Let he who has never flirted throw the first stone. That's all he did, he flirted. That's the word for it. FLIRTING.
He stood up there for 40 minutes and answered every question. People screaming "was it erect?" at him. Intimations of him being a "predator." "Will you support your love child?" was yelled from the peanut gallery!
So afterwards the panel on Dylan Ratigan all believe he handled it as well as possible. Then Tweety comes on to bury Wiener and his "wierdness." He's given a two week to live prognosis by this panel. AND I CAN'T STAND IT ANYMORE.
He friggin' flirted. And dammit I know what happens when you try to flirt privately but it goes out publically - ever hit "send all" by mistake and have to apologize to an entire office of people because you were both inadvertantly stupid and pushed the wrong button, but also premeditatedly stupid by flirting inappropriately. It happens. It's amazingly embarrassing. But it shouldn't be fatal.
I know there will be people on DK who will kick Wiener to the curb, just cut Wiener free to sink in the wake of his own mistakes as if we have soooooo many effectively progressive voices out there that we can demand perfection from them all. We don't and we shouldn't. I know somebody will compare him to John Edwards and that would be absurd. Is all bad judgment of any type the same? Of course not.
We had better not abandon Anthony Weiner. If he wants to fight it out, I'll be right there with him. Why won't you? Please, please don't be purists here and kill one of ours. Not just because the Republicans wouldn't, my God Vitter is still there. Ensign has been hanging around for 2 years. They weren't even embarrassed. And they did way more than just embarrassing stuff. Anthony Wiener broke no law. He didn't betray a public trust or commit a hypocritcal act. Somebody at the press conference asked him why he shouldn't resign since Mark Foley did. He wisely did not take the opportunity to get into why that was an amazingly stupid question. He put himself through the ringer, and yes, he has no one but himself to blame. But it should end here.
I don't want to hear that he's damaged goods. I don't want to hear how he can't be one of us anymore, can't speak for us anymore.
Imperfect people are welcome here. May that always be true.