Tweet
Okay so I’ve been watching Rep. Anthony Wiener doing something more than a little rare and amazing in modern American politics. He came out and not only apologized for lying about the twitter photo of his penis, but admitted that he had done this kind of thing before and was sorry that he had.
There has not been an once of an attempt to push the blame on someone else. No I am sorry if my actions offended, no I am a drunk or a drug users. He just straight up admitted to a personal weakness that he regretted.
What happened was he was meaning to send a personal message and tweeted it instead. Then he panicked about this because he had other relationships like this that might become public. When the lie became untenable he came out to come clean. He never had sex with these women, but it was inappropriate and he regrets it.
He said he has no intent of resigning. He is going to leave it up to the constituents to decide. He broke down several times, but he does not see that he violated the rules of the House or his oath of office. He does think that it is a major personal failing.
Now there are issues with politicians getting involved with much younger women (the power disparity) but at the same time everyone involved in it was an adult. Adults do dumb things with sex and they do (everyone has) lie about it. What is different here, at least to me, is that he is not making excuses. He, late admittedly, owning his actions, all of them.
That is what integrity looks like. Having integrity is not about never making mistakes, that is beyond human. Integrity is about owning the mistakes when your realize they are indeed mistakes. If this is something that he continues to do then it might be different, but right now he is saying he regrets what he did and wishes that he had not done it, and will endeavor to not do it again.
If more of our politicians were willing to do this on a more than issues like a scandal like this the nation would be in far better shape.
Let’s put this in perspective, Rep. Wiener did something that tens of thousands of people do everyday. It is not like he, oh I don’t know, illegally tortured people, outted a CIA covert operative or tried to use the power of the Federal Government for political purposes. He has not broken the law, he has only broken faith with people, but he is owning his mistakes, not avoiding them.
That is integrity in action. It is regrettable that he lied, but all leave the throwing of the first stones, to those who have never lied about sex in their lives.
The floor is yours.
32 Comments
Sad … It really is not so much about his failings with regard to other women, as innocent as they look to me, but his complete lack of judgement in his initial response. In today’s world, there are way too many instances of these kinds of exposures where the prinicpals think they can massage the truth and get away with it. Doesn’t anyone offer a “Response 101″ for representatives?
They do, but I don’t think it is ever going to matter when it comes to sex. As much as it galls me to admit I’ve lied about it, and I am pretty sure that I am not in the 99th percentile on this.
People lie about sex. People lie when they are going to be embarrassed. It is not a rational response, it is a gut level one and the longer you fear that the other shoe will drop the more likely your first reaction is going to be a lie.
Still, as much as a he lied, he bought his integrity back by coming clean. He did not have to take questions, he did not have stand there for 1/2 an hour and answer them all. He did that because it was required for him to make his way back to being the stand up guy he sees himself as. That is something that takes a lot of moxie.
Oh Lord! You cannot be serious?
I still see it as a failure to understand what he was doing – not the twitter part, but the initial and subsequently re-affirmed response. If he does not have his wits about him when he has the time to make a considered response, or even to touch base with a trusted ally to help manage the response, I do not trust him in other circumstances. He only “bought his integrity back” when he was cornered and outed. That is quite a distance from a principled handling of the problem.
Agreed. Weiner didn’t come out as a paragon of virtue when this story first broke by lying that his twitter account was hacked, nor did he ‘fess up in his bizarro-world press conference when he refused to be “hostage” to the question, and the number of cream pies thrown his way be damned. He’s only telling the truth now because someone finally convinced him of what a tool he was for sticking to a whopper of a story that even an eight year old would call BS on.
Bill Egnor defending an establishment Dem sellout.
Who’da thunk it?
Don’t make excuses for him! We’ve got 3 wars and a Depression and this is what we have running the government, bipartisan braindead bums.
OK, I’ll play.
Once, I cheated on a woman that I cared deeply about, on that one occasion only. Three days later I went to her and confessed. So unless you want to count lying by omission for those three days, I now want to throw some rocks.
