Why did Anthony Weiner resign?

The Anthony D. Weiner miniseries has concluded as the script demanded, with his resignation from Congress following his admission that he had, indeed, engaged in intimate communication with a half-dozen women through various social media, including the old-fashioned telephone.

The six-term New York Congressman, who was outed by a sleazy right-wing blogger (is there any other kind?), compounded his woes by declaring that images of his various body parts had been hacked by someone trying to destroy him before 'fessing up.

Nothing like a Congressman's junk for hot-weather relief from global warming, stagflation and three wars going badly at once.

But, seriously, why should Weiner's indiscretions have been a hanging offense?

The obvious answer is his wife, Huma Abedin, a 35-year-old aide to Hillary Clinton. You have to be seriously deficient in judgment to think you can cheat on one of Hillary's girls and not pay the price.

Clinton and Lewinsky

Of course, Bill Clinton didn't resign over the Lewinsky scandal; he merely suffered impeachment. And poor Weiner didn't even get so much as a real-life glimpse of thong underwear. But peasants will suffer for daring the pleasures of kings.

Everyone agrees that Weiner had to resign. His House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi, told him so, and threatened him with an ethics investigation if he didn't. The Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, snottishly remarked that if Weiner were to call him for advice, he'd tell him to go elsewhere. (Where's the loyalty? Where's the love?)

And, finally, the leader of the Free World chimed in, cautiously as usual, to suggest that, yes, perhaps it would be better were Tony to go.

But why should Weiner have resigned? He engaged in private behavior, on his own time and with his own (not government-issue) equipment. He engaged in it with consenting adults. He might have bent his vows, but he broke no laws. He didn't father a love child. He didn't even get to cop a feel, except perhaps with his own anatomy.

Private but not adulterous

You could say his behavior was unseemly, and that his lie was foolish. But he didn't lie about his public business, or any matter of state. He didn't send his Cabinet out at public expense to cover for him, as Bill Clinton did. He tried to protect his private life— not an adulterous life (though that would be his business too) but, essentially, a fantasy life.

I think this is an important point. We all walk around with a fantasy life in our heads, and, since there is little help for it except a lobotomy, we distinguish between unbidden thoughts and actual conduct. The world of cyberspace, however, has blurred the line between thinking and acting.

It is a virtual field into which we can project fantasies otherwise entirely private. We can do this on social media sites that advertise them to all and sundry. Since many people are doing the same thing, it's easy enough to find a partner, or several or many partners, with whom one can mutually exchange such fantasies. Since such people often conceal their identities, alter their real ages and images, and sometimes misrepresent their gender, no one can really be sure with whom he or she is interacting.

Is cyberspace "'real'?

It might take a very subtle metaphysician to explain how this activity differs from constructing or adapting a fantasy image to one's own specifications in the privacy of one's thoughts. In fact, that is essentially what one is obliged to do, based on the materials (partly or wholly specious) supplied by one's partner.

(Full disclosure: I am a happily married man. I do not Twitter or tweet. I am not on Facebook. I do not wish to meet you.)

Of course, cyberspace is "real"— i.e., public— in a way that the inside of one's head is not, as Congressman Weiner discovered. But one can easily understand how the difference can get lost, and how gratifyingly addictive it can be to project fantasy images of oneself that are willingly received and validated by anonymous others. It's a form of autoeroticism— and what, after all, is so seductive in an increasingly narcissistic world as our own buffed selves?

Long list of virtues

All of this may be a symptom of the moral decay of Western civilization. But was it a reason for Anthony Weiner to resign? He was a veteran Congressman, apparently hard working and respected. The New York Times, in calling for his resignation, described him as one of the "savviest" figures in the House. His ambition was to run for mayor of New York. He seems to have had an independent streak, and was none too popular with Pelosi.

These were all virtues. In short, he was a cut-rate Rahm Emmanuel, with similar political ambitions and a similarly developed ego.

Weiner's constituents by and large supported him through his ordeal. He hadn't broken the law or the rules of the House. If the people who elected him still wanted him, why shouldn't he have continued to serve them, as Bill Clinton did in finishing out his presidential term?

If he'd stayed

Of course, life would have been difficult for Weiner had he decided to hang on. On the other hand, repudiated by his party and denounced by its leaders, without a single friend or colleague to stand up for him in the House, he could have been a truly liberated figure. He could actually have spoken the truth about our national politics. Imagine what sort of scandal that would have been.

What ails our republic is not cybersex. It's the political prostitution we see every day, with 535 Senators and Representatives doing the bidding of those who've bought and paid for their services. It's the bankers who defanged regulation of the markets that crashed the world economy, and the insurers and drug pushers who wrote the health care law.

Tony, you could have been Jimmy Stewart, filibustering for the common good. At the least, you could have had a hell of a good time.

Instead, you're just self-deleted.♦


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