|
What Anthony Weiner Did Not Do |
 |
|
Sunday, 19 June 2011 12:00 |
|
Hendrik Hertzberg begins: "Of all the many political sex scandals of the last twenty-five years or so, none has had such a high ratio of political lethality to concrete caddishness as the Weiner affair. In the caddishness category, consider what Congressman Weiner did not do ..."
Former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner. (photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
What Anthony Weiner Did Not Do
By Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker
19 June 11
 f all the many political sex scandals of the last twenty-five years or so, none has had such a high ratio of political lethality to concrete caddishness as the Weiner affair. In the caddishness category, consider what Congressman Weiner did not do:
- Commit adultery
- Fornicate
- Hook up
- Patronize prostitutes
- Seduce an intern
- Seduce a congressional page
- Get divorced
- Get divorced serially
- Get divorced with children at vulnerable ages
- Hypocritically embrace prudish "family values"
- Advocate "abstinence"
- Lie about sex under oath
- Demonize his own sexual orientation
- Demand that some other politician resign because of some sexual misbehavior
- Break up somebody else's marriage
- Make an assistant take the fall for getting a mistress pregnant
- Fly to South America to see a mistress on Father's Day while leaving wifey home with the kids
- Pay off a mistress or a mistress's husband
- Have a mistress
- Break a law
There are plenty of strictly political reasons why Anthony Weiner was forced to walk the plank while others whose behavior was more morally reprehensible were not, and those reasons are getting a thorough airing at the moment. But certain cultural, or media-cultural, factors are perhaps more interesting.
The bad things Weiner did do - his sins, let's call them for convenience, without embracing the churchy implications - were, once revealed, a hundred per cent visible. And a hundred per cent of them were visible. They were a hundred per cent documented. No he said/she said this time, no need for witnesses, no need for testimony. No need for "evidence" - because the evidence was the sin, and the sin the evidence.
Weiner's sins consisted of nothing but his own documentation of them. The documentation was the sin, not the acts documented. Without the documentation, not only could no sin be proved, no sin could be committed. Is flexing one's pecs in the mirror a sin? Is baring one's penis when there is no one else in the room? Unlike, say, adultery, these become sins only when they are converted to pixels. I suppose flirtation may be considered a sin, especially when it consists of sharing (as distinct from enacting) an explicit sexual fantasy with a person not one's spouse. But what if the person is hundreds or thousands of miles away, and what if the sharing isn't even in real time? It's a sin to lie, but is it a sin to tweet? Apparently.
In 1987, a photograph of Gary Hart on a yacht called Monkey Business with Donna Rice perched on his lap torpedoed his promising Presidential campaign. But it wasn't so much the picture that was fatal, it was the broader story for which the picture - which, by the way, didn't become public until after he had withdrawn from the race - was an illustration. In Weiner's case, the pictures do not illustrate the story. The pictures are the story. There is nothing behind them. There is nothing more. Everything is up front. As the saying goes, nothing is left to the imagination.
Imagine, though, that nothing had been left to the imagination in certain other cases. In one such case, there was a blue dress with a stain on it. But what if there had been a video, or even a snapshot, of the moment the dress received the stain? What if the picture itself had been the whole point? What if every detail of every sex scandal of the last quarter-century, every word and every scene, had been photographed and archived, available for global retrieval at the click of a mouse? How high would Weinergate rate on the shock-o-meter? Not very, is my guess.
Weiner's sins, being wholly online, basically onanistic, pathetically "immature," and totally without direct fleshly carnality, are literally ridiculous. They lack the swaggering macho that pushes more traditional, arguably crueler male transgressions - having affairs, whoring, fathering children out of wedlock - into the comparatively (though only comparatively) safer territory of "boys will be boys" and "men are like that."
