Well, Anthony, The Weenie, Weiner has finally succumbed to the politicotainment media's sensationalism and resigned in tragic-comic infamy, and quite soon his little pseudo-sex scandal will be passé, old news, and superseded by some new story of a politician's private sordidness or sordid privates. The question of the moment that we're left to ponder, however, is why? No, I don't mean why did former Congressman Weiner engage in the risqué and risky behavior that provided gossipy grist for the politicotainment media's salacious and exploitative mill, that question is between troubled Tony and his therapist – and perhaps his wife, if she chooses to remain in their marriage. The more incisive and intriguing question that I have in mind is the one that should actually be of keen and focal concern to the rest of the public.
That is, why did the whole affair, which did not clear-cutly even involve an affair per se, rapidly and sleazily snowball into a full-blown, overblown, outré scandal? And, furthermore, why, pray tell, have the arguably more authentic sex and ethics scandals of certain wingnut-leaning others in Congress in recent years not become the same big, disgraceful, career-destroying deal as the Weiner mess.
Okay, let me begin my attempt to answer these questions by clarifying something, I call it the Weiner mess, as opposed to scandal, because I think that in standard English parlance the word "scandal" usually refers to a story of public humiliation with more meat to it (not that representative Weiner's photos don't reveal that he has some meat, so to speak), i.e. one that involves the sort of sexual misconduct that entails bodies actually coming into carnal contact with one another. The Weiner mess, of course, doesn't involve any such illicit intimate relations. The Weiner mess is really more of a media-generated circus than a scandal in the proper sense of the word, a media-generated circus right down to a crude & lewd "correspondent" for the moronically crass Howard Stern Show attending Weiner's resignation press conference just to shout profane rhetorical questions.
What's a real scandal then? Oh, perhaps a righteously right-wing and of course anti-gay senator propositioning a stranger in an airport restroom to engage in anonymous homosexual intercourse, or another family-values touting conservative senator using the services of prostitutes to pleasure himself in ways that apparently his wife wasn't into. These two examples, and others include both actual, in-person libidinousness , and the commission of an illegal emission, shall we say. Yet in all of these cases the sexual shenanigans of the naughty boys in question did not, I repeat did not receive the kind of intense and relentless scrutiny from the titillation-peddlers of today's tawdry fourth estate that the Weiner mess has received, and did not lead to any resignations from office.
So, what's up with this, with the vastly disproportionate coverage of the Weiner story vis–à–vis other more genuinely and feloniously scandalous episodes of sexual impropriety? And what's up with the apparent double standard favoring those on the right side of the political aisle when they now and then literally get caught with their pants down? Shouldn't the fact that conservatives like to portray themselves as staunch protectors of society's moral fiber cause them to be viewed as even more egregious hypocrites when their unvirtuousness is exposed? So why should concupiscent conservatives fare better than more progressive public servants? Hmm?
Well, to answer my first question first, one reason why Weiner was mercilessly roasted by the mass media, a reason having nothing to do with politics, was of course the photos. In the case of a Republican politician (Jim Kolbe) who was exposed for his sexual advances against male pages there were no pictures, likewise in the cases of conservatives who've committed adultery with hookers and mistresses. In the Weiner case, on the other hand, there were those smutty pics that he twittered to his female followers. These images were like blood-oozing chum for the tabloidized media, sending it into a veritable frenzy of sensationalistic and squalid reportage. The Weiner "scandal" quite simply became a media farce that his dignity and career couldn't survive.
This being said, there is however something more to the explanation of why Anthony Weiner was rendered politically defunct by his indiscretions, and why conservatives have buoyantly weathered and rebounded from their own ignominies. Here it goes.
To be blunt here, conservatives are more like aggressively dedicated Bolsheviks, ideologically committed to the cause of implementing their program and enforcing it upon society. Mm-hmm, they're militantly partisan pushers of their pro-big business, anti-social welfare, anti-minority, moralistic, anti-tolerance agenda. And because of this, because of their sense of being fighters in a holy war to control the political apparatus of the country and impose their policies, conservatives have more of a sense of the importance of making common cause with one another, of publically having each other's backs for the greater good of their party's war effort. In times of personal crisis this serves conservative sinners well. Rather than feeding and caving into media pressure, conservatives stand by, or at least refrain from censuring their fallen-from-grace comrades.
Conservatives certainly don't readily jump on the media-driven bandwagon to bring down one of their own, the way Democrats have in the case of now former Congressman Weiner. Consequently, caught-in-the-act conservatives in government don't feel the same heat to resign, they're shielded by the political firewall their party puts up to keep them in office. So, voilà, a conservative can be the subject of a scandal of a much, much more serious nature than the Weiner mess, he can be guilty of significant ethical infractions, and remain in Congress to keep fighting the bad fight to empower the rich, and disenfranchise the working class and groups such as people of color and gays.
