Anthony Weiner

A few random impressions of Weinergate:

Sending dirty messages to young women (most of whom encouraged those messages) just doesn't seem that big a deal. Weiner didn't rape anybody, as Strauss-Kahn is alleged to have done. Nor did he break the law, as Eliot Spitzer did.

Everybody expresses their sexuality somehow. There's nothing dignified about sex, so when we get caught we tend to look foolish. And yes, it was stupid for so prominent a politician to expose himself (literally, evidently) on the internet. But sexting just doesn't seem particularly egregious. He never even met any of them in person. 

At a certain level, it's actually sorta impressive. Before all this started, had I ever bothered to ponder his sexuality, I might have guessed he was gay. But he's the opposite. And one wouldn't have expected much muscle on that skinny frame; but Weiner turns out to be a mini-Schwarzenegger. (He must be quite vain to shave his chest like a bodybuilder.) Of course, the fact that he never bothered to get together with any of these women knocks him down a few rungs on the machismo ladder.   

When did Weiner have time for all this? He reportedly had the highest rate of staff turnover of any Congressman on the Hill, partly because he drove them so hard. But he himself couldn't have been working that hard if he had time for all of this online tomfoolery. (That sort of double standard comes naturally to a Democratic attack dog.)

Whenever anybody marries as a function of his ambition, it makes him seem like a user. And out of all the nubile young women potentially available to him, Weiner chose Huma Abedin, who just happened to be Hillary Clinton's top aide. As far as his character goes, that's a definite tell.

Finally, although the majority of those blow-dried Congressmen probably have, or have had, their own indiscretions (haven't we all?), it's always entertaining to see them act holier-than-thou when one of their brethren gets caught with his pants down.