A Made-for-TV Moment: Four Minutes of Phony Contrition, a Heckler & Flashing Cameras

So Congressman Weiner resigned. Solo. No spouse in sight which was good because there were so many camera flashes going off that it looked like Weiner was standing in the middle of a lightning storm. “Yay! Bye-bye pervert,” an ebullient heckler shouted after Weiner announced he was resigning his post.

I didn’t buy that Weiner genuinely believed what he was saying, all that business about wanting to “heal,” that he was sorry for what he’d done (he was sorry he’d been caught is more like it) and that he was proud of the “values” his parents had instilled in him. (His poor parents! I’m sure they don’t want to be anywhere near their son and linked to his so-called “values.”)

When Weiner said he was there to “again apologize,” he sounded like a chastened schoolboy who’d been forced to apologize for behaving in way that the grown-ups did not approve of because he originally had no intention of resigning. That was before many members of the Democratic party, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the chairwoman of the party and even the president said that they thought he should go. (In the president’s case he said if he were Weiner he’d resign.)

At least Huma wasn’t in the picture. At least there’s that.

Now we can focus on "fun" political stories . . . like the astronomical federal debt dovetailed by the ominous news out of Greece, members of Congress suing the president over U.S. actions in Libya and the steady, dismal U.S. unemployment rates.

Dear Rep. Weiner: Don't Reenact Opening Scene from 'The Good Wife'

Now that news has broken that lewdly sexting wildman, New York Congressman Anthony Weiner is set this afternoon to announce that he’s resigning his seat (as he should’ve done well before this), I have one request: Please don’t have your pregnant wife, who’s been married to you for less than a year, stand beside you and endure more humiliation because of the stupid things that you’ve done.



It’s extraordinarily painful to watch these women -- Silda Spitzer, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Edwards immediately come to mind -- stand beside their skunk husbands who couldn’t keep it in their pants and not only shamed themselves, but their spouses and children. (The fallout from your politician husband and/or father's indiscretions is the entire premise of the fabulous drama The Good Wife.) These guys don’t deserve to have the innocence and agony etched in the faces and eyes of their wives take the edge off of their disingenuous apologies for their scandalous behavior.

If it’s the only noble thing you do this week, don’t use your wife as a sympathetic prop.

Weiner-Gate: Color Me Disgusted

This whole Weiner-Gate thing is gross, immature and disgusting. A 46-year-old CONGRESSMAN who is considered a firebrand liberal member of his party – therefore he garners lots of media attention for his partisan antics – should know better then to take and send lewd photos of himself to people he’s never met on the internet. (New X-rated photos are now making the rounds.) New York U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner certainly shouldn’t be engaging in that kind of thing now that he’s a married man. He only got married last July for God’s sake, it’s not like there’s been time for the romance to fade from the marriage.

But now we learn, courtesy of the New York Times, that his 35-year-old wife is pregnant. If this was a TV drama, we'd be calling BS right about now.

While Weiner claims he never “physically” cheated on his wife, he has cheated on her emotionally and has thoroughly humiliated her while she is carrying his child. To me, the fact that his wife, Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton, is pregnant makes this whole stew of ugly even uglier. Seriously. You’d think that a man who goes on television for a living as a politician who's pushing an agenda, who’s still a newlywed, who is expecting his first child with his new bride would know better than this.



What a cad, a cad who won’t resign his office like other well known politician cads (*cough* Bill Clinton, John Edwards *cough*) who had no shame and who humiliated their spouses and families.


Speaking of a cad who actually DID resign . . . former New York Governor Eliot “Client Number 9” Spitzer had the temerity to express sympathy for what Weiner’s going through, saying it’s a “torment like virtually no other.” Dude, try being married to the source of that torment, the one who brought the torment raining down upon the house. For the perp who created the situation, who created the reason for said "torment," no sympathy. Zip.

Which brings me to this pet peeve of mine as a journalist: Eliot Spitzer has no business anchoring a news program on CNN. But since CNN apparently has no problem with putting this guy on the air, perhaps Weiner could resign his office and join Spitzer as a co-host . . .