Hold the tears and sympathy. Anthony Weiner is only sorry he got caught.
Now we know why he found it so easy to lie to the cameras and his wife for most of the last three weeks. He’s still lying to himself about the depths of his depravity.
A visitor from Mars easily could have mistaken yesterday’s resignation speech as a jaunty moment of triumph. To watch him dance around his sensational flameout, you’d think Weiner reached his goal of being mayor. The only thing missing was the confetti and the beaming wife — and the full and honest truth.
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He’s not being drummed out of Congress in complete disgrace, with even a president from his own party helping to push. He’s merely moving on so he can “continue to heal.”
He didn’t do anything scandalously wrong that made him a pariah among his colleagues. He just made “personal mistakes” and created “distractions.”
He didn’t betray his oath of office and the people who hired him. He’s only looking for “other ways to contribute my talents.”
I’d say he’s done enough already. Good riddance.
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We now have three distinct images of Weiner’s final days. First was the initial series of TV interviews where he patiently and repeatedly lied about every aspect of Weinergate. Then came the blubbering confession where he defiantly insisted he would not resign.
And now we have the resignation with hints of a planned comeback. What those events share is that Weiner remained strikingly unsympathetic, unlikable and untrustworthy throughout.
It’s easy to see why nobody in Congress would rise to his defense. He is the kind of man about whom it is said that even his friends don’t like him.
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He is dishonorable by every definition, yet refuses to accept that truth in his own head. Weiner is a weasel even to himself.
Unfortunately, he is in many ways the consummate modern politician. A strident, arrogant partisan, he was all about scoring political points to advance his career. His is the kind of ruthless ambition that gives ambition a bad name.
Did he ever believe in anything other than his own career? If so, it died long ago, suffocated by the gamesmanship of his politics and the raw pathology revealed by his secret life on the Internet.
Tellingly, the sins of his flesh were not about a passion for someone else’s, but about a twisted exhibitionism that was more tawdry and less understandable. His home, office and pets were mere backdrops for his photo shoots. Being a member of the United States Congress was a convenient pickup line as he sought the virtual adoration of strangers.
It was a sex scandal that apparently involved no sex.
The squirmy strangeness of his conduct precludes the quick return to public life he seems to have in mind. He obviously desires to minimize the depths of his affliction so he can recapture some semblance of the power and status he has destroyed.
That’s just another fantasy, and a sure sign he hasn’t hit bottom yet. But at least his visits to crazy land will be on his own time and won’t bring any more shame to America.