It’s very rare that I stand in 100% agreement (or any percent agreement) with something written by the NY Times editorial board. But after yesterday’s newly introduced sexting chronicles of Anthony Weiner – aka (allegedly) “Carlos Danger” – the board took to publishing a scathing editorial, urging the NYC mayor hopeful to pack it up and go home.
Here’s the core of it, from the NY Times:
When the first texts were revealed two years ago, Mr. Weiner lied about it, saying he had been the victim of hackers. Then he owned up, tearfully abandoned his office and retreated into private life. Then he was back, telling the world that therapy and his wife’s forgiveness had turned him around and that he was ready to begin a new chapter. That turned out to be the mayor’s race, which he entered in May. What he did not say then, and what voters did not realize until Tuesday, was that his resignation had not been the end of his sexual misconduct.
The timing here matters, as it would for any politician who violates the public’s trust and then asks to have it back. Things are different now, he insists. “This behavior is behind me,” he said again on Tuesday. He suggested that people should have known that his sexting was an unresolved problem well into 2012.
That’s ridiculous and speaks to a familiar but repellent pattern of misleading and evasion. It’s up to Mr. Weiner if he wants to keep running, to count on voters to forgive and forget and hand him the keys to City Hall. But he has already disqualified himself.
That’s exactly right. The timing matters.
Less than a year ago, while Weiner was telling the world he was cleaning up his act, he was…well…doing anything but.
Supporters of Weiner will also speak of forgiveness and moving on, giving people second chances. “The voters have already said it’s OK, they forgive him,” pundits will say of all the polls.
But at what point does this madness stop? Does anyone really believe there won’t be more random women who come forward, whenever they decide the moment strikes them? Weiner has said time and again that more are out there.
That Weiner would continue to, as the NY Times puts it, “drag the city into” his “tawdry saga,” speaks volumes of his character. As Philip Klein tweeted, it’s also a level of narcissism few of us can understand.
Both Weiner and his wife spoke in Monday’s press conference of having put the whole sordid scandal behind them, and they stressed on more than one occasion that this is a private matter. “I do very strongly believe that that is between us, and our marriage,” Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin said.
It’s no longer a private matter when you run for public office. The NYT has this part right, too.
Mr. Weiner and Ms. Abedin have been saying that his sexual behavior is not the public’s business. Well, it isn’t, until they make it our business by plunging into a political campaign.
This isn’t about the sexting. It’s about lying, betrayal and an apparent complete inability to exercise self control or good judgment.
It’s true that none of this is surprising, of course. We’ve come to expect this kind of thing, not just from Weiner, but from so many politicians today. But why do so many allow themselves to accept it?
Voters need to be able to trust that a leader is capable of making good decisions. Anthony Weiner has proven precisely the opposite. Again.
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Comments
So, the NYT doesn’t think Weiner is up to the job and they want him to pull out and hang down his head in shame. Fascinating. I wonder what Huma wold have to say to this. I wonder how long after this would the marriage last.
HA I see what you did there. well done 🙂
Agreed! He shouldn’t go soft during this campaign.
Does New York City
Want to pay out on Weiner’s
Harrassment Lawsuits?
With Mayor Weiner
New York is the Deep Pockets
For his misconduct.
Huma got some serious “Stand by your man…” mentoring from Hill-larry, the Great Enabler.
I kinda wish I’d been a fly on the wall of Camille Paglia’s office if she’d listened to that pathetic display of “feminism” while that creep was lying and dissembling.
Huma and Hillary — both in it for #1. All the praise for Huma standing her ground with hubby was revolting. Weiner will either drop out or lose and she’ll either overtly dump him or live a separate life like Mrs. C.
Both of these women will continue to be disastrous if they achieve any more power to grind us down. Egads, before in gov’t it was just the progressives and the RINOs … now we have to watch our backs for the rise of the muslim brotherhood!
These are not “marriages” in any sense I would recognize that term.
They are “strategic alliances” in the cold, hard lexicon of organizational behavior.
