“Being Mrs. Carlos Danger”: Subjected To A Storm Of Contempt
As America basks in the comedic glow cast by Anthony Weiner’s dirty little keyboard, made so hilarious by Weiner’s use of the online pseudonym “Carlos Danger,” many are asking, what about Huma? That Weiner is a dirtball is pretty clear to all at this point, and given that a year after he had left Congress over the first incarnation of the sexting scandal he was still playing these games suggests something compulsive about the behavior. An ordinary person, particularly one who wanted to stage an eventual political comeback, would say, “OK, I had my fun, but now I’ve been caught and humiliated—no more of that.” But who the hell knows what was going on in his head? Maybe the possibility of getting caught was the whole thrill.
If you want to read the texts, they’re here. My absolute favorite is when, in the midst of all the Penthouse Forum dirty talk, Weiner sends this plaintive text to his digital paramour: “I’m deeply flawed.” You can say that again, Carlos.
Huma Abedin is just the latest in a long line of women who had to stand before the press while their husbands discussed their betrayal. Each one handled it differently—Elizabeth Edwards was supportive in front of the cameras but raged at John privately, Jenny Sanford dumped Mark like a rock—but as Garance Franke-Ruta notes, if we assume Weiner and Abedin are telling the truth that she’s known about Sexting II: Sext Harder for a while, then they had prepared for this moment for some time.
I didn’t find much wrong in the statement she gave; it was blunt about how difficult it was for her to stay married to Weiner, said in the end their marriage is private, and expressed her belief in his political career. In other words, it was exactly what you’d expect. What was she going to do, slap him across the face in front of the cameras? I’ve seen many people react negatively toward Abedin’s statement (here’s an exception), which I think isn’t so much about what she said at the press conference but more a reaction to the fact that she hasn’t packed her bags. We can all say, “How can she stay with him?”, particularly when the two of them were posing for People magazine talking about all the progress they’d made at the same time he was starting up a new online relationship. The trouble is that it’s hard to find a good reason Abedin would stick with this. Is being the mayor’s wife really that great?
And that may be the most despicable thing about what Weiner did. Not just that he betrayed Huma in this way but that he asked her to accompany him on his mission to become mayor of New York, all the while taking this enormous risk that would not only put that bid in jeopardy but also mean that at some point, she’d have to come before the cameras and do what she did. Forcing his wife into that public humiliation, even knowing it would inevitably subject her to a storm of contempt, was, for him, worth the price of Carlos Danger having his fun (or feeding his addiction, or however you want to think about it).
It can’t be said too often that none of us knows what goes on between them or what is in her head. But I picture Huma going down to the basement every night, where there’s a punching bag on a chain; she puts on the gloves and goes to town, eyes narrowed, teeth clenched, sweat pouring down her face. The sound of her punches echoes up the stairs to where Anthony sits reading campaign memos, each thwack a reproach that he knows he should feel worse about than he does. After a while she climbs the stairs, panting, and stops in the doorway to stare at the back of his head. Knowing her eyes are on him, he turns and puts on a smile. “Good workout?” he asks. She pauses an extra second before answering, just to let him know she knows how full of it he is. “Yes.” Then she turns and heads for the shower, while he lets out a big sigh and returns to his computer.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, July 24, 2013
“This Has Got To Be A Trick”: Is This The Best The GOP Can Come Up With?
I think I’ve figured it out. Republicans must be staging some kind of fiendishly clever plot to lure Democrats into a false sense of security.
That’s the only possible explanation for some of the weirdness we’re seeing and hearing from the GOP. The party must be waiting to come out with its real candidates and policy positions at a moment when unsuspecting Democrats are in the vulnerable position of being doubled over with laughter.
Why else, except for the entertainment value, would the party nominate former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford — he of Appalachian Trail fame, or infamy — in next month’s special election to fill a vacant seat in Congress?
Sanford, you will recall, made news in 2009 when he went missing for a week, which is rarely a good idea for a sitting governor. Upon reappearing, he acknowledged he hadn’t been hiking in the mountains but rather was visiting his mistress in Argentina, which is never a good idea for a sitting governor, especially one who is married and preaches sanctimoniously about family values.
Sanford’s wife, Jenny, refused to play the role of dutiful spouse, basically telling interviewers that her husband was, in fact, a heel; they divorced the following year. After his term ended in 2011, he went slinking into the wilderness. But a toppling of political dominoes — former senator Jim DeMint resigned; then-Rep. Tim Scott was appointed to replace him; Scott’s seat in the House thus had to be filled in a special election — gave Sanford the opening for a comeback.
