Let me get this straight. Weiner admits to sending lewd photos...but not to actually having

extramarital sex. Right?

I know this whole thing must be intensely frustrating for many of you because I saw you all working so hard to prove that Weiner was telling the truth and his Twitter account had been hacked. And now all of a sudden, whoops, turns out that really was him.

And I thought what you all are thinking: what a MORON. Does this idiot really think that any "tweet" is a private communication? Does this guy not understand about how in our digital world today any image you put into the series of tubes can be duplicated infinitely in less time than it takes to change your underwear?

But the fact is that many of us put stuff out on the 'net that we don't necessarily want coming back to us. Most of us don't get burned only because nobody out there cares enough to burn us. To have a meaningful internet life means making yourself vulnerable, to some extent, to total strangers. I understand how, believing that he really needs this internet life, a guy might talk himself into believing in more confidentiality and privacy than his internet self can actually have.

It's also quite likely that Weiner was using these "illicit" cyber-encounters as a substitute for actually having sex, figuring that it was less risky. More chance of discovery, but the crime itself is less severe. Embarassing, sure, but not career-ending material.

And the crazy thing is, he'd have been wrong. It now costs, apparently, just as much if you send someone an inappropriate image as it does if you are literally having hot torrid extramarital sex with someone.

I find this very strange. One can make the argument, and I have, that as long as this hot torrid extramarital sex is between two adults free to consent to relations with each other, then the only person who ought to be truly concerned about this is the injured spouse and any children who may be facing an infidelity-related parental divorce. Still, I guess I am old fashioned enough to believe that there is a difference in kind, and not just in degree, between cheating on your spouse with a flesh and blood being and cheating on her with pixels.

Every time something like this happens (*cough* Edwards *cough*) I go on this internal rant about why people can't "keep it in their pants." But we don't (yet) have any evidence that Weiner _didn't_ keep it in his pants. I mean I suppose he had to take his pants off to take the photo of his underwear (oy gevalt). But my point is that the internet age has, apparently, lowered the bar for infidelity. Now you don't have to have had inappropriate sexual relations with an intern to be keelhauled. It is enough that you caused an inappropriate image to materialize on the monitor of someone you've never met and may well (indeed, after this, probably will) never see in person.

Sure, it's creepy. I would certainly freak out if I found such a thing in my inbox, and probably want nothing further to do with whoever sent it. But to me, anyway, doing such a thing in person is whole googleplexes creepier. And yet, in conversations I see about this, the distinction between virtual and sexual misbehavior seems to have evaporated.

I'm not standing up for Weiner. I have nothing personally invested in him and my patience for the antics of straight men who think that strange women are dying to see their dicks is short. I'm just noting what appears to be a seismic shift in our understanding of what counts as a sex scandal. And it does make me almost feel bad for the guy. I mean if you are going to go down in flames, do it over something that's gonna matter to you--not over some tweet you sent that maybe made you chuckle in a creepy kind of way for a couple seconds and that was about it.

yeesh,

The Plaid Adder

Every relationship is different.

I do think it would have been an epic moment if Huma had joined him and said "This is how we hang, deal with it".

That would have made the highlight reel.

Until then, I am going to assume that she didn't know and didn't approve.

claiming on his web page that he prioritizes keeping irresponsible photos from children on the internet.

http://www.weiner.house.gov/issue_display.aspx?id=844

anything to do with sex, they have already been "educated" by something other than that picture.

He showed nothing more than a man shows in a pair of tight bathing shorts. Not even that much.

It was juvenile but not erotic.

Rep. Anthony Weiner showed an understanding of the new age of privacy during a press conference on Weinergate this afternoon. Weiner subjected himself to a half-hour whacking by journalists, during which he admitted to lying about his Twitter account being hacked, saying that he did send a photo of his little member of Congress to a Seattle college student “as a joke.” He had intended to send it privately as a direct message, but messed up. On Twitter, this is called a “#DM Fail.” It happens fairly often — it’s the equivalent of the inadvertent “Reply All” of email — and is a good reason NOT to use Twitter as a forum for sending racy photos of yourself.

http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/06/06/anthony-weiner-comes-clean-about-dirty-photos-and-phone-calls/

But he got paid for that piece of gratuitious anonymous and unsolicited flesh spamming so it's way different.

than typing words.I was cheated on in my first marriage. It started with him with cyber stuff, then phone sex, then actual cheating and he lied about it all so it brings back a lot of bad memmories for me. It is a very hurtful thing to do if your partner has not agreed to this within the parameters of ones relationship.