“Integrity is about owning the mistakes when you realize they are indeed mistakes”
What Mr. Weiner first “realized” is that he had been caught and outed. Secondly he “realized” that he wasn’t a very good liar (perhaps this fact can be spun into a favorably mitigating factor). Only then did all this integrity reassert itself.
I would further disagree with your characterization of this behaviour as a mistake, or mistakes. When you begin talking about an ongoing pattern of behaviour engaged in with several different people, over several years, you’ve long since obscured the definition of “mistake”.
You further proffered the definitive statement “He never had sex with these women,” and we know this to be true how Bill? Because he said so? Please.
“and they do(everyone has) lie about it.”
Really Bill? Not in my little ( I guess unsophisticated) world.
Your second to last graph lapses into full blown rationalization. Since when are 1.)lots of people have done it, or 2.)lots of people have done worse considered convincing arguments.
“That is integrity in action”
Pathetic.
“Still, as much as a he lied, he bought his integrity back by coming clean.”
No, he didn’t. Might as well say, “Wiener proves his moral superiority by admitting he’s a dick!”
Anyone in that position who does what Wiener did is at best a damned fool who is truly sorry that he got caught. Think of all of the conscious steps he had to take: photographing himself, entering in the addresses of the young women the arrogant asshole wanted to impress, pressing “send,” realizing he oopsed and sent his Magnificent Wienerness to more people than he wanted, lying about it, realizing he was nailed, then crying crocodile tears for 30 minutes in front of the Fourth Estate.
Pah! I don’t say this that often, but I’m a better man than Anthony Wiener.
I swore I wasn’t going to lower myself to comment on this topic, but I am unable to resist. Here is a comment that I consider appropriate for the low wattage of this topic:
Wiener and sex? Please! how can he even kiss? He has no lips.
I’ve said before that in order to be a really good capitalist one must be something of a sociopath who really doesn’t care what effect his actions have upon others.
Thanks for helping me prove my point.
Why is anyone wasting time on this ? Have all the soap operas and the weather channel gone into reruns ?
Beach Populist with a snide remark that does nothing to further the conversation. Same old trick.
Owning your mistakes is what integrity is all about. If you don’t, how do you have any integrity. That he made mistakes makes him human.
You never made a mistake, made it worse by lying about it and then owned up to try to make it right? I think everyone has done that from time to time. Why should we set a different standard for politicians?
Ah…but to be a successful capitalist you have to be a total sociopath with sadistic tendencies or completely sadistic.
Hang on, you’ve lead a perfect life? You’ve never done something that you later figured out was wrong? or never done something that you knew was not a good idea?
Really? Because that is what you are asking politicians to be by your stating you’re a better man than Wiener.
He did not say he was morally superior nor did I. I said that integrity is owning your mistakes when you realize them. Sometimes it is your mistake becoming public that makes you realize it. That is what happened here, when it was clear that he was making it worse, and that it was going to be public no matter what, he admitted not only that he sent the tweet, but that he went on to lie about and took responsibility for it.
What more would you have someone do? Oh, wait, you’ve never ever been in that position so you can’t really say can you?
I am not saying he is a paragon of virtue, but he does have integrity enough to own it and say it was all his fault, eventually. Everyone lies about sex. Everyone. Everyone lies, everyone. What makes a difference is do you own up to your lies or do you keep digging? Wiener stopped digging. That is integrity.
And if it turns out that he was lying today, well then I’ll own my mistake too.
I never said I was perfect, I said I was a better man than Wiener, not that that’s saying much. I’ve never sexted or sent photos of my privates on Twitter. I’ve never cheated on my wife, either. I’ve certainly never hurt her or her kids in the way that Wiener has hurt his family.
Sure, I’ve made some mistakes. Some whoppers, in fact. But never, ever, like THAT.
I stand by my statement. I am a better man than Wiener.
