Weinergate
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Posted:Jun 12, 2011 3:36 pm
Last Updated:Jun 12, 2011 11:53 pm
7577 Views
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I paid way too much attention to the Anthony Weiner story last week. Some of it was because of how much the story dominated the news, but mostly it was because I found it amazing what people had to say about the man and his character.
For the record I think what he did was incredibly stupid for a man in his position, especially given the attack role that he played in congress. He seemed like a smart enough man to know that, so why did he do it?
There has been a lot of discussion about him being mentally ill, having some sort of sexual addiction, that this was a cry for help. By far the best one was some lady telling us how men seek to objectify women, attempt to remove as much emotional components from sex as they can and how this kind of thing is the ultimate form of that.
Personally I think that all of those analyses are wrong. My thoughts are that it started out small and relatively innocent, then he just got reckless over time. If someone gets away with something once they are more inclined to do it again. The more times they repeat the process with success, the more reckless they are inclined to get until eventually things blow up.
Given that he was single, on the road a lot, I can see how this kind of thing would have offered a certain appeal to him. He may have well started out anonymously, but as seen in some of the photos, he eventually got to a point where he wanted to prove to the to anonymous women on the web that he was chatting with that he really was who he said he was which was boneheaded move number one.
I can understand wanting to play off his position to increase the intensity of the texting and phone sex. And in the chat conversation that was made public, his position definitely enhanced their foreplay, but as a public official, he should have known better.
After that he just got outright stupid by including images in the background that could be easily tied to him or enough features of his face to make it hard not to know it was him.
I'm not sure if he was being stupid about revealing his identity before he got married, but once he got married he needed to stop. Quite frankly once he got serious about her in 2008 was when he needed to stop unless it was something that she approved of him doing. For all we know she may well have and gotten off on the whole thing with him. But sadly we live in a society where to admit that sort of thing would be suicide in her career and public image as well.
To those who say he was some kind of freak for texting these kind of things, I say get a life. While it is not meant to be a replacement for sex, it can make for some nice foreplay leading up to sex which is probably the last reason why he needed to stop.
He says that not of this was every going to lead to actual sex, but one day he would have connected with a woman that would have presented him the opportunity at a time when his resistance to the idea was low.
In the end I still think he should step down because he exercised extremely poor judgment and betrayed the trust of entirely too many people, especially those close to him who had been out there defending him. But is he some kind of sexual freak or predator I seriously doubt it, I just think he is a man who let something that was fun in his single life spiral way out of control.
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