Weiner Leans In: 5 Thoughts On Anthony Weiner’s Mayoral Candidacy
First, a little Weiner refresher: in May of 2011, “a photograph of a man’s torso wearing gray boxer briefs and an obvious erection appeared on Weiner’s official Twitter account. It was a smartphone shot that Weiner meant to send privately to a 21-year-old college student in Seattle, but instead accidentally Tweeted to all 45,000 of his followers.” Oops! Weiner initially denied that he had sent the picture and claimed that his account had been hacked. Soon enough though, the truth came out, Weiner resigned, Abedin announced she was pregnant, and the couple pretty much retreated from the glare of media attention. In the last two years, Weiner has become something of a stay-at-home father, while Abedin has continued her high-profile job at Clinton’s side.
But now, Weiner wants to be in on the action again, reveling in the thrills that only politics and, maybe, sexting, can provide. So he’s doing a lot of press including this Times profile. In many ways, the profile is exactly what you would expect it to be. It’s an attempt for the couple to show that they are united and have moved past the scandal and so should the public. Weiner certainly tries to persent himself as someone who made a mistake and who has changed because of it. He’s, you know, been working on himself. But reading between the lines, or not even between the lines because it’s all right there, has made me think that maybe there’s still some work to be done? This profile actually raised more questions for me than it answered. Here are the things that I found to be the most puzzling about the whole Weiner situation, as it exists right now.
1) Weiner Has a Clinton/Kennedy Complex
That’s Bill, not Hillary. Weiner compared his sex scandal to the Clinton sex scandal and himself to Clinton a lot in this profile. He also compares himself to another giant of the Democratic Party when he says that his marriage was romanticized to the point where it had “kind of [a] Camelot feel to it.” Which, to paraphrase LLoyd Bentsen, but no. Weiner is not Jack Kennedy. Nor is he Bill Clinton.
2) Weiner and Abedin Never Spent More Than 10 Days Together Before the Scandal
“Anthony and I had not spent more than 10 consecutive days together until I was pregnant,” says Abedin in the profile. This seems crazy to me? I understand that both of their careers involve traveling, but still. That’s pretty excessive considering that they had been together for years. And maybe this led to the following problem…
3) Abedin Doesn’t Know What Weiner’s Weiner Looks Like
She blames it on having “never been on Twitter” but, well, that doesn’t really make too much sense. It’s a picture of your husband’s dick. You either know what it looks like or you don’t.
4) Weiner Blames Twitter
Although Weiner does accept personal responsibility for the scandal, he is also quick to point out in the interview that none of this would have happened if there wasn’t this crazy thing called “the Internet.” Weiner “went back to the idea that Twitter and its ilk provided such easy access to the feedback loop. ‘You know, like spin the wheel! Find someone to say something to you! And if it wasn’t 2011 and it didn’t exist, it’s not like I would have gone out cruising bars or something like that. It was just something that technology made possible and it became possible for me to do stupid things. I mean, the thing I did, and the damage that I did, not only hadn’t it been done before, but it wasn’t possible to do it before.’”
5) Everything Would Have Been Fine If Only His Father Hugged Him
Weiner tells the Times that he has been in therapy since the scandal and so perhaps this is why, when attempting to explain why he was prone to making the mistakes he did, he blames his dad. Weiner laments the fact that there was “not a lot of gratuitous hugging in our family.” And also points out that, “I am this middle-class guy from Brooklyn, the men in our family don’t hug each other, we don’t talk about our feelings.” Aw. Poor Weiner. All he needed was a little love from his father so that he didn’t need to look for love from women he had never met. That makes perfect sense.
So, I guess the lesson here is hug your sons so they don’t grow up to be compulsive dick pic senders? Valid. Anyway, I still don’t totally know what to think about Weiner’s candidacy, other than that it should make for a lot of interesting soundbites and New York Post headlines, and really, that’s all that matters.
Follow Kristin Iversen on twitter @kmiversen