:)
First of all, chances are very good that his decision to come clean was not entirely unilateral. Since his wife was affected by the photos (and likely knew about them beforehand) I am sure she had a say in it. ‘fess up publicly or I’ll put your balls in a jar.’ or ‘fess up publicly or I am out of here.’ and ‘give me the god-damned cell phone.’ All that, I would guess.
Heck, by now a therapist may be involved, I don’t know.
If there had been an Andrew Breitbart during the Roosevelt mistress days, FDR would have told Breitbart to go get fucked.
Bill,
I clearly have a different definition of integrity than you do. And so does just about everyone commenting here. When will you have the integrity to say you’ve made a mistake about what you have called integrity?
Congressman Weiner, riddle me this. You’ve gotten a great education. You’re married. You’re a public figure. You’re interested in higher office. You either know or should know that “www” stands for World Wide Web, as in everyone in the world can see what you post. So why on Earth did you engage in such high risk, low reward conduct?
I wonder why Nancy (we aren’t going to prosecute or impeach Bush and Cheney and who thinks nothing of funding the Israeli killing machine and all these wars) was so quick to call for action against Anthony Weiner the most outspoken member of Congress when it comes to supporting domestic social issues?
Simple answer: she’s a Capitol Hill Democrat, the most timorous species in the animal kingdom.
I am going to go out on a limb here and state that, at least it is possible that the guy has some sort of a sex addiction. By no means am I excusing his behavior. But doing things repeatedly, knowing full well the risks and potential harm is characteristic of someone who may not have a good hold on this particular behavior.
Perhaps he needs some professional help with this.
I assume that by “professional help” you don’t mean a pollster, a strategist, and a speech coach.
Right, I know.
No, I was thinking more along the lines of a doctor.
Weiner stopped digging because there was further evidence that was about to come out. He only had two choices – admit to it or file a false police report and risk going to prison.
Wow, this is harsh. Are you perfect? I agree with Bill.
But you’ve admitted it about yourself. That you’ll defend the Democratic party to the death. I swear I remember a comment of yours to exactly that effect. Why should we listen to you any more? What’s the point? Your contortions on Wiener are beyond pathetic. The little shit spends his time sending photos of his privates whilst claiming to “stand up” for the poor, suffering “ordinary American”. He’s a fraud, and a narcissist. And quite, quite repulsive. It also appears he spends an inordinate amount of time “working out”. Not even practising a real sport. Just “working out”, “Men’s Health” style. He’s repulsive. Reptilian. Vile.
Absolutely right. Antony Wiener cares about one issue, and one issue only – Antony Wiener.
Okay, so Weiner lied. Questionable behavior, ‘dumb and destructive’. Okay. I can see both sides to an ethics commission over this. While my inclination is to say ‘that’s ridiculous, a big waste of time’ ,
it may be a good idea if the House set down a modicum of guidelines about proper or improper use of teh interweb – yadda yadda – so they could at least say, ‘we tried to make a bad situation better’.
That’ll be good if they could manage it. Meanwhile actual travesties and tragedies clog up the storerooms and backalleys that in comparison just leave people feeling the burn of so many other reps with worse skeletons gone done disappeared, forgotten wondering where the justice went for them.
The biggest thing though for me is the source of this story. Who else in the ‘press’ gets away with fraud, slander and blackmail for the naked – yeh open, transparent – grab for power in the political realm? Isn’t there laws about this? Or entrapment-via hidden camera- like with O’Keefe? I have heard the phrase IOKIYAR but this all seems breaking all sorts of boundaries in all sorts of ways. Are they riffing on the idea that ‘America is an exceptional nation’ or some such and then simultaneously claiming ‘as a soverign citizen of an exceptional nation, I can do whatever I want!’
I really don’t get it. And I really don’t get whynobody calls him on it. Since the beginning. It’s all just been blatantly false, misleading, manipulative for partisan and monetary gain and all wrapped in the fake gauze of speech freedoms.
It really seems way outside the bounds of civil society. However imagined.