which a prominent male politician was ritually murdered every three months. "Family Values" was centered around an antiquated ritual called "marriage," rather than the reproductive contracts we have nowadays, and symbolically, through the "marriage" ritual (those of you aware of the mating rituals of Black Widow spiders will find this familiar), the "wife" castrated the "husband" and then swallowed him back up into her womb. This is how the "wife" received all her superpowers and legal privileges.
Democrats are such goddamned wimps. Where have all the LBJ's gone?
But I still don't think he should resign. I think he should man up and tell everyone to mind their own affairs, And get back to governing and try to keep a low net profile from here on out.
And maybe the political parties should hold classes for all reps once a year and how to deal with sexual scandals.
This is just stupid American puritanical nonsense. I agree that he shouldn't have gone into whatever "rehab" he's in, because there's nothing to "recover" from. People lie about sex all the time. Get over it.
Vitter the Shitter doesn't have to resign because outside of The Stranger and its ilk you will never read, let alone see, what Vitter's fetish was. The least censored mainstream media(Bill Maher on HBO for example) will mention Vitter's diapers, but not what was in them and what he did with his shit. Most regular news viewers and Vitter's constituents think he just went to a prostitute for "regular" sex. If you had a Grandma in Louisiana would you explain it to her? I didn't think so.
Both liars and hypocrites are dishonest to shield their own sorry asses from media fire, but at least liars like Weiner and Clinton don't try to throw the fire back at the rest of us.
But then again, when he gave that terribly evasive original answer about whether or not that was his crotch shot, he really signalled exactly how he was going to handle this whole thing.
I *do* think Vitter should absolutely go as well, but unfortunately there's no calls for *his* head going on in the media right now.
Meh. Double meh.
They get upset because they expect public figures to represent the best of the American character.
"How can I teach my children to keep their dicks off the Internet when Weiner does it and doesn't get in trouble?"
I watched them read aloud by Bill Maher and Jane Lynch. While I'm aware that most sexy talk sounds stupid out of context, this was a pretty crappy-sounding script that could have come from a jaded phone sex operator or a female cop working vice, or a computerized sexbot that needs it's patter upgraded when the new model comes out.
Murder isn't created equally. Yet somehow we've managed to accept this obvious fact, classifying homicide as 'Murder One,' 'Murder Two,' etc. We've grown to accept nuanced jurisprudence when it comes to addressing the taking of a life.
Aren't we bright enough to do the same with respect to deceit?
@35 Americans have no actual enumerated right to privacy, except in certain States like Washington. If you want a legal right to Privacy, move to the EU or Canada.
Deos ibuprophen help any?
The qualities do not disqualify him in the House.
When the President asked him if he did these things, he denied them. He lied to the President. He got caught.
He does not respect the office he holds or the offices he works with.
He should resign.
About the lying thing: So if Weiner lied about his personal consensual virtual sex life, that's a "resignable" offense but if he lied about, say, healthcare reform, the Palestinian occupation, Mavi Marmara or Amnesty International, etc. [there's many instances of his AIPAC/ corporate flackery] it doesn't matter at all?
I long for the day that "it's none of your business" is the knee jerk reaction instead of "I didn't do it!" It's easier to recover from and, most of the time, it's more appropriate.
The "how am I supposed to teach my children" argument is a callback to this gem:
"HOW AM I GOING TO EXPLAIN THIS TO MY KIDS?!" Being a parent sucks, doesn't it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPvVnrV1t…
Only if he made an honest effort thereafter TO STOP. If not, discovery is simply inevitable.
So. Fuck Weiner. I don't care if he's in my tribe. He's stupid as shit and I'm sick of stupid people getting to run things and getting to be part of the Nobility just because they pander to my political kinks.
It's not his morality that's the issue. It's not that he lied. I couldn't give a shit. It's that he's too stupid to understand how the most rudimentary technology works, too stupid to employ a simple stratagem to deflect his mistake, and too stupid to just say 'fuck all ya all' and ride it out. How's this stupid fuck going to resolve a single one of our serious problems if he can't figure out how to talk dirty to a college chick and then can't figure out what to do once he get's busted?
And he's hardly done much to generate goodwill -- he got his first elected position through race-baiting, has a reputation as a pretty relentless bully, and has used homophobic slurs against members of his staff. This feels like karma ...
And he's hardly done much to generate goodwill -- he got his first elected position through race-baiting, has a reputation as a pretty relentless bully, and has used homophobic slurs against members of his staff.
And here's the problem with his lie, that makes it different than Clinton's lie: he tried to push the blame onto Breitbart and a "vast right wing conspiracy". This has given Breitbart a great chance to play the victim. Now the legitimate criticism of Breitbart will be drowned out by his smugly righteous self-pity. Thanks for that, Weiner.
Funny. It never works that way in the depositions or trials I attend.
Weiner's response to people finding out about his activity? Similar to Clinton. He blamed nebulous hackers and such.
You cannot trust people like that to exercise their judgment for the benefit of others over themselves. They gotta go. Not because of the sex, but because of the attempt to so scandalously lie to the very people they are obligated to not lie to, all in order to avoid simply saying, "Yeah. I did that. I am done talking about it."
If Tony really wants to go down swinging, why not choose someone (equally irrelevant to his present dilemma) who plays for the Team which has the power to force him from access to the Congressional gym? Why not refuse to resign until Barney Frank resigns?
If Tony really wants to go down swinging, why not choose someone (equally irrelevant to his present dilemma) who plays for the Team which has the power to force him from access to the Congressional gym?
Why not refuse to resign until Barney Frank resigns?
And if you think that means that a lot of other Congresscritters should by that standard also be thrown out, I'm fine with that, too. Promises mean something. If promises to your wife mean nothing, promises to me probably don't either. The problem isn't our cultural attitudes towards sex. The problem is this guy's behavior that makes him think he should do whatever he wants AND get away with it.
Clinton? He had sex with someone he had a position of authority over. I don't care if she wanted it or not. As far as I'm concerned it was rape, and he should have gone down over it.
He did not break any laws. And if one more person says that he took a photo while at the congressional gym- i'll puke. Tired of hearing all these hypocritical petty bitches. STFU Already.
http://www.alternet.org/sex/151223/the_w…
http://www.alternet.org/sex/151223/the_w…
Weiner's behavior is objectionable because it was just SO stupid - if you're going to indulge your fantasies online, do it anonymously if you don't want to be found out. Don't send pics from your account and don't include your face. I'm sure that's what the rest of his colleagues have been doing. I don't expect our representatives to be rocket scientists, but would sure hope they're smarter than this.
I do hope he has learned a lesson, though. If you are going to be a public figure, a political firebrand AND engage in computer/phone sexual interaction, find a way to be freaking anonymous about it. It pisses me off to see that scumbucket Breitbart cackling away and releasing photo after photo and simpering "I'm the good guy here."
Andrew Breitbart needs to go down, hard. But how? He deserves no credibility but this incident seems to boost this smear artist a great deal
If he did not break any laws, if he did not misuse public funds, if he did not use public resources, if these were conversations that took place between consenting adults, then there were no laws broken. I am not defending what he did - its not my place to condemn or defend - nor is it anyone else's. We don't get to have a say what goes on between consenting, sound-minded adults. And while I completely agree that he should have either fessed up about it to begin with OR not said a word about it at all, he faced no ethics violations charges, there was no congressional censure, there was no evidence of legal wrongdoing. There was no due process of any kind, the only people who had a right to call for his resignation are the people who elected him to office. If a majority of them felt that he could still represent him, their voices should count more than the voices of other politicians. If they don't, then there what meaning does "of the people, for the people and by the people" really have?