It is a sad situation all the way around. He did communicate extensively with the one woman prior to the phone sex so even though it was not a physical relationship it was a communication outside the marriage that was more than just a few flirting emails.

or representing ones constituents.

He did deny sending the first woman the picture of his crotch, something that the research going on at Kos would seem to confirm.

It's best to assume nothing is private in cyberspace, especially if you're any sort of a public figure. It's not just the hackers, trusted people can turn on you and circulate things you don't want circulated.

The whole thing is beyond juvenile. I feel exactly the same way I did about Clinton, I want to shake him until his teeth rattle, hoping to wake him the hell up.

However, no laws were broken and I have no desire to see him quit.

Especially since that piece of shit Vitter, who did break laws, is still in office.

He admitted he sent it and then lied about being hacked.

Too much evidence was out there. He got caught and had to fess up. 2 of the supposed 6 women have already data dumped to the media.

Lets just hope for his sake that none of the remaining 4 lied and are really underage.

AFAIK, he didn't break any laws, he's just an ordinary rat of a husband.

I don't vote for pols to be pope. I vote for them to do what he's been doing, going after rat bastards like Clarence Thomas for illegal things like lying about a spouse's income for over a decade, something that would have landed the rest of us in prison years ago.

Funny how the right wing thinks the only immoral behavior is SEX. It's not.

For all we know, she was okay with it. She knew about it before they got married. There is a fantasy side of sex that a lot of couples share, accept, even encourage. Who knows. I wouldn't expect her to talk about it publicly either way.

Only the two of them know what is acceptable in their marriage. It is no one else's business.

since the only immorality they recognize is over sex.

I spent too much time dealing with a public that felt compelled to inform me about all their kink while my eyes glazed over and I wanted them to stop.

any hot, sunny summer day? If I saw the same picture everyone else is talking about, I don't think so.

And normally men that get an erection at the beach are embarrassed by it and cover it up rather than showing it off to everyone. If I did see a man at the beach with an erection in his bathingsuit he was proudly showing off I'd think he was a skeevy perv and notify beach patrol.

That photo didn't say "check out my underwear" or "check out my dick hidden in my underwear" it said "check out my erection". That's the whole point of sending a photo of your erection to someone with or without underwear.

and more revealing. If so, then what??

And if they do exists I would guess he's looking into all kinds of blackmail possibilities.

You musta missed the one released today.



:smoke:

fucking undignified

revealing than a lot of bathing shorts at the beach. It just looke like a joke which was what it was intended to be.

Rep. Anthony Weiner showed an understanding of the new age of privacy during a press conference on Weinergate this afternoon. Weiner subjected himself to a half-hour whacking by journalists, during which he admitted to lying about his Twitter account being hacked, saying that he did send a photo of his little member of Congress to a Seattle college student “as a joke.” He had intended to send it privately as a direct message, but messed up. On Twitter, this is called a “#DM Fail.” It happens fairly often — it’s the equivalent of the inadvertent “Reply All” of email — and is a good reason NOT to use Twitter as a forum for sending racy photos of yourself.

http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/06/06/anthony-weiner-comes-clean-about-dirty-photos-and-phone-calls/

Apparently there are a lot more pics.

Talk about time management. Or else, great assistants! (I need a secretary SO badly!)

The article I read about a "body person", the position his wife holds for Hillary, said this job is pretty much 24/7 and wondered how you can have a relationship while in it.

If she travels with Hillary she must be gone a lot.

I'm guessing Weiner had a lot of time to himself.

about their dumbass husbands these days!

it must feel to her as if he's been cheating. And who's to say that he hasn't, this twitter sex stuff could just be foreplay for him. Or sending stupid pictures of his dick around the internets could just be some pathetic type of perversion. Regardless she has to feel pretty low right about now.

Answer: Because he was really embarrassed about it. Honesty isn't exactly the easiest thing to come by for a person with a conscience after they have monumentally screwed up.

So many are screaming about how he lied about it and that is their main concern. I guess they never put themselves in a compromising position, never made any consequential mistakes. Well good on all you righteous ones... run for congress. Lots of "independents" and "conservatives" are looking for you.

As for Weiner, he damn well better not quit. We need real fighters like him. Maybe now that he's fucked up on the personal side, he'll be a better man for it. But learning takes time and we should give him that. He's sure stuck his neck out for us more than once. And god help us if we have a less than perfect person in congress.

Remember, he wasn't out there preaching to everyone about family values like so many others we can think of. This is his personal issue and I'm willing to let it be just that. The fact that we hear it as the top story in the media says a whole lot more about the people who are in the media than it does about Weiner. The media is a group of truly fucked up liars - they've been doing it for years, they have an agenda behind it, they could care less who they hurt, and will never apologize for it.

