Anthony Weiner’s Goodbye

It must have seemed like a good idea, once Anthony Weiner had decided to resign, to hold a press conference saying so at a senior-citizens’ center in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn—the same one where he’d declared his candidacy for City Council, back when he had a political career before him. What was left of his staff might have been more sparing with the invitations, though. A minute or so after Weiner called his neighbors “opinionated” and “authentic,” a heckler shouted “pervert!” and much cruder things, too. (“There was at least one non-journalist in there,” John King, of CNN, said, perhaps forgetting the shouts about sexting at Weiner’s last appearance.) Weiner held himself together reasonably well, with some stumbles. After saying that he was leaving “most importantly that my wife and I can continue to heal from the damage I have caused,” he tried to cut off the jeers by repeating that line; the second time, it came out as “so that I can continue to heal from the damage that I have caused.” But fair enough; time to heal. He’s paid a price, and there’s no reason to shriek at him now.

It is not quite right to say, though, that Weiner is being forced to resign because of an imprudent tweet or two, or because he’s been caught in some pageant of hypocrisy. He is resigning, first, because he had an entire web of relations that started, in many cases, when women engaged with him as a politician (there’s a rep in @repweiner) and continued with him just engaging, and over-engaging. (Did any woman, after a first radar-raising back-and-forth, wonder about ever corresponding with a politician again? If he’d stayed in office, what parent of a teen-age girl in Queens would encourage her to write to her congressman—something any girl should be able to do, and that can be the beginning of a life in politics?) Second, he lied in an outright way. Third, he accused other people of crimes out of shame at his own actions. Those are the things he did: we’ve also learned how reckless he was—his paycheck and marriage might have been his own to toss on the giant gambling table of Twitter, but he also had responsibilities to constituents, colleagues, staff, and political positions he was identified with. We also saw how ineffective he had become, and as much as one might complain about media obsessions it is not everybody else’s fault that he did—it is his.

No, Weiner didn’t start a war based on lies, and other politicians have gotten away with more. But do we approve of those things? Monicagate was thirteen years ago; it would be sad if politicians had learned nothing, and our standards remained unchanged. There’s nothing wrong with starting somewhere, even if it’s at a senior-citizens’ center in Brooklyn.