One more factor that comes to mind: the particular media addictions of the political class. I suspect that, unlike normal people, a preponderance of that class - commentators, political reporters and editors, operatives, "strategists," aides, news producers, etc. - spends several hours of every day watching cable-news television (or having it drone and flicker in the background), reading political blogs, sending and receiving e-mails about the latest political uproar, and talking about same to other members of the same class, on the phone or face to face. Actual office-holding politicians don't necessarily have the time for all that, but they live inside the bubble it creates. The ambient atmosphere is one of constant overexcitement, hysteria, and sometimes unbearable tension, all focussed on the story of the day. That may be a reason why the protagonists of political scandals are dispatched more quickly and more mercilessly than in the past.
Except when they aren't, of course. Senator Vitter is still Senator Vitter. But that's another story.
 |
|
Bachmann's Latest Conspiracy Theory Is a Doozy |
|
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=6358"><span class="small">Steve Benen, Washington Monthly</span></a>
|
|
Saturday, 18 June 2011 17:15 |
|
Intro: "Rep. Michele Bachmann's creativity is unrivaled in contemporary politics. Consider her remarks yesterday to a gathering of the Republican Leadership Conference.... Bachmann's principal problem is that she combines the worst of two important traits: she's strikingly ignorant about public policy and she's paranoid to the point of delusion."
Michele Bachmann suggested that President Obama secretly wanted Medicare to go bankrupt so retirees would be forced to enroll in 'Obamacare.' (photo: AP)
Bachmann's Latest Conspiracy Theory Is a Doozy
By Steve Benen, Washington Monthly
18 June 11
 ep. Michele Bachmann's (R-Minn.) creativity is unrivaled in contemporary politics. Consider her remarks yesterday to a gathering of the Republican Leadership Conference.
Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, the latest candidate to join the Republican presidential campaign, suggested Friday that President Obama secretly wanted Medicare to go bankrupt so retirees would be forced to enroll in the new national health care law.
"This hasn't been talked about very much - the president's plan for senior citizens is Obamacare," Ms. Bachmann told party activists here. She added, "I think very likely what the president intends is that Medicare will go broke and ultimately that answer will be Obamacare for senior citizens."
Bachmann's principal problem is that she combines the worst of two important traits: she's strikingly ignorant about public policy and she's paranoid to the point of delusion.
It's these qualities that lead Bachmann to come up with such odd theories. In this case, the unhinged Minnesotan believes President Obama is secretly trying to eliminate Medicare, forcing seniors into the Affordable Care Act. Is there any evidence at all to support this? Of course not, but that's not important right now.
In practical terms, Bachmann apparently thinks the president is secretly right-wing - she believes Obama wants to end the existing system of socialized medicine for seniors, and force these millions of seniors into the private insurance market.
Of course, there is a group of people who actually support such an approach. They're called "House Republicans." Indeed, the House GOP budget plan - written by Paul Ryan and endorsed by none other than Michele Bachmann - seeks to end Medicare and convert the program into an ACA-style system. Bachmann's conspiracy theory is that Obama secretly agrees with her far-right colleagues.
This isn't just wrong; it's mad-as-a-hatter crazy.
Bachmann's ability to come up with remarkable conspiracy theories has always impressed me. Remember the time the right-wing presidential candidate argued that the U.S. Census may lead to "internment camps"? How about when she warned of a "one-world currency" because she got confused about what a global reserve currency is? Or maybe the time she thought the "Lion King" was secretly gay propaganda? How about the time she said a bipartisan national service bill could lead to "re-education camps"?
This new one, though, is probably my favorite to date. Anytime a right-wing lawmaker talks to a right-wing audience and thinks it's wise to attack President Obama as secretly on their side, it deserves some kind of award.
Steve Benen is a contributing writer to the Washington Monthly, joining the publication in August, 2008 as chief blogger for the Washington Monthly blog, Political Animal.
|
|
|
Joe Lieberman Joining Glenn Beck: a shanda |
|
|
Friday, 17 June 2011 17:56 |
|
Dana Milbank writes: "Joe Lieberman, first Jew on a presidential ticket, was embracing Beck, the leading purveyor of anti-Semitic memes in the mass media. One of the most visible Jews in America was making common cause with a man who invoked apocalyptic Christian theology in promoting his rally in Israel."