Ironically, conservative Republicans play the game of realpolitik to win in a frequently more effective fashion than their Democratic opponents because they are idealists, and have the solidarity and strength that comes of being uncompromisingly, dogmatically devoted to their particular brand of idealism. Unfortunately for the rest of us though, not all idealism is of the socially and humanistically enlightened variety, conservatism is in fact dangerously benighted right down the line on all of the issues it takes an interest in. But be this as it may, being stalwart and mutually-supportive ideologues does enable conservative officeholders to take the blow of a personal morals scandal and remain standing.
Moreover, when their political opponents are experiencing a scandal conservatives certainly know how to play realpolitik effectively. They know the exact and most effective strategy to put into effect. They begin taking the righteous position that so-and-so must go because his personal troubles are becoming a "distraction" from his ability to give 100% of himself to serving the public. Never mind that conservatives don't recognize this to be the case when it's one of their own bogged down in dealing with embarrassing personal issues, they certainly know what the right thing to do is when it's someone on the other side of the ideological spectrum who's "distracted". "He's too distracted" becomes the monotonous conservative mantra, which is droned into the ears of Democrats until they can't help but chant along and pressure their embattled fellow party member to save face for them by self-sacrificingly leaving his position.
So not only do conservatives enjoy a double standard, they play it for all it's worth, and the upshot for our society is that we have conservative individuals in government who've practiced really wretched hypocrisy and broken the law, i.e. anti-gay types who've been outted by scandal, moralists who've been revealed to be adulterers and whoremongers, and even those suspected of illegal conduct with minors – while progressives who might have done some good for society get railroaded out of office for behavior that isn't criminal or even technically adulterous! Alas, this is how the particular double standard in question seems to usually work out for the people.
This is just one more affronting aspect of the fact that American politics is a big ole PR train carrying a massive load of BS, it originally left the station of history way back in 1776 and every now and then puts in a stop to unload some of its fecal freight on the public – you know, whenever there's a new scandal, or election, or attempt to cut taxes on the fat cats, or to pass some legislation that favors the fat cats, or to launch another war to profit the fat cats, etc. The Weiner mess is just the latest whistle-stop of the political poop choo-choo, and it certainly won't be the last, perhaps not even the last this week.
Yep, American politics is as dishonest as the proverbial three dollar bill, no one can justify, with a straight face, Representative Anthony Weiner being forced from office for at worst a quasi-sex scandal when the sanctimonious sleazoids of the conservative camp repeatedly get away with the real and disgusting deal. Did Weiner do wrong, sure he did. But does he deserve his tragic fate, not if the ethical bar was set as low for him as it is for Republicans. Indeed, it's not at all rhetorical overkill to say that Weiner is truly yet another victim of political injustice and another unemployment statistic caused by the menacing combination of the dominating dogmatism and ruthless realpolitik of conservatives.
That is, why did the whole affair, which did not clear-cutly even involve an affair per se, rapidly and sleazily snowball into a full-blown, overblown, outré scandal? And, furthermore, why, pray tell, have the arguably more authentic sex and ethics scandals of certain wingnut-leaning others in Congress in recent years not become the same big, disgraceful, career-destroying deal as the Weiner mess.
Okay, let me begin my attempt to answer these questions by clarifying something, I call it the Weiner mess, as opposed to scandal, because I think that in standard English parlance the word "scandal" usually refers to a story of public humiliation with more meat to it (not that representative Weiner's photos don't reveal that he has some meat, so to speak), i.e. one that involves the sort of sexual misconduct that entails bodies actually coming into carnal contact with one another. The Weiner mess, of course, doesn't involve any such illicit intimate relations. The Weiner mess is really more of a media-generated circus than a scandal in the proper sense of the word, a media-generated circus right down to a crude & lewd "correspondent" for the moronically crass Howard Stern Show attending Weiner's resignation press conference just to shout profane rhetorical questions.
What's a real scandal then? Oh, perhaps a righteously right-wing and of course anti-gay senator propositioning a stranger in an airport restroom to engage in anonymous homosexual intercourse, or another family-values touting conservative senator using the services of prostitutes to pleasure himself in ways that apparently his wife wasn't into. These two examples, and others include both actual, in-person libidinousness , and the commission of an illegal emission, shall we say. Yet in all of these cases the sexual shenanigans of the naughty boys in question did not, I repeat did not receive the kind of intense and relentless scrutiny from the titillation-peddlers of today's tawdry fourth estate that the Weiner mess has received, and did not lead to any resignations from office.
So, what's up with this, with the vastly disproportionate coverage of the Weiner story vis–à–vis other more genuinely and feloniously scandalous episodes of sexual impropriety? And what's up with the apparent double standard favoring those on the right side of the political aisle when they now and then literally get caught with their pants down? Shouldn't the fact that conservatives like to portray themselves as staunch protectors of society's moral fiber cause them to be viewed as even more egregious hypocrites when their unvirtuousness is exposed? So why should concupiscent conservatives fare better than more progressive public servants? Hmm?