Some may say there is nothing wrong with those, in the same sense there was nothing wrong with Machiavelli writing “The Prince”. It all depends on your values…
Echo of Henry Ford’s “You can have it in any color you’d like, so long as it’s black.”
~ Anthony Weiner, candidate for mayor, committed Democrat and 100% for everything leftist that that political party stands for, to the nth/most radical degree. Often confuses his professed marital faithfulness and his oaths to obey the Constitution with other subjects.
~ Christine Quinn, candidate for mayor, committed Democrat and 100% for everything leftist that that political party stands for, to the nth/most radical degree. Open lesbian, showing full throated hostility to the three Fs, faith, family (traditional one, going back 000s of years), freedom.
NYC, we know you’ll make the right choice.
And what will that choice be? Answer: the Weiner who 4 months from now will be elected as the 109th mayor of New York City, one of the world’s great cities. He will be its mayor. You can repeat that if you’re sober. He will be its mayor.
This low point is where liberalism and its handmaidens, Democrats, have brought us. But stay with the Democrats; they will deliver on their promises to take us farther into the darkness.
How long before Weiner’s obsession moves on to more than just sending photos? Obviously, Weiner is a sexual predator, something that his supporters seem to not only overlook, but appear to think is something to admire…( a guy who isn’t afraid to agressively pursue what he wants).
I do NOT understand the public in New York. The Dem’s in New York supporting this guy with $$, sure, they are looking at what they can get out of a guy with such serious skeletons as to be easily blackmailed into doing their bidding. But the run of the mill voter?
Weiner is a sexual compulsive who is out of control. He will get worse because this is a progressive disease. He needs months of treatment in a locked down facility. Failing that he will end up in jail or dead by his own hand.
‘dead by his own hand’?
You do not want to know what creative visions come to mind …
His wife is a sad enabler. There are plenty of 12-Step meetings for spouses of addicts in Manhattan. She needs to hightail it over to a meeting now.
Weiner has a Mayoral war chest of $4.3 mil + approx $1.5 mil in matching funds from taxpayers. I believe he loses all this dough — the opportunity to line pockets of others and himself through typical back-scratching political schemes if he steps down.
A conclusion is looming for me about The Electorate. Not the deTocqueville observation that “…a democracy can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.”
Instead, it’s something more like the Detroit lesson: Enough stupid people will believe the lies of clever glib pols that they (the people) will get largess. The voters will get crumbs while the pols sack the real dough away until the state runs out of other people’s money.
Detroit is history. Detroit is future.
New York: this can happen to you!
It’s almost like Weiner is deliberately inviting people to urge him to drop out of the race.
“Urges”? Seems more like a full throated yell when you consider the source.
I have to agree with the substance of a comment I read at the NYT.
What is the big deal? If Mr. Weiner had marched in the Gay Pride parade in assless chaps with nipple clamps chained to his gay lover, would the NYT be aghast at his sexual behavior? If his wife stands by and says she has no problem with his behavior, that it is between them, who is the NYT editorial board to opine about his fitness for office as a result of sexual “misconduct”?
I find the board of the NYT so morally compromised that their opinion only matters to statists trying to establish the proper narrative in furtherance of egalitarian tyranny. The same editors have loudly denounced critics of one American president so compromised by sexual misadventures as to be impeached and disbarred for perjury (among many other failings). Are the editors only interested in supporting sexually aggressive men when they lie about it?
I gave you a thumbs down. I like that you offer a viewpoint! I should give you a thumbs up for that, too!
It’s about more than sex., although the sexting revelations are depraved + not welcome Big Apple PR should he ascend. (Check the Brit PR re: the wholesome birth of George. This is good for the economy! Maybe Weiner could bring back the good old Times Square.)
The “more” is that the Weiner revelations point to a lying, craven + self-dealing character. His positions would encourage similar character traits in the body politic –” getting mine/yours without providing exchange.”
He claims to be the teacher’s unions’ favorite candidate. I rest my case.
