Maybe "tweeting" and "sexting" is a generational thing?

I think we may be seeing a demarcation line between generations? Tonight, on the Bill Maher show, he showed a clip from the MTV Awards show(?) and Justin Timberlake grabbed Mila Kunis by her breasts and she in turn grabbed him by his crotch? What the hell? Justin Timberlake is a talented guy and Mila Kunis is a beautiful lady so why do they have to resort to such theatrics? Was that supposed to be funny?

Or is it that maybe I am on the other side of that demarcation line? Perhaps this generation looks at sex and breasts and crotches in a different way than we older generation? It was shockingly casual.

Perhaps Anthony Weiner is on the cusp between this older and younger generation? He does not seem to think of his actions the same way the older generation might think of his actions. It seems more "normal" to him and his younger supporters than it might seem to myself or his older supporters. Why?

"Talking dirty" over the phone is no big deal. Everybody does it. If you don't know that, then you are just out of touch. The times have changed.

Or perhaps not?

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to random women. And do you remember how much those Polaroid films cost? Today's perverts don't realize how well off they are. Being able to send photos of your erect penis at no cost, indeed.

:rofl:

and then it took weeks for the mules to get over the mountains.

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If FDR had had a Blackberry, we wouldn't have Social Security.

You need to stop pretending that sexual indiscretion has anything to do with a person's ability to contribute great things to our society.

sure wish more people would get it.

we simply don't care about "normal" any more. And why should we?

Read Dan Savage's column. The number of kinks is infinite, and the number of people with those kinks is very, very large. After realizing this, you begin to stop caring about what seems normal anymore. What matters is: are you treating other people ethically when act out on these desires? That's the focus of Savage's column: how to be an ethical freak.

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dunno. If he used government resources, computer, etc, no, that's unethical. Illegal? Probably not, but not cool.

If he simply used the fact that he's a high profile guy and that some people are attracted to that, well I don't have a problem with that. There's nothing wrong with "trolling for women", or "trolling for men" per se. And nothing wrong with people being attracted to powerful people, in and of itself.

He knew he was being watched and he knew he'd be subjected to this circus and subject all of us to it. But he didn't care. He actively sought out what he perceived to be his supporters via Facebook and Twitter. He didn't create an anonymous account to get his rocks off. He didn't TRY to be careful and discreet. No, in fact, he sent pics with his face, his name, photos of his family in the background with this egotistical "LOOKIT ME, I'M ANTHONY WEINER, HERE'S MY WEINER!!" shit. To anonymous people he didn't know and couldn't trust. It could have been Breitbart, his minions, Chris Hanson, a minor, Abe Vigoda.

Stupid. And maybe illegal if any were minors. He himself said he "can't confirm"; to the "best of his knowledge" and, I assure you, more bullshit will surface. Maybe it'll be true, maybe not but here we are. Thanks to him.

but at this point, unless he did something illegal, I want him to stick it out, if only because I don't want alternate sexual tastes further demonized.

Suppose, as a thought experiment, he and his wife are swingers. Then this behavior, in the context of their relationship, is completely legitimate (if still not particular careful). Suppose it came out he and Huma frequented sex clubs too. Would that also disqualify him as a politician?

I don't want our political eligibility to revolve around legal, if weird (to some people) bedroom practices.

I've always liked and respected him and thought he was a smart man. I still very much support his positions. I am just blown away at his stupidity and think he's done us all a huge disservice. I don't think it should or will kill his career but it will significantly limit it.

I want our guys to be better than them. 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. This is important shit and they can't be so brazenly stupid at such a critical time. I don't want our strongest voices advocating our positions are silenced by their own stupidity. For me it's not about the sexual aspect. It's not about the lying, even. It's just about being really fucking stupid.

And honestly, I am mostly over that even, but I won't defend him and I won't stop thinking it was a total boner move for a guy I thought was pretty fucking smart.

and if he's done something illegal (and we shall see) then he's worse than dumb. But I'm waiting on that.

.... I agree with just about everything you've said.

