Idiots, Lemmings, Assholes, Liberal Apologists, Demagogues, Militant Morons. So many apt descriptors to choose from, but I’ll stick with Idiots.
Early yesterday I perused the latest recommended DailyKos diaries and by far the most recommended were about how the Weiner Photo was manipulated and altered and therefore this had to be a Breitbart machination. Weiner was the Victim! And of course 90% of the commenters lapped it up, even ran with it. No one seemed to care that Weiner was obviously lying (“Can’t say with certitude”, really???). No one cared that he wasn’t acting like someone whose private account was hacked. Everyone immediately believed everything he said and was hell-bent on finding - creating - any possible shred of evidence to exonerate him and blame the “vast right wing conspiracy”. Idiots. How is it that we on the left can appeal to “common sense” when the morons on the right delve into utter stupidity, yet we become utter lunatics ourselves when anyone on the left is accused of a misdeed? What the hell is up with the reflexive, knee-jerk, defend-at-any-cost response to any whiff of scandal on the left?? What’s wrong with you/us??
And now that the truth is out, now that we know that Weiner is a weiner and all the accusations against him are true, do the Kossacks berate and chastise Weiner for his misdeeds? Do they hold him accountable? Do they admit to being willing dupes to his obvious lies? No, instead they pretend that what he did wasn’t so bad, that he’s just human and society is being unfair to him (yeah, I’m talking about you Spencer Troxell and your “our culture's voyeuristic puritanism” bullshit. Fucking Idiot). There are the rare exceptions - well done labradog, although so many of the commentors to your diary completely and depressingly miss the point - the overwhelming majority of Kossacks have proved themselves to be Idiots.
Let’s start with an undeniable truth about All politicians, the overwhelming majority of them are narcissists, and the most ambitious of them are the most narcissistic. Everything they do and say screams out, “Look at me!” “I’m special” “Glorify Me” “You must Want Me as much as I Want Me”!! This is what compelled Weiner to engage in such blatantly stupid conduct. Can anyone seriously deny that he is a narcissist on steroids? Yes, he’s smart, articulate, a defender of liberal causes, blah, blah, blah. Does that earn him a pass? Does such thinking differ in any way from the right’s defense of Palin, Bachmann, et. al.??
It is lunacy and dangerously delusional to believe that this narcissism is a quality only of politicians on the right - it is true of all of them, and we, as adherents of the left, should be more critical of our own rather than less critical. We should demand better from those who claim to represent our interests. One great cure for such self-love is humiliation. Intense, public, brutal humiliation. That’s what Weiner needs and deserves - but that’s not what Kossacks want to demand. Idiots.
Oh, but what he did is just “human”. Bullshit. It is one thing for a single man to flirt with strangers. Certainly a bachelor cannot be judged severely for looking for opportunities to meet someone, even if the method may not be one that many of us would choose. It is quite another thing for a married man - a newly married man at that! - to betray his wife by such blatantly inappropriate conduct. How many of you married Kossacks have engaged in this behavior behind your husband's/wife’s back? How many of you would countenance such behavior from your spouse? And for those who would analogize this with having fantasies or looking at porn, again I say Bullshit. These were real live people he was communicating with. These were flirtations that could very well have led to meetings and hookups. This was not an attempt to enhance his marriage or the sex he was having with his wife, this was an attempt to obtain sexual pleasure and satisfaction outside of his marriage with real people. He fucked up, admit it Kossacks, what he did was wrong - a private wrong that became a public wrong when he lied about it and when he attacked those who were telling the truth about him. STOP DEFENDING WEINER! You demean yourselves and all of us when you defend the indefensible. STOP IT!
And that brings me to Rachel Maddow. What an utter disappointment. Here was a man who has been a frequent guest on her show, who had benefitted greatly from the exposure those appearances gave him. It is no exaggeration to state that his career and reputation were built on the Rachel Maddow Show. And when the photo came out, he went on that show and LIED. He lied to Rachel, he lied to me, he lied to all of us. He lied with false humor, false self-deprecation, and false sincerity. What he did was outrageous and he needed to be taken to task by Rachel last night. But what did she do? She deflected. She danced around it all. She opened her show with a stupid chart and a stupid plastic hand on a stupid plastic stick and gave a demonstration of how Weiner’s sins were minor, insignificant peccadilloes that barely warrant “pooh-poohing” and certainly don’t warrant any harm to his political career. Rachel, What the Fuck??!! I was so outraged by her indifference to his abuse of her, her show, and her audience that I had to stop watching. It is possible that later in the show Rachel gave Weiner his comeuppance, but if she did, it was way too late. The show should have opened with the outrage, with the demand for contrition and correction. It didn’t. This is the same woman who spent months mind-numbingly reporting on the deceit and misdeeds of those who live at C-Street. The excruciating time and detail she spent on that one issue was - I believed - evidence that Maddow would not let anyone get away with lies and deceit. I was wrong, she won’t let anyone on the right get away with lies and deceit, but anyone on the left, especially heroes of the left, not only are they allowed to get away with lies and deceit, they are allowed to lie and deceive on Rachel’s show to Rachel’s audience. But it was no big deal, it wasn’t prosecutable or sleazy. Uh, Rachel, it was a big deal and you blew it big time. And we on the left all look like idiots. Thanks Rachel, thanks Kossacks, nice job.