Aargh. I didn’t read your full post (I had to make dinner). I get it. I just gave you the thumbs up. Sorry, I see your point — thumbs up.
http://patterico.com/2013/07/23/carlos-danger-strikes/
Patterico links to a blog that reports Weiner was sexting (and, BOY, do I hate it that I know that word…!!!) even during Huma’s little lie-fest.
Creep-o-mongous.
As soon as Weiner feels that people are for him, that he is ‘liked’, that he is in a ‘good’ place he goes back to his sexual addiction. This will continue throughout his life until he gets some real help.
Say “No” to Weiner for NYC mayor unless you consider Carlos Danger to be of Rolling Stone fame.
The Party of Inclusion has room for their sexual degenerates.
I cannot believe that his wife knew nothing about his online activities before it broke in the media. Why should it be assumed that she was clueless about the goings on of her husband, that she lives with? I am reminded of the wife that allows her husband to go to the strip club, as long as he does not touch and he comes straight home – to bed!
Just my two cents on Huma and Creepy Weiner.
Huma Mahmood Abedin and Dilemma:
If Huma Mahmood ever ‘loses it’, how and which head goes first?
This IS about the “sexting” and the degradation of our culture. This isn’t the NYC voting population who elected Giuliani, this is who is left over after sky high taxes and runaway progressivism has chased everyone else to Connecticut (which used to be better, but is also spinning down the progressive vortex).
So, NY Times, you implicitly admit Andrew Breitbart was right again? First the Pigford story, which you belatedly headlined a few months ago with no mention of Breitbart’s work, and now Weiner, with same conspicuous omission.
Maybe it’s time for another post-mortem hit piece on Breitbart, just for good measure. You know, to reconfirm your vicious resentment. I’m sure David Carr or Jeremy Peters or Kate Zernicke have a few thousands words of hate ready to spill.
So the NYT is taking a “hands-off” Weiner position. They also want him to pull out prematurely, which would leave his campaign flaccid. He should have taken a wider stance on the issues.
I’m sorry. I won’t do that again…which is what he said.
I remember calls from both sides of the aisle to back off after Weiner resigned from office, claiming there was no need to further shame him since his political career was ruined.
And now he’s running for Mayor and doing it all over again.
Lesson learned, next time: make the rubble bounce, salt the earth, nuke from orbit just to be sure.
Random women are hot.
I don’t get it. Exactly what did Weiner do wrong? Morally or legally?
He…uhhhh…joked around on the internet. Ooooooooh.
Heck, he didn’t even cheat on his wife or kill someone.
He….joked around on the internet.
The New York Whore times are the ones that aided and abetted the Bush/Cheney liefest to war. And never apologized, or said they’d clean up their act.
Weiner will probably win, and who’s to complain?
Oookay, for the slow learners: First, he sent photos of his junk to a woman he didn’t know. If he did that to a co-worker he’d be fired for sexual harassment so fast his head would spin. “Just joking around” is not a valid defense.
Second, he lied about what he did. Repeatedly. You missed that little detail in your apologia.
I heard a radio caller yesterday who claimed to be active duty in the Army and an instructor for training on investigating and documenting “sexual assaults.” According to this caller, the Army classifies this type incident not just as sexual harrassment, but a sexual assault.
I’m not sure if it’s true, or how their regulation on this is written, but that would help explain the incredibly high number of military “sexual assaults” I keep hearing about in the news.
Another confusing factor in that number for the civilian population is the manner of news reporting in the last couple of decades. News people like to use the term “sexual assault” from anything like groping all the way to a rape that included a physical beating. I think that was done so as to not offend the delicate sensibilities of the violent lawbreakers among us.
To the tune of “Secret Agent Man”.
There’s a pol who thinks he’s Carlos Danger,
He likes to show his weiner off to strangers,
He’s always on the make,
Sending pictures of his snake,
Odds are he may be the New York mayor.
Carlos Danger, man.
Carlos Danger, man.
They’ve given him a camera,
and taken ‘way his brain
Wow. What a great example of the Collectivist lying moron.
Post some more, please!
