Doesn't Seem Housebroken

I suppose that's a bit of a crude way to describe my general impression of former US Rep. Anthony Weiner's recent admissions, but I think it's safe to say, there could definitely be cruder ways to put it. As of his resignation from the House two years ago, I was pretty well done with interest in his political career, and haven't put a lot of stock in his "comeback" to run for mayor of NYC. In the first place, his original problem struck me as being a kind of gross immaturity, and if he hadn't already gotten an idea of the loaded game he was playing with his public image the first time around, well, two years isn't a lot of time for growing up and figuring out What Not to Do.  It looks like a bad case of what we'd call "boundary issues"-and learning where the acceptable boundaries are and how to respect them is best learned as a pup.

But also, with the recent revelations of alter ego "Carlos Danger", I think I'm getting the picture (just as an educated guess) that skirting the boundaries and testing reactions is a part of the thrill of the kind of transgressive play that Weiner likes. To use the "housebroken" analogy--you can't really scold someone for making a mess of things if they thrive on the scolding, or you'll just see more messes.

Now, that doesn't mean he can't be a brilliant guy or a good politician in other ways, and if he had a cause that wasn't ultimately self-serving, and wanted to throw himself into it, I'd be like--"Go! Do that thing!" But running for an office like mayor of New York and having one of these "wife awkwardly supportive at his side" press dealios as he weathers yet another self-set sex-themed media time-bomb? No, I think he's burning up the oxygen in the race and needs to take his going-up-in-flames-ass outside, now.

Does that sound prudish of me? Well, I think the problem is, he hasn't been respectful of some of the women he's been all up in the sextmoshine with before, and all speculation about how his wife feels about this aside, she is a professional politico too, and this isn't really a big help for her, either.  It isn't just a thing he does without consequences and respecting other people's consent. I could care less what he was into--if he could balance it with his public life intelligently. That sure isn't what it looks like. And it hurts his political allies.

He should probably get out of the race, is all. Maybe he can throw his support to someone else, be a  consigliere to a candidate he believes in, but just...not ...be the candidate himself. Nothing personal.

(Everything personal.)