Is There Life After a Twitter Scandal?

~ Laura

14weiner1-articleLargeI was just wondering about Anthony Weiner, and this morning the Times gave me a little gift of a long article about him. 

 The big question is about the Political Comeback. Clinton did it. Can Weiner do it? 

 

UPDATE: Weiner blames Twitter for the scandal.

 Then he 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.”

UPDATE2: The article contained not one word about any policy or issue that was important to him. Not education or housing or the economy. It was all about ego. 

Published by Laura

10 thoughts on “Is There Life After a Twitter Scandal?”

  1. All I really got out of that story is that the rich are not like us. Clearly these super-rich international jetsetters have different rules, values, norms — and although the reporter was trying to humanize them I doubt that either he or she would have a lot of empathy for the regular people in New York. clearly their child will not go to public school. Also interesting that he was able to resign as a congressman and still live in an expensive Manhattan apartment, eat at expensive restaurants, etc. I’m sure that if you or I lost our jobs, we too would just move into a Manhattan apartment. . .

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  2. I didn’t read past the first page, either, but, yes, I noted the wealth as well. Wealth eases a lot of mistakes, as pointed out in our previous comment thread about teens, and their mistakes. I think that the ability of wealth to confer recovery from risks gone bad is one of the most overlooked privileges of wealth. People talk about opportunities that wealth buys, and they are many. But we often notice those. What we don’t notice ishow much you might be able to do because you “know you cannot fail.” (mind you some of the wealthy do much less because of that cliche, but others have the freedom to attempt more (in addition to recovering from their screw-ups).

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  3. Because I never stopped being twelve, I can’t be past his last name. It’s what Rowling would have used for a name, should she have wanted to add an inappropriate character at the Ministry of Magic.

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  4. I don’t think it’s fair to say he’s blaming twitter — he’s arguing that his transgression was aided by the technology. In parallel examples, we have teens sending pictures of themself naked, which would have been really tough in the days when that required drawing skills, or even with print photos, casual sex tapes, and porn,mot which there is much greater access because of tech.
    I myself once attributed my collection of dolls to eBay. I fave a fairly big collection of high end fashion dolls (unexpected to most, since I don’t appear to be a doll or fashion kind of person). I’d never hangout at doll colnventions to buy these dolls, but eBay makes that unnecessary.

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  5. “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.”
    Nah, because he’s a public figure who wants to get his jollies off, he’d have called an escort service like Eliot Spitzer did. Or had an affair with a young staffer, or some random videographer who approached him.

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  6. The article contained not one word about any policy or issue that was important to him. Not education or housing or the economy.
    I wasn’t aware that he had any issues that were important to him (though he made a big deal about wanting to destroy bike lanes when he thought he was going to run for mayor of NY City.) He’d seemed like a classic case of the kid who wants to be a politician for its own sake, and got where he was not because he had any ideas, skills, or useful experience, but because he’d been successful at sucking up to Chuck Schumer at the right time.

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  9. Now that you put it that way, it might actually become a relevant question: “Is it big enough for you to be Mayor of New York?”
    (And should we, here, open a pool on when the first article will appear dissecting his other, previously unreported, indiscretions?

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  10. There’s probably an editorial cartoon with a “is that a 32 ounce soda or are you just glad to see me” joke already drawn and waiting.

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