So have your moment of anger with Anthony Weiner but get on with the forgiveness - he's asking for it. Save your rage for the ones who will push you into poverty, are willing to let you suffer in illness or leave you and your children on the street without a home. They are the same ones who are amplifying this issue with Weiner and obscuring the real issues with the daily feed of bullshit stories. They are lying to *you* in a most profound way.

and if he had come out and admitted it the lie the next day or so I probably would not support his resigning but since he continued to lie I believe he should resign or at the very least serve the remainder of his term and not run again because he broke the trust of the people he swore to represent by lying for so long over this whole thing.

We have politicians who lied about war. Which is worse?

Looking at all the outrage over this, it seems America's priorities are a little strange.

Hundreds of thousands of people died when far too many US politicians AND the media, lied about war. Millions of lives were destroyed.

Thousands were illegally tortured, some tortured to death.

I want every person who lied about war, or who supported those lies out of our government.

Those who lied about sex are way down on my list of who we need to get rid of.

an issue about him lying in private to his wife he lied to everyone in pubic for days and days.
As for trying to use the excuse of x politicians lied about a war or x issue as a defense for why its ok for him to lie now i am not buying it because I personally believe those politicians should have resigned as well and their actions dont make his actions ok.

Lying to the public is okay. If that is our standard then it should be across the board and not selective.

That is why I don't buy 'it's not the sex it's the lying'. Clearly it isn't so that's an empty statement.

When we do start demanding truth from elected officials, and when there are consequences for lies, then we can claim 'it's the lying'.

And what is worse, lying about sex or lying about war if we are going to be selective?

I know what I think.

doesnt resign then its ok for another asshat not to resign when they do something wrong is not a legit defense imo for why this guy should not resign for lying but hey if you want to keep on telling yourself it is thats ok just try not to whine to much when the next member of the GOP gets caught with his or her pants down and doesnt resign.

Republican or Democrat. The only difference when a Repub gets caught is the additional element of hypocrisy.

I think this country needs to grow up and accept the fact that people DO have sex, sometimes they cheat, and that is their own personal business.

What just happened with Rep. Weiner was a disgrace. On one side was an entire organization of rightwingers working for months, like little boys, spying on twitter accts, FB accts, emailing, PM'ing, TM'ing, Texting, phoning, each other in state of absolute, almost orgasmic frenzy at the prospect of catching someone flirting on the internet??? What kind of society produces this? And to think it is heavily funded by far right multi-million dollars entities.

Then we have the media, frothing at the mouth because OMG! Someone was engaging in sex talk and sending each other photos on the internet!! This never happened before, EVER!

And now we have the 'left' terrified of being 'judged' by the right, calling for him to step down.

How about we stand up to the bullies for once?

How about we make it illegal to do what Breatbart and his gang of thugs and criminals have been up to for the past several months, and make Sex LEGAL and just leave people alone to deal with their own personal business??

People died, five US soldiers eg, while the media was rabidly reporting on all of this Jr. High garbage and they weren't even mentioned.

When a country gets to a point where this is THE most important 'news' story for days on end, something is very, very wrong and what Weiner did pales by comparison imho.

about the sex, repeat "not" about the sex but about the lying so just ignore the sex issue and pretend its say about pics of something else if it makes it easier for you to grasp that its the lying for days on end.
As for the part at the end, you enabling him with that statement is not the way to get the country back on the right track and blaming the media for reporting this you need to point the finger at the one who is at fault and thats Wiener himself by going in front of the media multiple times to denounce this as false and "lying", they wouldnt have probably kept the story going as much if it had not been for him.

we view sex as 'shameful'. If we acted the way other developed nations react to grown-ups engaging in sexual activities, no one would feel the need to lie. And what business does the media, or Breitbart have to be prying into the personal sexual lives of anyone??? What business is it of theirs if nothing illegal is going on? I think what they are doing, spying on people, plotting to destroy them, is far, far worse than people engaging in a perfectly normal human activity.

Stop with the 'it's not the sex, it's the lies' nonsense. It IS the sex! This country is puritanical about sex, shaming people they 'catch' engaging in it and then conducting what amounts to a media Salem Witch trial to make sure the person is fully humiliated and shamed in front of the whole country. What is with this country?? So because people know that sex is viewed as shameful and their private sexual moments will held up like a dirty rag in front of the world, they DO lie at first.

