Think about where Anthony Weiner was 15 days ago. Puffed-up bantam of a partisan venom-spitter -- a liberal cockatrice -- and a big fightin' hero on MSNBC and Daily Kos and partisan hate-rallies (like the Wisconsin rally he was scheduled to attend). Generally considered to be the prime contender for the next mayor of New York City.Let me add a bit to that. Where do you think this story would be had this happened before the era of new media? Like the movie, gone in 60 seconds. We saw how the mainstream media tried to play this when it first broke - everybody in the mainstream media jumped on Weiner's statement that he'd been hacked and ran with it. There was a complete lack of professional curiosity that might have suggested something was wrong. A Democrat said it so it was gospel.
And after getting serious executive experience... who knows what next.
Think about where he is now.
Now think about what caused this.
No, don't say "immoral behavior" or "reckless sexual compulsiveness" or "hubris" or the "entitlement of the putative elite" or "the need of high-functioning, modern men to take the edge off."
Yes, those caused this, but they weren't the immediate cause of this. He was doing that stuff for years without any problems arising from it.
No, what caused all this was.... a typo.
The Typo From Hell. Possibly the worst typo in the history of politics.
Not saying he doesn't deserve it -- he does -- but consider that but for a single clumsy move by an errant left forefinger, none of this happens.
The smallest error of a fingertip, and a man is wholly undone.
Just a little mindblowing.
I can't even comprehend how deeply that twitch of a fingertip is burned into his brain at this point. How he has revisited and revisited a single errant keystroke.
If it wasn't for the efforts of a number of conservative blogs that did the digging and investigated the heck out of it - in other words did the job the mainstream media would have done on any conservative - this story would have had a early demise and Weiner would still be on the fast path to NYC Mayor and who knows what after that. Those blogs did the world a big favor.
Now we hear that Weiner has played the "rehab" card in hopes of retaining his seat in Congress. That was a bridge too far even for his party leadership and they immediately started calling for his resignation. Even they realized that dragging this embarrassment into a third week was making the whole party look bad.
I still have my doubts that Weiner will resign. Being a powerful political figure is all he's got. Without that he's just another geeky Jewish kid getting turned down by girls. The aphrodisiac of political power may be too much for him to give up, and his party will be forced to take care of it for him by redistricting him out of a seat. Meanwhile, he'll continue to be a source of revulsion for many Americans and that can't help the Democrats.
And do you think he's learned his lesson? They say past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, and that makes me think that Anthony's namesake "member" has not seen its last close-up. In fact, we're not done seeing the close-ups it's already done.
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I remember a story from a time, long, long ago, in a place far, far away (well, closer to you than to me, I guess) when "voice mail" as a label had not yet been invented and voice answering services and message store-and-forward services integrated into telephone systems was new and not widely available, a company executive returned to his office from a company picnic and recorded a lengthy message intended for a clerical person of the female persuasion (that might be redundant form that time and that place).
He described for her in exquisite detail (the story goes, I have no first hand information) what he would like to have done with the strawberries and whipped cream.
And sent it to a group address, instead of to her address, which group address was said to include every executive in his part of the world.
I assume she was fired.
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