It's the "stupid" that gets me. No, I don't think he should resign (unless, of course, a minor was involved) .... but, I sure as hell won't defend abject stupidity.

Second, if he had been in some other field, such as business, he could have trolled for a willing secretary.

The variety of ways that people can "troll" is infinite.

He has a problem, but as long as he did not break any laws or seriously offend the people he texted, while I don't understand it, who am I to object?

As far as we know he did not sex-text underage people or unwilling recipients. I am ready to forgive him provided he gets help, and I'm sure he will. He has a baby on the way.

he took a position where this behavior is not allowed. he did it. he was irresponsible. he married and promised to stop. he didnt. he hurt someone.

he failed.

not seeing that this behavior isn't "allowed". Lots and lots of counterexamples. And I don't agree that it shouldn't be allowed.

And who did he hurt? Maybe the girl? That's an open question. I have yet to hear from his wife. Maybe she's into this, and even if not, well her problems are not my problems. I don't care if he gave her a sad.

And finally, even if he didn't act ethically, I don't really care either. That would make him slimy. But politicians are a means to an end, and if he continued being effective toward that end, but leads a kinda shifty personal life, I don't see why I should lose a moment's sleep over it.

my friend is caving in to validating, excusing, justifying wrong behavior.

meh is right

being contingent on him being sexually ethical

I was talking about generational differences in perceptions of appropriate sexual activity.

Weiner is a related question, but different.

I don't have enough information yet to decide if he acted ethically or not.
That depends on if he hurt someone. That's unclear yet.

But even if he did, as far as him keeping his job is concerned, you're right, I still wouldn't care (with respect to his employment). He can give his wife a sad as often as she is willing to put up with it. That's her problem. Not the publics.

the issue is.... he took a public job where this behavior does not bode well. he had a responsibility to his people that voted for him and the democratic party as a whole. he had an ethical responsibility not to behave in this manner and create this mess for the people he represents. he failed. ethically, to the voters, to the dems.

if he had to have this behavior, then he had ethical choices. not persue a public life. go anonymous. he ethically failed. that is what happens in adult life. we make choices. personal sometimes interfer with professional and vice versa.

don't believe he had any responsibility to comport himself sexually in any particular way, as long as he broke no laws. I don't care if he's done orgies with Brad and Angelina. He doesn't owe any kind of sexual behavior to his constituents.

Are polyamorous people excluded from lives of public service?

and then voting for the lobbyists' bills.

That I find unethical. Yet it is a widespread practice in Congress.

As long as he did not do anything illegal, I would rather we focus on the ethical indiscretions that involve policy or that involve serious financial abuses. Personal stuff I cannot judge.

For one thing, we cannot know how many of our members of Congress flirt in various ways with members of their staff or the public. He flirted in a way that was easy to catch.

The amount of sex that goes on in some workplaces would shock many a DUer. But if it is in a large corporation, no one says a thing.

Unless more serious charges are brought, I am quite willing to forget what Weiner has done assuming he gets help for what appears to be a serious addiction to sex-texting.

as of now and the past, i dont think he should step down either.

the only thing is i hope he take seriously the getting help if he plans to have any kind of future with wife. (which is not my business) this stuff leads to the fucking around.

That's what pisses me off. It's a completely unreliable source, unless of course you are looking for pictures of penises.

E.g., Rachel Maddow, Joan Walsh, my local weatherguy. But there is a huge problem in that many DUers have no fucking clue how Twitter works and how it can be controlled/filtered, and are so quick to either believe every word or completely condemn it. It's really not that difficult a concept to grasp.

are so quick to believe every word that is written on twitter. Others are not so quick to believe everything they see written on a web site without any verification. They would be called skeptics??

not you. Too many fall into that first category: "I saw it on the Internet so it's true!" Doesn't matter if it's Twitter, Wikipedia, or some random blog start by some dude in his jammies.

