Exceptionally lazy SNLC this evening, encapsulated in the poll below, for several reasons to be explained momentarily. Curious, though, that beyond the salaciousness of subject matter that the 2 choices have in common, both situations involve mayorships of major cities, although one currently has the office, though who knows for how much longer, and the other wants the office, but I doubt that he'll get the chance to get there. More (though not much) below the flip....
Even the hoity-toity (which is why 3CM likes the magazine, of course) The New Yorker has made hay out of Anthony Weiner's seemingly endless capacity for idiotic behavior, illustrated (literally) here. In principle, you'd think that the NY Democratic primary voters will take care of Weiner when the time comes, but some comments at this New York magazine blog post may make you wonder. But if Weiner doesn't take himself out of the race (which is entirely possible, given his clueless behavior so far), and it takes the NY Dem primary voters to send Weiner packing, it will be just further proof of how much smarter Blue state New York (OK, New York City) Democrats are than Red state South Carolina Republicans. Granted, that's not difficult.
Regarding current San Diego mayor Bob Filner, Amanda Marcotte at Slate noted here:
"Democratic party leaders in San Diego formally denounced San Diego Mayor Bob Filner Thursday afternoon, asking for his resignation in response to the growing number of women—now a total of seven—stepping forward to report his long history of workplace sexual harassment."
Marcotte does also state, however, with a look back at the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas controversy back in 1991:
"It seems that the tired debates about sexual harassment, with its defenders hiding behind the "just flirting" and "women are too sensitive" excuses, seem to be fading away and a new consensus is forming that it's never okay to force sexualized interactions on the unwilling.....
.....it's nice to see that Filner doesn't have many allies. Things have clearly changed a lot in the two decades since the Clarence Thomas hearings, where even male Democratic Senators were more interested in defending the old order where women simply had to suffer creepy advances in silence than they were in keeping a right wing ideologue like Thomas off the bench. Turns out the world doesn't actually end if men are expected to keep their hands and their sexual thoughts to themselves in professional situations, and give women the respect they offer their male colleagues."
Our side likes to rip on Republican bigots who treat women with contempt, as witness the treatment of Cornelia Pillard, one of President Obama's nominees to the federal DC circuit appeals court, by thuggish Senate Republicans, as reported by
Slate's Dahlia Latwick
here. But we can't have that kind of ill-treatment of women by people on our side. Nancy Pelosi, for one, recognizes this, as quoted in
this USA Today article from yesterday:
'House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — Weiner's Democratic leader when he was in Congress — said Thursday his behavior and that of San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, accused of sexual harassment, is "so disrespectful of women. And what's really stunning about it is, they don't even realize it. They don't have a clue."'
If there's any good part about the situations with Filner and Weiner, it's that the consensus on our side seems to be that they deserve to be toast. Too bad that the Republican party is so far right with respect to basic respect for women that they have no mechanism of self-correction there, again as illustrated by their treatment of Ms. Pillard. (Hopefully she'll get enough votes for confirmation regardless.)
Hmm, not quite as short as I thought it would be. With that, time for the usual SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories of the week, although let it be noted that I'm extremely likely not to be around to respond to/mojo any comments this evening. So you folks are on your own.....