Crotch of Fury

Let me get my Weiner, I mean, get the Weiner stuff out of my literary TVO. My quill is 40% hard hitting commentary, 15% disgust over the cultural vortex we live in, about 25% Family Guy references, and the rest is pretty much that windy sound they play when you see tumbleweed fly by in those old westerns. The fact that people who wear Che T-Shirts and stick a Darwin decal on their Prius annoy me, but at the same time, I can watch back-to-back episodes of Family Guy all evening either makes me a closet quasi-libertarian or it gives me street cred with my liberal readers who come for a laugh then get pissed off at me because they lack the language skills to call me out. Anyway, where was I? Oh the ignoble end of the mighty Weiner.

Just about every major news outlet has sucked the air out of the punchlines with bylines like "Pelosi to Ask House to Probe Weiner" and the New York Post's zinger "Weiner Roast." As we go to print, disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner is in rehab, slowly coming to the "turgid" realization that you can't take pictures of your junior member of congress, send them out to every gal who tweets you, and still expect to keep your job. Yeah, yeah, I know all the claptrap about how your personal life is your own business, but if you're doing it on the company's dime, and "doin' it" means sending nasty Facebook messages and snapshots to 17 year old girls, well, there shouldn't be any ethical discussions about the status of your employment.

Spare me the usual "they all do it." They don't. He torpedoed his new, pregnant bride (who is an up-and-comer at the State Department) with his cavalcade of depravity, and he is now under investigation because of the age of some of these girls. Now this is becoming a possible criminal matter, not to mention the terse letter he's going to get from his HR department - and that's the least of his worries. His wife's boss is Hillary Clinton. She can turn people to glass just by staring at them.

It's become the "riguour" to say that your weekly pants-off dance-off with your harem of barely legal mistresses should have zero impact on your job. Maybe I'm wet behind the ears, maybe I'm hopelessly naive, but maybe it's time we start expecting a little more from the men and woman who pick our pockets to make our country move, or in the case of this administration, come to a grinding halt. Everyone screws up, and I don't expect politicians to be paragons of virtue, but if you want to be a serial creep with teenage girls you lose the privilege of representing my interests in the hallowed halls of Congress.

We could debate nuance and at what point does behaviour A or B cross the line. You could make some sophomoric debating point about Jefferson and think you've ended the argument - but at the end of the day, Anthony Weiner didn't just cross the line, he moved it 5 miles south and ran it over with a tractor.

Sorry Tony. There's no way to wiggle or spin your way out of this one. Sit tight, though; CNN will probably give you Spitzer's time slot when his ratings start to tank.

Cordially

Joe