Opinion

Anthony’s ‘Honor’

It may seem physically impossible, but it looks like we’re going to be seeing a lot more of Anthony Weiner.

The former member (of Congress) popped up at 15 percent in a mayoral-race poll, though the Marist survey failed to disclose just how many Post headline-writers its sample included.

Or reporters, for that matter: After all, the toughest part of their job is exposing a politician, and Weiner’s already done that for us.

In this race, the hard part will be getting Weiner to talk about what’s he’s famous for. “I am not going to get into the details of every bit of it,” he told NY1’s Errol Louis this week; “I’ll let other people do it.”

He’s not dodging, mind you — it’s about respect, he claimed — “out of respect for the idea that I’ve laid it all out for [his wife] and out of some respect for the privacy of the people who were at the other end of these correspondences, who had their lives turned upside down.”

Right, because otherwise Weiner would be happy to spend the campaign talking about his habit of Tweeting photos of his member to young women, and about his weeks of lying about it after he got caught. C’mon, what guy doesn’t love to talk about his genitals?

So it’s not that Tony doesn’t want to talk about the compulsive behavior that exposed him as a self-indulgent liar. It’s his sense of honor to his victims.

Or, just maybe, he’s still lying his undies off.

Consider his reasons for thrusting himself into the race.

First, there’s that $1.5 million in hard-earned cash that goes away unless he runs for citywide office this year.

Except it was hard-earned by the
taxpayers, not Anthony: He’s legally entitled to it only because the City Council voted in a system of welfare for politicians. And an honorable man might say he got it under false pretenses — by claiming to be a different kind of person than his perverted Tweets showed him to truly be.

Indeed, those funds were awarded to match (at a ratio of six to one) actual donations from the people of New York. After his spectacular disgrace, wouldn’t an honorable man at least have offered to return it to anyone who wanted his money back, even if it left him entitled to less “free” cash?

But, hey, that $1.5 million would let Weiner hire a lot of staff to stroke his ego, and buy a lot of ads to pump up his now-flaccid image. Little surprise that it’s tough for Anthony to let it go.

Plus, he must figure he’d quickly rise above the existing field of candidates. The only one who can even think of rivaling Weiner’s Twitter exposure is Bill de Blasio — and that’s only because of his habit of hiring staffers who can’t resist racist and anti-Semitic hate-Tweets.

And, in the end, Weiner probably doesn’t have many choices if he wants to start supporting his family: Nobody in the private sector is going to hire a guy who’s shown himself capable of such idiocy.

On the other hand, if he does give up on elective office, there are plenty of other public-sector opportunities in this town, including ones where out-of-control Tweeting is apparently a job skill.

Try the FDNY, Anthony.