When we get over this medieval attitude towards sex, Breitbart and his media cohorts will have to go get real jobs, and no one will feel compelled to lie about it.

are discussing why its my opinion he should resign and your defense of why he shouldnt.
I personally dont care if he was banging a 3 legged crossdressing midget just dont lie that its all a setup for days if word leaks out.

or who supported those lies out of our government."

You sure about that?

How did Weiner vote on the Iraq war?

http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Anthony_Weiner

I did not support Hillary Clinton because of that, or Edwards and settled on Obama mainly because he spoke out against the war. Although now I am fairly certain he was just lucky not to have been there for that vote.

He deserves not to have been Congress because of that vote, NOT because of a sex scandal.

Rep. Anthony Weiner showed an understanding of the new age of privacy during a press conference on Weinergate this afternoon. Weiner subjected himself to a half-hour whacking by journalists, during which he admitted to lying about his Twitter account being hacked, saying that he did send a photo of his little member of Congress to a Seattle college student “as a joke.” He had intended to send it privately as a direct message, but messed up. On Twitter, this is called a “#DM Fail.” It happens fairly often — it’s the equivalent of the inadvertent “Reply All” of email — and is a good reason NOT to use Twitter as a forum for sending racy photos of yourself.

http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/06/06/anthony-weiner-comes-clean-about-dirty-photos-and-phone-calls/

That would explain this. After all, the picture is about at the level of a 10-year-old's humor. It is juvenile and silly, anything but erotic.

that he has never met in person is a pretty stupid and creepy way of "joking around"

It never ceases to amaze me how many emotionally immature people (and outright sociopaths) manage to get themselves into leadership positions.

Long ago, when I was applying for positions as a peace officer, I was subjected to intense psychological testing and evaluation. We could avoid so much of this crap with political officials embarrassing themselves and us by requiring such profiling when they file to run for office.

good points

he made a bad decision and he will pay the price.

personally i`m more offended by the supreme court judge who thinks laws are for the great unwashed. a supreme court judge who does have a direct affect on everyone who lives in this country.people are fascinated by weiner`s penis picture while a supreme court judge escapes the punishment of the outraged.

this manufactured outrage about mr weiner`s penis proves once again that sex sells soap.

If our guys screw themselves out of their elected positions they screw us out of decent representation. They need to take their jobs seriously and seriously address issues like war and poverty and working families. This is important shit and they can't be so brazenly stupid at such a critical time.

This wasn't a relationship that was rooted in love. It wasn't even a private lustful affair between two (or hell, more) people. He was trolling the internet for cybersex. With anonymous people. While sitting as a very esteemed member of Congress loved by many liberals, hated by all Republicans.

I am not a puritanical holier-than-thou preacher who is appalled at the ACTS as much as the methods he used. He sent lewd pictures and communicated with not one, not two, not three, but SIX random women he didn't know at ALL on the internet. People he didn't know and couldn't even come close to trusting. Now it's an issue and it's the ONLY thing we're talking about. And we wouldn't be if he hadn't been such a fucking fool. His credibility is shot. He clearly has ZERO sense of judgement if he thought his actions would not get out. He might not have fucked them but he fucked those of us who supported him pretty good.

Fucking idiot. How did you think this would end, Weiner? I really thought you were a smart man.

creepiness involved in this behavior, I do not agree about "having nothing invested" in Weiner. OMG, here come the jokes. IMO, all Progressives and Democrats seeking a Democratic politician with a backbone (and obviously other bones :>( (idiot, him not you) has an implied investment in him. He has had the courage to stand up and speak truth to power and demand changes for real Americans. He has ben unfaithful, both pixelly and physically.

I hope he can learn from this idiotic episode and keep his job. We need all of the strong voices we can get.

"I tried to have phone sex, but kept getting my penis caught in the '9'!"

And it is not infidelity.

I think what he did was stupid.
I will say that he comes from a generation (mine) that, in some ways, does not get that the internet is FOREVER.
Once something is out there it will stay out there and will pop up to haunt you.
It does not rise to the level of sex scandal, and doesn't hold a candle to the crap going on in GOP sleazy sex scandal world.
Vitter, Gingrich, Ensign, ring any bells GOP?
It seems to me that the MSM has a huge double standard when it comes to these kinds of antics from politicians.

I have to say Adder that this was a gem:
"I have nothing personally invested in him and my patience for the antics of straight men who think that strange women are dying to see their dicks is short."
I had a great belly laugh over this unintentional (?) double entendre!

it is about doing something so stupid that it takes the conversation away from what needs to be addressed.

