Well, that was weird. On the part of Breitbart (someone on Twitter said that he totally “Kanye’d” the press conference); on the part of the press (I was fed up with the where-is-your-wife-ing even before that crasher guy starting shouted “Were you fully erect?”); most of all, on the part of Weiner (who really ought to have been aware of the potential humiliations of sending boner pix to constituents, even if your last name is Jones). Weiner’s design for this thing was obviously to stand up there and at least take his lashings, so that everyone would say, “At least he stood up there and took his lashings.” (There is basically nothing one can write about this story that doesn’t come out sounding like some lame double entendre.)
Anyway, that was nice enough, but wouldn’t it be great if our elected officials could stop inflicting these unsavory screwups on us in the first place? That, clearly, is a fantasy. These guys cannot seem to help themselves refracting their silky-chested narcissisms through the increasingly numerous lenses at their disposal, or at that of their videographers’. Perhaps their staffs should start disabling image-dissemination features of their Blackberrys and iPhones—like those earphones that come with built-in volume controls? Or maybe a revival of fireside chats. Nobody wants to see this stuff.