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) talks with reporters before going into the Senate Democratic Caucus luncheon, 12/14/10. (photo: Getty Images)
Joe Lieberman Joining Glenn Beck: a shanda
By Dana Milbank, The Washington Post
17 June 11
 he Israeli tabloid Yedioth Ahronoth came out on Wednesday with a shocking report: Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann would join Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) at Glenn Beck's rally in Israel in August.
It turned out that much of the report was wrong. The three candidates quickly said they had no such plans - a sensible decision. Beck's hateful shtick encouraged even Fox News to end his show later this month. But, incredibly, another piece of the report was true. "I'd love to participate," Lieberman confirmed when The Post's Felicia Sonmez found him in a Capitol hallway. "It's just going to be a rally to support Israel and the US-Israel relationship."
This nearly caused me to plotz.
Joe Lieberman, first Jew on a presidential ticket, was embracing Beck, the leading purveyor of anti-Semitic memes in the mass media. One of the most visible Jews in America was making common cause with a man who invoked apocalyptic Christian theology in promoting his rally in Israel.
I admire Lieberman, and I've defended him over the years when he defied party and faction. But if he shares a stage with this creature, he will surrender the decency that has defined his public life.
When I spoke to Lieberman, he sounded less definite. "Am I going to go? I don't know," he said. "I've got a lot of other things going on." I hope he finds something else to do on Aug. 24. As he approaches his Senate retirement, it would spare him a shameful end to a dignified career.
Lieberman, who knew Beck back when he was a morning DJ in New Haven, may have missed some of the broadcaster's recent feats: hosting a guest on his show who describes as "accurate" the anti-Semitic tract "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"; likening Reform rabbis to "radicalized Islam"; calling Holocaust survivor George Soros a "puppet master," a bloodsucker and a Nazi collaborator; touting the work of a Nazi sympathizer who referred to Eisenhower as "Ike the Kike"; and claiming the Jews killed Jesus.
"Obviously," Lieberman said after I presented some of this to him, "that's troubling stuff."
Since Fox decided to part with Beck, the broadcaster has tried to repair the damage to his reputation by doing a couple of shows about the evils of anti-Semitism - and by proclaiming a "gathering" in Israel for "restoring courage."
It's nice that Beck wants to defend Israel before the United Nations attempts in September to create a Palestinian state. But this support comes with an asterisk. Beck's descriptions of his event as a gathering and a restoration echo his Mormon faith's theology: there will be a "Gathering of Scattered Israel" in which Jews return to the Holy Land and are converted to Christianity as part of "the restoration of all things" and the Second Coming.
Announcing his event on the radio last month, Beck invoked "the words of Ezekiel" - a prophet associated with end times theology - and said: "There are people who will say, 'oh you are crazy, that's not going to happen. People have been saying this is Ezekiel for 5,000 years, yadda yadda yadda.' I have no idea if these are the Times. I just know that the old hatreds are starting up, and God will not hold us blameless. I choose to stand and be counted."
In the same broadcast, Beck offered the apocalyptic prediction that "the force of darkness" would "attack the center of our faith" with "a two-state solution that cuts off Jerusalem." He further predicted that, at his rally in Jerusalem, "the very gates of Hell are going to open up against us." Later, he said that Israel may be destroyed "by Labor Day weekend" and that his gathering "may be the last time you get to see the holy sights."
Beck assumed a Messianic role: "The peace that is promised comes from standing in the place where He asks us to stand. I believe I have been asked to stand in Jerusalem." He predicted his gathering would send "a global shockwave. It will ripple across the earth."
Mainstream Mormonism has de-emphasized this notion of a literal gathering of Jews in Israel, but megalomaniacal Beck sees value in it. His Web site is promoting tour packages and selling merchandise; "this is not a charity event," says a disclaimer.