Last month, Sanford finished first in the GOP primary against a weak field. This week, he won a runoff. Since South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District is solidly Republican, Sanford’s victory on May 7 should be a foregone conclusion. Even the fact that Democrats are running an unusually viable candidate — Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of late-night satirist Stephen Colbert — ought to make little difference. But the GOP establishment is worried.
So far, it appears that Sanford is less interested in victory than personal redemption. He had the nerve to ask Jenny Sanford to manage his campaign; she, of course, declined. As he gave his victory speech after Tuesday’s runoff, his fiancee — Maria Belen Chapur, the former mistress who lives in Buenos Aires — stood behind him. If Sanford ends up making this contest a referendum on his personal life, some loyal Republicans may hold their noses as they vote for him. Others will just stay home.
Republicans are also trying their best to lose a governorship, in Virginia, that could be theirs for the taking.
The Democratic candidate, longtime party fundraiser and operative Terry McAuliffe, has always shown more talent as a kingmaker than as a candidate. But he’s fortunate to have as his opponent Ken Cuccinelli, the commonwealth’s loony-bin attorney general. Describing Cuccinelli’s views as “far right” is like calling Usain Bolt “reasonably fast.”
At the moment, Cuccinelli is challenging an appeals-court decision that struck down Virginia’s sodomy law, which sought to restrict sex acts between any two people, including married couples. The Supreme Court ruled such laws unconstitutional 10 years ago, so the appeals court really had no choice. But Cuccinelli is appealing anyway.
When he was campaigning for attorney general, Cuccinelli refused to endorse his Republican predecessor’s policy of nondiscrimination against gays and lesbians. “My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong,” he said at the time. “They’re intrinsically wrong. . . . They don’t comport with natural law.”
Cuccinelli has also tried his best to halt all abortions, launched what looked like a witch hunt against climate-change scientists and generally pursued an ultra-conservative agenda with chilling gusto. Virginia has voted twice for President Obama; I’ll admit I was surprised when Cuccinelli won statewide office in 2009, even though the attorney general’s authority is limited. I’ll be really surprised if Virginians put him in the governor’s mansion, giving him the whole state as a sandbox.
You’d think the national GOP would try to avoid potential giveaways like these. But leading Republicans are too busy tying themselves in knots over issues that much of the country considers settled and done with — gay marriage, immigration reform, background checks for gun purchases, a balanced approach to debt reduction.
A party can be out of step on any of these issues and still win elections. But on all of them? I’m telling you, this has got to be some kind of trick.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, April 4, 2013
“Empathy For The Devil”: Mark Sanford Proudly Champions The Most Self-Righteous Instincts Of His Privileged Class
At New York Magazine, Jason Zengerle’s got a long article on Mark Sanford’s fall and rise, focusing on his very touchy relationship with his ex-wife Jenny, who could have easily preempted his comeback congressional campaign with one of her own, and could sink his today with a few tart words.
Reading the piece, I couldn’t help but marvel at what a relatively easy time Sanford has had recovering from such a spectacular implosion, spending his post-gubernatorial days “almost Thoreau-ing” on his family’s plantation, building a cottage to house his political memoranda, mulling life in the big picture and occasionally jetting off to New York or Miami or Buenos Aires to spend time with his lover (and eventually fiancee). If Sanford hit bottom or struggled through a Dark Night of the Soul, it was in considerable comfort. Nor did his first steps back involve community service or anything selfless at all:
After a year and a half, he left Coosaw [the plantation] and moved to an apartment in Charleston. He did some commercial-real-estate deals and joined a couple of corporate boards. He popped up on Fox News to offer some political analysis. Then last summer, he took the plunge and traveled to Tampa for the Republican National Convention.
But here’s the most revealing part of the story:
Empathy is a dominant theme of Sanford’s campaign, and it came up in my own conversations with him. “I would argue, and again I’m not recommending the curriculum to my worst enemy, but if one fails publicly at something, there’s a new level of empathy toward others that could not have been there before,” he told me.
When I asked Sanford how that new empathy had changed his views on public policy—whether it had made him, for instance, more inclined to support public-assistance programs he’s long denounced as unnecessary—he said it had not. “Convictions are convictions,” he explained. His empathy is for other public figures recovering from sex scandals and personal humiliations. “I used to open the paper and think, How did this person do that? Now it’s all, But by the grace of God go I.”
Unbelievable. Here’s this man who grew up on a plantation and married an heiress, and then presided over a state that is a living monument to inequality, proudly championing the most churlish and self-righteous instincts of its privileged classes. But his new empathy still extends no further than people just like him. And odds are he’s going to go back to Congress, where I suspect he will declare his rehabilitation complete.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, March 4, 2013
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