Well, to answer my first question first, one reason why Weiner was mercilessly roasted by the mass media, a reason having nothing to do with politics, was of course the photos. In the case of a Republican politician (Jim Kolbe) who was exposed for his sexual advances against male pages there were no pictures, likewise in the cases of conservatives who've committed adultery with hookers and mistresses. In the Weiner case, on the other hand, there were those smutty pics that he twittered to his female followers. These images were like blood-oozing chum for the tabloidized media, sending it into a veritable frenzy of sensationalistic and squalid reportage. The Weiner "scandal" quite simply became a media farce that his dignity and career couldn't survive.
This being said, there is however something more to the explanation of why Anthony Weiner was rendered politically defunct by his indiscretions, and why conservatives have buoyantly weathered and rebounded from their own ignominies. Here it goes.
To be blunt here, conservatives are more like aggressively dedicated Bolsheviks, ideologically committed to the cause of implementing their program and enforcing it upon society. Mm-hmm, they're militantly partisan pushers of their pro-big business, anti-social welfare, anti-minority, moralistic, anti-tolerance agenda. And because of this, because of their sense of being fighters in a holy war to control the political apparatus of the country and impose their policies, conservatives have more of a sense of the importance of making common cause with one another, of publically having each other's backs for the greater good of their party's war effort. In times of personal crisis this serves conservative sinners well. Rather than feeding and caving into media pressure, conservatives stand by, or at least refrain from censuring their fallen-from-grace comrades.
Conservatives certainly don't readily jump on the media-driven bandwagon to bring down one of their own, the way Democrats have in the case of now former Congressman Weiner. Consequently, caught-in-the-act conservatives in government don't feel the same heat to resign, they're shielded by the political firewall their party puts up to keep them in office. So, voilà, a conservative can be the subject of a scandal of a much, much more serious nature than the Weiner mess, he can be guilty of significant ethical infractions, and remain in Congress to keep fighting the bad fight to empower the rich, and disenfranchise the working class and groups such as people of color and gays.
Ironically, conservative Republicans play the game of realpolitik to win in a frequently more effective fashion than their Democratic opponents because they are idealists, and have the solidarity and strength that comes of being uncompromisingly, dogmatically devoted to their particular brand of idealism. Unfortunately for the rest of us though, not all idealism is of the socially and humanistically enlightened variety, conservatism is in fact dangerously benighted right down the line on all of the issues it takes an interest in. But be this as it may, being stalwart and mutually-supportive ideologues does enable conservative officeholders to take the blow of a personal morals scandal and remain standing.
Moreover, when their political opponents are experiencing a scandal conservatives certainly know how to play realpolitik effectively. They know the exact and most effective strategy to put into effect. They begin taking the righteous position that so-and-so must go because his personal troubles are becoming a "distraction" from his ability to give 100% of himself to serving the public. Never mind that conservatives don't recognize this to be the case when it's one of their own bogged down in dealing with embarrassing personal issues, they certainly know what the right thing to do is when it's someone on the other side of the ideological spectrum who's "distracted". "He's too distracted" becomes the monotonous conservative mantra, which is droned into the ears of Democrats until they can't help but chant along and pressure their embattled fellow party member to save face for them by self-sacrificingly leaving his position.
So not only do conservatives enjoy a double standard, they play it for all it's worth, and the upshot for our society is that we have conservative individuals in government who've practiced really wretched hypocrisy and broken the law, i.e. anti-gay types who've been outted by scandal, moralists who've been revealed to be adulterers and whoremongers, and even those suspected of illegal conduct with minors – while progressives who might have done some good for society get railroaded out of office for behavior that isn't criminal or even technically adulterous! Alas, this is how the particular double standard in question seems to usually work out for the people.
This is just one more affronting aspect of the fact that American politics is a big ole PR train carrying a massive load of BS, it originally left the station of history way back in 1776 and every now and then puts in a stop to unload some of its fecal freight on the public – you know, whenever there's a new scandal, or election, or attempt to cut taxes on the fat cats, or to pass some legislation that favors the fat cats, or to launch another war to profit the fat cats, etc. The Weiner mess is just the latest whistle-stop of the political poop choo-choo, and it certainly won't be the last, perhaps not even the last this week.
Yep, American politics is as dishonest as the proverbial three dollar bill, no one can justify, with a straight face, Representative Anthony Weiner being forced from office for at worst a quasi-sex scandal when the sanctimonious sleazoids of the conservative camp repeatedly get away with the real and disgusting deal. Did Weiner do wrong, sure he did. But does he deserve his tragic fate, not if the ethical bar was set as low for him as it is for Republicans. Indeed, it's not at all rhetorical overkill to say that Weiner is truly yet another victim of political injustice and another unemployment statistic caused by the menacing combination of the dominating dogmatism and ruthless realpolitik of conservatives.