I was called a "@ hole" yesterday in here because I think people in public office should think before they act.

Public officials do not have the same freedoms that the private citizen has, and in fact with the internet none of us do now.

People have to accept anything they put on line is for public consumption. There is no private moments on line.

As a Democrat who wants to push a party platform forward,, these types of distractions just drive me nuts.

Last week, this week, and now a house investigation. geez louise.

How simple ,embarrassing of course, but simple it would have been if he had just fessed up last week.

I really thought Weiner was set up, but he's just another prepubescent horny 14 year old in an adults body.

grow the fuck up you jerks.

but I still think the media is way way overdoing all this. and still don't know how someone was there like a vulture to pick up that photo... but I don't care enough to want to know...


next....

no, I don't believe women don't cheat.
but as my heading says, give me some examples.

women know that if they want to keep their political stations, they have to stay the hell away from sexual scandals. Men can gt away with it, women can't, the public is very biased in this respect.

and go on tv talk shows and joke about it, nudge nudge wink wink.
you think the hubby might feel a bit put off?

well, bill clinton does that, still.

you really think a woman could get away with that without being burnt at the stake?

give me some examples then, instead of running from my question.

I get it that the lying is the real problem. That actually is the part that breaks my heart for all y'all who were out there proving he'd been framed. I was perfectly ready to believe that, but I guess it doesn't surprise me that it turned out not to be true.

I don't personally understand what makes a guy want to send pictures of his dick to strangers. It seems to me like it should be real easy to avoid doing shit like that. Then again, a lot of people find it real easy to avoid eating cheese, and I don't, even though I know it's not good for me. Nobody can always follow all the rules they should be following all the time. It ought to be good enough for our elected representatives to follow the rules about 1) not hurting other people 2) not breaking the law 3) not being corrupt and 4) doing what they honestly think is the best thing for their constituents and for the country. Whether a guy wants to maintain some kind of virtual sexting harem doesn't bother me as much as it would have bothered me, say, 20 years ago--unless the harem starts to involve minors.

(I know, y'all are going to tell me that Weiner violated #4. Yes. But only because we live in a world where people are made to care about crap like this. The standards for what counts as "poor judgment" are becoming so low that soon it will be impossible for any human being in elected office to exercise 'good judgment' all the time.)

Not sure what's made the difference, except that I'm older and I guess I have come around to the opinion there are no heroes any more. It's not just that nobody's perfect. The heroes we were able to believe in back in the days of yesteryear were made possible by our strategic ignorance of their personal flaws. Martin Luther King Jr. himself could not have become a hero in today's environment. Oh, sure, he's changing the world by leading one of the most succesful nonviolent civil rights movements in history; but did you see that email he sent to that staffer? CREE-PY!

Some kind of rational balance has to be reached with all this. I mean, I am faithful to my wife. I do not have a Twitter account. I have never taken a picture of myself in my underwear, nor do I flirt with women half my age. According to media logic, I would be a perfect Congressional representative, or even, dare I say, president. And yet I know that I would be a disaster in either job, because you know what, whether you can avoid putting yourself in embarrassing sexual situations doesn't really have a whole lot of bearing on whether you can get a @#$! law passed, which is actually Rep. Weiner's job.

Perhaps this doesn't seem as serious to me as it does to some of you guys because I'm still mourning the loss to the party of John "let's father a child on someone and then corrupt ourselves in order to keep it under wraps" Edwards. I kind of wish he had just stuck to sending out humiliating pictuers on Twitter.

The only silver lining here is that I am sure there will be some good Daily Shows out of this. I only wish it were still marching band season.

@#$!,

The Plaid Adder

Bad judgement. He showed lack of self control and the inability to make rational judgements.

Serving the public.

We The Public are spending a lot of our time trying to survive the relentless onslaught of policies from both sides of the aisle that are destroying the Middle Class.

It would be great if our public servants would spend a bit of their free time visitng the "real" America that is camping alongside the highways, or fighting in out in court with the Big Boy Bankers that were bailed out on our Tax monies.

raincoats...

;-)

when I was a teen-ager. I was in a park and some guy exposed himself BAM just like that, way creepy, scared the crap out of me. :scared: :cry: Maybe if I had been older I would've handled it better. A friend of my mother's had that happen and she just pointed and laughed the guy took off, probably traumatized him for life. :rofl:

he he had come out and said...

"yeah, i did that shit. please stay out of my business" i would have been able to forgive him a LOT easier

you and the rest of us who want a fighter with backbone in Congress should stand up for Weiner

I have missed your sanity. Perfect. K&R.