By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
Weary of penis puns? Me too. One more wiener joke will put me over the edge. I’d willingly travel back in time to those rowdy years as a Cub Scout den mother, facing down the emerging testosterone of over a dozen 9- and 10-year-old boys, each and every one trying my patience with potty humor. I’d happily volunteer to scold those who make big bucks delivering my corporate-sponsored and televised news, who can’t control their nervous laughter or their need to repeat the name Weiner over and over as if we might miss the joke. Get a clue, you guys — you’re embarrassing yourselves. (I wonder what we’d have to pay someone with actual intellect to anchor network news, and I wonder who would watch.)
Just last year, Anthony Weiner married Hillary Clinton’s long-time top aide, exotic beauty Huma Abedin, and the couple is expecting their first child. Weiner’s behavior seems particularly dismaying for a newlywed. His sexting habit appears to be long-standing, and if he was serious about quitting he probably should have sought treatment for this compulsion rather than endanger his marriage and career. Clearly, the psychology of this personal problem isn’t news to any adult, but the variables are very much a reflection of 21st century multimedia influence. There IS no real anonymity these days, but Mr. Weiner may have factored that in, adding an additional layer of thrill to his eventual self-destruction.
Certainly Weiner got emotionally stuck somewhere in adolescence. I don’t say that because he got caught playing cyber-footsy; I say it because he’s got a habit he reportedly confessed to his fiancée, telling her he had quit when he hadn’t, which in turn produced all the gory details we’ve endured over the last week. There are programs available for that kind of thing.
This would be a good place to interject that I don’t care what consenting adults do sexually, that’s strictly between them and their partners. I do care, however, when elected officials put their public authority in jeopardy by risking it for a personal thrill. That seems to me a self-defeating exercise, and — until we collectively grow past our long list of sexual prohibitions — one that ultimately harms everyone involved. Look at all the time and energy wasted in this train wreck, mitigated only if intense Chiron energy begins to expose and bind these kinds of collective wounds.