We need more skeptics...especially when scum like Breitbart and Issa are involved.

there is lots to play in the tech world today. the young are going to play. we hope as they grow up, they mature in accepting their responsibilities. weiner failed at accepting his responsibilites. he is the example we show our children at failure in being a grown up and hope they learn from his example.

i have no issue with sexting. i have no issue with online play.

chosing a career representing the public gives you responsibilities, he ignored. responsilibity in marriage, he failed. admittedly.

and the fact that they are from all walks of life. My 60-something neighbor has something going with a woman in Latvia, so I know he's doing it, in between those bi-annual trips to visit her.

There, we've covered three decades. It's really no big deal -- it's just a type of flirtation and/or porn (soft or hard-core), but home-grown.

On edit: There was a time when I played with 20- and 30-somethings, as a 40-something. So, make that FIVE decades...quite a generational span.

:shrug: Naughty text, wang pictures, receiving equally naughty pics -- heck, I've done entire seductions by text and email. I'm a logophile; I think a sexy text is as exciting as dirty talk in person.

But most people do it with people they know and trust or do it anonymously. Especially those who are smart enough to know full well that shit would hit the fan if their discussions were made public.

They tell me it's NOT common because it's "public" and "once it's out there, it's forever".

They aren't "prudes" either. The older girl is a global traveller and DEFINITELY experienced sexually, and my 14 yr old just asked to go on the pill.


Maybe it's common for sexually voyeuristic congressmen to send unsolicited sex pics to young women in hopes of sexual favors or for other fantasy fetishes?

it seems like these younger kids have watched the older enough they may be turning away from it. they are hearing kids commit suicides. embarassments that get put all around the school.

see that enough, kids are gonna be wary.

my early 20's niece. i am watching her take a step back on a lot of this stuff that they thought would not be a problem.

Seriously, even the oldest guy there (71 years old) has engaged in dirty texting and sending pics via phone.

My stepfather has almost 40 years in with a supermarket chain.

He's always saying that grocery customers are the scary-oddest people you'll ever meet, from the woman he caught popping a squat in the middle of an empty aisle because they didn't have a public bathroom (this was in an inner-city neighborhood where they had been ordered to close the public bathroom by law-enforcement and public health because people were using it to shoot-up.) to the much wealthier neighborhood he's in today where he had to throw away an entire display of cucumbers and have a woman arrested because she was "test-driving" them to find the right fit.

Then there are the things he ordered that never arrived because "they must have fallen off the truck" somewhere in the 2 miles between the store and the warehouse, the day he showed up to find 14 palates of bagged, cubed ice in his storeroom in the dead of a CT winter with no explanation given other than that he needed to sell it. The belligerent customers trying to return competitor's store brands, the fridge failures at the worst times and the stockboys who quit with a moment's notice, the creepy old men managers who can't be bothered to do their jobs because they're too busy leering at the 17-year old cashiers & the security guards who stand there thumb-in-rectum as the shoplifter he's chasing runs right past them out the door.

He's ready to retire.

http://notalwaysright.com

They have a section for grocery stores, too :)

and if you were found to be screwing around with underage girls, we would have no business. Seriously. Girls and women of every age and type comprise 90% of our biz and if we were found to be fucking around with any inappropriate shit it would destroy us.

I can't imagine where you work where this is okay, especially if the age of the recipients can't be verified. My older girl works in academic circles and tells me this is toxic, her SO works in govt GIS stuff and also tells me he'd lose his security clearance if he engaged in it. Hell, even my 14 yr old knows if she sexted that day would come when she'd regret it.

not easily traceable. There is a way to *play* anonymously.

touching at all.

It's very strange that Weiner was doing it. He probably has a serious problem and it may be that his problems are due to being ridiculed about his name from the time he was very young. He needs help, but then at least he is not taking money from lobbyists to do their bidding. Let's get back to the basics here.