Given all this, it's little surprise that AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, hasn't endorsed Beck's "gathering." Lieberman still has time to reconsider. For the sake of everything you have stood for, Joe, please: Say it ain't so.
|
|
Sarah Palin, My President |
|
|
Friday, 17 June 2011 10:19 |
|
Intro: "It will be a devastating loss if Sarah Palin peddles enough books and visits enough gun shows that she has no incentive to run for president. There would be many chances for unique moments in the White House if she won. How about Sarah on horseback, riding through the Potomac basin like Paul Revere, ringing bells like he did and shouting, 'The Democrats are coming!' That would give folks ample warning to quickly cling to their guns and religion before the left wing snatches them away."
Republican candidate for Senate John Raese, left, Sarah Palin, and performer Ted Nugent embrace during a rally in Charleston, West Virginia, 10/30/10. (photo: Jon C. Hancock/AP)
Sarah Palin, My President
By Deepak Chopra, Reader Supported News
17 June 11
 t will be a devastating loss if Sarah Palin peddles enough books and visits enough gun shows that she has no incentive to run for president. There would be many chances for unique moments in the White House if she won. How about Sarah on horseback, riding through the Potomac basin like Paul Revere, ringing bells like he did and shouting, "The Democrats are coming!" That would give folks ample warning to quickly cling to their guns and religion before the left wing snatches them away.
I know that she suffered ridicule for her version of Paul Revere's ride, but from a Hollywood standpoint, she actually improved the story. Movies have soundtracks, in case anyone didn't notice, and bells are a lot more cinematic than one lantern hanging in a church steeple. Or even two. (You can hear her defense of her version on Fox News, or as my friends call it, the F Channel.)
Since Wall Street's recklessness plunged us into a national nightmare from which we are trying to awaken, it's hurtful to say, as some do, that Sarah is the national nightmare. Not true. She is historically inevitable. First there was Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party, now there is Sarah's Shoot Moose Party. And she's amazingly cheerful about this recession (of course, her own checkbook has fattened, but she has spread the wealth by buying a free shotgun shell reloader for every voter in Alaska).
I have some personal atonement to perform, because in the 2008 election I posted an article saying that Sarah Palin stood for our collective shadow, the pent-up bigotry, hatred, and anger that was suddenly being vented. She was Joe the Plumber's calendar girl. She was the secret hero of Alcoholics Anonymous, whose slogan is that you can't recover until you hit rock bottom. President Palin would show us that we haven't remotely hit bottom yet.
The mistake was mine, though. Sarah would smile her way into the presidency and then show pointy-head critics the error of their ways. Not that she would ask Americans to turn on one another in vicious divisiveness -- been there, done that. With 70% of the public so misguided as to consider her unqualified to be president, she has a bigger job to do than fomenting discord and calling anyone who disagrees with the Tea Party a socialist.
My President Palin would lead us through a national cleansing, like Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution. Nothing as violent, however, not at first. Maybe she might let school kids scribble with crayons on the paintings in the Museum of Modern Art. I've never met a soccer mom who wanted a Picasso refrigerator magnet. Or she might close all the high-brow music schools and inaugurate the kind of music that gosh darn real Americans like: harmonica, the musical saw, and tapping your foot to the radio while driving a pickup. What more do we really need?
Andrew Jackson's inauguration in 1828 was disrupted when a mob burst into the White House, tracking in mud, breaking the china, and eventually turning the lawn into a drinking bout. Sarah has the style to make this an official event. The Jackson mob dropped so much cheese on the floor that it ruined the White House carpets, so my advice is for Sarah to skip the buffalo wings and hand out beer bongs.
The last reason I want Sarah to run for president is rooted in a famous saying from the auto industry of the Fifties: "What's good for GM is good for the country." Sarah wouldn't have bailed out GM, so you might not see the fit when it comes to helping the average worker. But here's the update: "What's good for my brand is good for the country." Sarah has proved that in spades.
|
|