He lied. If you wish to contend it was only “about sex”, as the chorus of relativists and temporizers usually do when it involves a democrat, let’s put aside the sex issue and even the issue of breach of public trust in using Congressional resources in the pursuit of extra-marital libidinous exchanges with underaged women. He lied when he asserted he’d been hacked, and colluded in the lie that Andrew Breitbart had been the hacker. This opened up a further abuse of public trust and resources in the investigation of a phantom hacker and subjected Andrew Breitbart to public censure and slander. In the face of facts clearly implicating him and the lapses and inconsistencies in his statements, he persisted in his lies. It was only Breitbart’s tenacity that confirmed the pathological extreme of his lies and willingness to lie.
Did you ever wonder if such obvious and serial compulsive lying and contempt for his total audience and his public trust would bleed into other issues and his performance as a public servant?
Do you think this is the sort of character to run a major American city?
You dumbfound me. He didn’t cheat on his wife? Let me tell you, if I were that wife, I would feel cheated on. And really, really icky. In fact, I would cut my hair so short and throw out every pair of high heels I owned (after hitting him with a few). Didn’t cheat on his wife? Are you daft?
I think that Wiener should run for president with Eric Holder as vice president. The Wiener/Holder bumper sticker would separate the real lefties from the sheep.
Goooooooo. Weiner. Win. Win. Win. Yeeeeeee ha. Go Weiner. Thanks in advance for all the comedy material!!!!!!! Cause I know, deep in my redneck, ignorant, clinger to my bible and guns heart, You have reformed and will be the mayor NY and the times, deserve. Weiner, mayor of NY forever!
It never ceases to amaze me how people will vote for someone who cheats on their wife. If a man can’t keep the most solemn commitment in life, what in God’s name makes you think he will keep his political promises?
Character ALWAYS matters.
You just know that the author wanted to make the headline: NY Times Urges Weiner Withdrawal.
http://patterico.com/2013/07/24/timeline-of-anthony-weiners-sociopathic-sexting-and-the-dishonesty-of-him-and-his-wife-huma-abedin
THAT is a killer exposition of this whole nasty, lying mess.
YEP! Weiner is a very sick man – has serious pathological psychological problems.
PLUS HE IS DISHONEST AND A CORRUPT DEMOCRAT MARRIED TO A MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD ISLAMIST.
I didn’t realize the SWATing of Patterico was connected to AW. Sickening. Disgusting. Democrat.
Huma clearly lusts after power. What else can explain her even marrying this cad? Or putting up with him after the first scandal? Or sucking up to every — and I mean every — whim of the Queen of Benghazi.
But Huma’s continuing allegiance to the Weiner shows her utter lack of judgment. And self-esteem.
I hold that Huma was the Muslim Brotherhoodlem inside “man” at State, whispering in Old Walleyes Clinton’s ear the Islamist lies d’jour.
And that is no joke.
Huma has bigger fish to fry and Weiner is simply a means to get to that end. Spencer has her number,
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/08/huma-abedin-and-the-saudi-kings-manifesto.html
[…] NYT to Weiner: Drop Out – Mandy Nagy, L.I. […]
Mayor Weiner’s first action: change name to New Yank City.
NY state legislature’s reaction to Weiner’s election as mayor of NYC: move state capital from Albany to Hoosick Falls*.
*Ballston came in second.
The Weiner is official roasted.
Okay. But what if weiner doesn’t withdraw? What options will the New Yuk Times have then?
I sort of think he’d fit right in as mayor of New York. The biggest Weiner in a town of perfect dicks.
i have no problem with his sexting (as long as it’s not unsolicited). millions of people are sexting right this second…and if his wife is cool with it why should i care ? the problem is that the dude is a chronic LIAR who can’t admit the truth until it is d-r-a-g-g-e-d out of him. “i’m a big fat liar, vote for me !” isn’t much of a campaign slogan.
To the tune of “Secret Agent Man”.
There’s a pol who thinks he’s Carlos Danger,
He likes to show his weiner off to strangers,
He’s always on the make,
Sending pictures of his snake,
Odds are he may be the New York mayor.
Carlos Danger, man.
Carlos Danger, man.
They’ve given him a camera,
and taken ‘way his brain.