In a country in which we have serious corruption of the financial kind, sex-texting, however obnoxious and personally objectionable it is, is not something we should focus on.

and there was a graph with a shaded area that made an arc over a straight line and anything within the shady area was accepted as "normal" by society and anything outside of that area was not accepted by society. I'm sure the arc changes over time and what some people may see as "normal", others may see as a perversion of sorts.

the accessibility, ability to do it from their own home..

might be a extreme reaction...but parents need to monitor their kids

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZOS95p4Eyg&feature=related

at least dad was taking out anger on the phone.

i have a problem with whole cancer issue too though, and i dont much go for having kids buried in cell phone texting, so i had other issues. 4, or 5. BUT i got him one at 16. kids know, anytime, i can look thru t or the puter. (well, not really cause i dont know shit, lol). BUT... i could have hubby check the shit if i had a reason

I would never allow my kids (under 18) to "own" their own phones or you lose all control over what they are putting on it. Since I own the phone, I have complete control over what shit they do and do not post.

My adult daughter keeps her account with me because I pay her bill (and thus ensure she always answers my calls! :) ) but has moved beyond the sexting thing, if she were ever tempted, as she lives with her SO. Now, as an independent young woman, she knows the risks and tells me she'd never risk that kind of exposure.

men having affairs with their poor secretaries. And I bet that affairs with underlings are not uncommon among some of our leadership. It would be hidden but probably there.

And I object to that strongly.

But sex-texting is just downright dumb. It doesn't really hurt anyone other than the people who do it.

There have been two office scandals where I work caused by inappropriate things posted online and I have been "sexted" by a woman in her forties and given pictures by another on a disk.

Some people are just creepy exhibitionists of all ages.

Being in the technology field, I'm well aware of the downside of social networking, as in, "You never know WHERE your information can end up."

Besides which, I have no compulsion to spend any more time online than I already do.

It's the old advice you give to corporate employees: Write your e-mails as if everyone will read them.

But for a public official to be so reckless? Extremely poor judgement on his part. Maybe some of it was combined with ego and a false sense of invincibility or invisibility. But knowing the American political environment as he should, it was stupid to take the risk.

No excuses for Weiner - bad decisions based on thinking with the wrong head, combined with technology? There you go.

and he feels the same way. very particular where he goes and does none of the social network. and like you, he is missin with it all day.

Imagine . . . masturbating to pictures of naked women! Why, it's disgusting!

I used to eat lunch across the street from one of New York's larger peep show establishments. It amazed me how ordinary-looking the traffic was in and out of the place. As a exercise in social awareness, I made a deliberate effort to discern the differences between peep show customers and ordinary guys who go to baseball games, drink in bars, or take the train home at night.

There weren't any differences. These were the same populations.

I have to laugh at the notion that only perverts do online sex. Maybe men have changed since the days of the peep show booths. Then again, maybe not.

but sexting, phone sex, etc seems to me to be a way to avoid dealing with the other person during sex which sort of defeats the purpose.

I suspect that is what it is about, and that is why I am not so horrified as some others.

How many of us have read erotic novels? Lady Chatterly's Lover was censored at one point. How our mores change.

In 1990 when I was 18, my sister and I placed personal ads in the local weekly for grins. We both got back a deluge of snailmail, most with Polaroids included. Half of those snapshots were R and X rated. We had a good laugh. And this was back in the day before the Internet. I think it's just easier now, and much more public when you get caught.

not counting the 13 yr. old ds who is grossed out by anything sexual, the older three (19, 18 and 15) think some things are funny and some are just plain gross, but where that line is changes probably hourly and depending upon who they are with at the moment.

The older two text regularly (the oldest son texts constantly, while gaming!) while the 15 yr. old daughter uses Facebook the most and not Twitter or texting. I tweet occasionally (but not about personal stuff), use FB regularly and text a few times daily w/family members.

The crotch/breast grabbing incident didn't impress me in that it was obviously done for shock factor (meaning it didn't get any sort of reaction out of me). Nobody else in the family seemed to care as it didn't seem unwanted--it was pretty silly.

But, if a congressman is otherwise a strong spokesman for what is right on policy issues, I will put up with a lot.

Even teenagers know that if you send naked pictures of yourself over email or text it will come back to harm you. People either choose to take the risk or not.

For the record: This is an issue for his district to address in the polls.