Anthony Weiner and the 'ewww' factor

The real lesson of "Weinergate" is that we will never learn our lesson about politicians on the prowl

Ewww. 

I hate to open on such an inelegant note, but when the word of the week  is "Weinergate," how else to start? "Yuck," "ick," "you've got to be kidding," "not again," "his poor wife," and "how can anyone be so stupid?" just don't seem to fully capture it.

Not that the present national mood of revulsion vis-a-vis power and prurience should be blamed solely upon the distinguished gentleman from Oscar Meyer. On the contrary: Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) would appear to exhibit by far the mildest strain yet seen in the alarming outbreak of toxic crotch syndrome that is now imperiling our power elite. And what an outbreak it is. Just in the past few weeks, Dominique Strauss-Kahn has gone from global economics god and French presidential favorite to sex-crime defendant. Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted that he has an adolescent son with the family housekeeper, thereby spawning such enchanted anglicisms as "sperminator." John Edwards has been indicted, thus finally bridging his fabled "Two Americas": the one in which he was running for president hand in hand with his brave, cancer-stricken wife; and the other in which he was fathering a baby with a videographer, and then trying to hide mother and child under a pile of possibly-illegal campaign cash. By comparison, Weiner comes off as almost benign for merely sending images and/or descriptions of his eponymous organ across the internet to a number of women over a number of years. 

Given such a parade of sex-based self-immolations, what is there possibly to say about this most recent one? To rant and rage seems like overkill; once a guy has gone from plausible contender for New York's mayoralty to congressional mendicant, begging his district for mercy, there seems to be little to gain from chastising him further. The Strauss-Kahn mess has squelched the reliable "relax-already-this-would-be-nothing-in-France" line of argument. And I can't share in the Democratic cri de coeur that the disgrace of their angry youngish man constitutes a tragic distraction from such important issues as Medicare. Rest assured, just as many policy wonks will produce careful analysis of Medicare as they would have if Weiner had kept his chock-a-block undies to himself, and just as few Americans will read it. 

What about the evolving techno-sexual social morés that give rise to this kind of episode? Just thinking about that stuff makes me feel like a prudish Luddite martian. I simply can't imagine that I am from the same planet as any woman who would receive a, shall we say, self-portrait of Weiner and say, "Look, here's that public official I friended on Facebook! And now he has sent a half-naked photo of himself to my phone! Cool!"