I just want to get this on the record and off my (fully clothed) chest: I was wrong about Anthony Weiner.
I'd said nothing about the whole hoo-ha because I didn't think it was worth the attention. Then I got a call from Howard Kurtz' Reliable Sources to come on last Sunday and talk about it. My wife said, Why are you doing that? I said, I'll be on the right side. As always, she was right. On the show, I said that media were using this as an opportunity for sophomoric jokes and that the fuss over a penis was a symptom of American Puritanism. What's the worst that happened here? I asked: So what if he had a stupid picture on his phone and accidentally tweeted it, so long as he wasn't sexually harassing anyone? But that's not the worst that happened.
Weiner lied. That is the story. That's what haters said in email to me after the CNN segment. They were right.
What's most amazing to me is that anyone in politics in this age could still be stupid enough to think that the coverup won't be what kills them. That's not just a matter of the age of publicness and the net that I write about. It is perhaps Richard Nixon's most important legacy. I gave Weiner too much credit when I thought he must have figured this out.
The personal irony for me is that I've long thought Weiner is a weasel. I chose to overlook that in this case. Wrong again. I confronted him at a Personal Democracy Forum a few years ago (it so happens that PDF11 is going on right now) over his support of noxious legislation to raise fines on so-called indecency on broadcast. Weiner would go onto Howard Stern's show as an alleged fan to get the attention but then he'd turn around and throw Stern, the First Amendment, and freedom of speech to the wind for a politically expedient vote. So he voted with prudery and isn't it always the case that the prudes are the ones with something to hide? Now we see what he was hiding.
I'm trying to pull back from my personal embarrassment and stupidity at giving this schmuck the benefit of the doubt and see the lessons here about our age of publicness. There are many. It fascinates me that Twitter provides such an easy way for people to connect for *any* purpose. It astounds me that Weiner thought he could do this under his name with his face and think it would not end up being a public act. Once he was public to the extent of sharing with one person -- a stranger -- then it's nothing for that to be shared with the world in an instant. All this affirms my belief that the only sane way to operate in one's life today -- as a public figure especially -- is as if *anything* you do can and will be seen by *anyone.* I would still like to think that eventually this will lead to an assumption, a default of transparency.
But then, I keep forgetting to calculate into this view the forgetful, venal stupidity of the public official. That's where I was wrong. Have I said that enough?