Anthony Weiner is boning up quickly.
Hide the kids and preg nant women. Now that his wife, Huma Abedin, is in the family way, within a few cynical days, Weiner will hit rock bottom. Like many a man caught with his knickers down, he seems poised to try and salvage everything by admitting he’s powerless against the monkey on his back, in his head, in his undershorts.
Anthony Weiner. Sex addict?
Weiner started the ball rolling on the road to rehab at his manically surreal press conference in Manhattan Monday. He apologized. He cried. He begged. He sounded like a man zipping down the list of Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12 steps.
Now he’s going to be a father. A father who must be forbidden from being alone with a minor.
Is there redemption? Step 1: Admit you’re an uncontrollable jerk.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said, when he enjoyed Facebook sex, Twitter sex, phone sex. He admitted he’s sent raunchy photos, including the famous shot of his nimble manhood, for the last three years, to a half-dozen chippies. Some young enough to be his kids.
“I might be sick.”
Shut the front door.
Weiner made this confession after someone suggested he suffered from the dime-store disease that’s spawned voyeuristic TV shows and saved countless flaccid careers. Yesterday, he even zoomed to Step 9 — apologizing by his well-worn phone to people he’s wronged. Like Bill Clinton.
Is Weiner an addict? He never used the phrase. He did say that he might seek professional help for his “issues.” Such as being a spoiled and greedy predator. He’s got nothing to lose.
Declaring sex addiction is a sure-fire stop on the road to redemption, transforming a faithless scoundrel into the victim of a trendy disease.
The trouble is that sex addiction — a medical diagnosis that’s been used to earn forgiveness for gross and aberrant behavior by powerful men (Tiger Woods is its poster boy) — may not really exist.
“It certainly is a compulsive lack of judgment and impulse control,” ventured Dr. Puja Hall, who treats self-declared sex addicts in Manhattan.
“Or he might just be a bad husband.” Now expectant father. The mind reels.
No less an authority than the American Psychiatric Association refuses to list sex addiction in its canon of mental disorders. That didn’t stop the affliction from being plunked on the map in 1992, when rumors swirled that actor Michael Douglas entered rehab to cure a sexual itch. Douglas insists he was treated for drinking too much. It didn’t help his reputation — or maybe it enhanced it — that Douglas’ dad, Kirk, thought the sex-addiction fable was kind of funny.
Ex-ballplayer Darryl Strawberry declared himself a sex addict, earning a new generation of fans and, for a while, holding his marriage together. Actor David Duchovny, too.
Tiger Woods went to rehab for his powerful urge to shtup legions of blondes and brunettes, admitting it was “harder” to play golf after being so defanged. His wife, Elin, picked him up from the facility, stoking the belief that she was on board with the therapy, before, finally, calling it quits.
Not coincidentally, Tiger’s main mistress, Rachel Uchitel, said on Dr. Drew Pinsky’s addiction-glamorizing “Celebrity Rehab” that her main jones wasn’t drugs. She was “addicted to love.”
The phoniest bearer of the sex-addict title is Steve Phillips. The ex-ESPN analyst tossed off taste and reason to have sex in a car with a junior staffer who stalked his wife.
“You’re broken inside,” Phillips sobbed to Matt Lauer in a desperate career-saving interview. “You’ve got a hole that you’ve tried to fill,” he actually said, “whether it was with alcohol or drugs or sex or gambling — with whatever.” Now he has a thriving job in radio.
Weiner has insisted that, despite his penchant for juvenile sexts — “Who takes pictures of his own junk?!” asked a source — he won’t quit Congress. Or he can’t.
There’s another mouth to feed.
“Weiner is unemployable,” said a political veteran who asked not to be named. “He’s been in public service his entire life, from Chuck Schumer’s office to the City Council to Congress. He needs this job to pay the rent.”
Thousands of sex-addict wannabes are watching.
“God help the nurses in Weiner’s rehab facility,” my source cracked. “He hasn’t changed.”
FACE FACTS, PLAX
He did his time. Ex-Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress served 21 months in prison for gun possession after he narrowly missed maiming innocents when his illegal pistol stupidly went off into his thigh inside a crowded Manhattan nightclub. So don’t hold any parades in Plaxico’s honor.
Some will blame laws, the cops or Mayor Bloomberg for cracking down too harshly on the gun menace. But the only one to blame is Plaxico himself.
He could make a difference by campaigning against illegal weapons in schools, clubs, youth groups or parks. But for Plax, his football career comes first.
Bed-Stuy honors a lost ‘jewel
Five years ago, Father’s Day, lovely16-year-old honors student Chanel Petro-Nixon disappeared in daylight near her Bedford-Stuyvesant home. Her body was found nearby four days later stuffed in garbage bags. The murder remains unsolved.
On Saturday, Bed-Stuy will hold an 11 a.m. march at Fulton Street and Marcus Garvey Boulevard to honor the “jewel in our community.” A life taken cruelly. Too soon.
A ‘maid’ to order witness
She won’t be silenced. The Manhattan hotel maid who summoned the courage to accuse high-flying Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sex abuse plans to testify against him at trial, said her lawyer. She won’t be cowed by reports in The Post that DSK’s cronies tried to buy her silence with payments to kin in Africa.
Word of the domestic worker’s defiance came as the ex-International Monetary Fund chief, 62, pleaded not guilty to a raft of charges stemming from his May 14 man-vs.-maid encounter at the posh Sofitel. He claims the lady, who is 32, wanted him.
This drew shouts and jeers from some 200 hotel workers who stood by the courthouse yelling, “Shame on you!” as the accused oaf strutted inside with his big-bucks wife.
In this country, even a powerless immigrant can stand up for her rights, and the rights of all women. Even maids.
Businesses foot the bill ‘
Zoltan Hirsch has no feet. That hasn’t stopped the Brooklyn man from suing a SoHo pedicure salon for failing to provide access to its bipedal services.
Hirsch, 31, rolls New York streets in his wheelchair looking for people to sue. He’s filed some 87 business-crushing federal claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act, targeting everything from a strip club to a Dunkin’ Donuts for making access difficult. For each successful suit, he rakes in some $500, while his Florida lawyer gets up to $15,000 a pop.
Life in a wheelchair is not easy. But if one cynically takes advantage of a law whose intent was to help people who need it, the living gets a lot richer.