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| Anthony Weiner: America can tolerate a lot, but apparently not a 'wanker mayor' | Anthony Weiner: America can tolerate a lot, but apparently not a 'wanker mayor' |
| (about 2 months later) | |
| A great number of the New Yorkers who will or will not vote for Anthony Weiner, and, as well, many of the journalists and politicians so nonplused by his behavior, are online porn consumers, too. This has always been true about public and private morality. What you yourself do in private, you can, nevertheless, happily condemn a public figure for doing. It's a cover, collective disapproval. It's standard hypocrisy. | A great number of the New Yorkers who will or will not vote for Anthony Weiner, and, as well, many of the journalists and politicians so nonplused by his behavior, are online porn consumers, too. This has always been true about public and private morality. What you yourself do in private, you can, nevertheless, happily condemn a public figure for doing. It's a cover, collective disapproval. It's standard hypocrisy. |
| All the more now. The internet, that revolution in auto eroticism, is built on mass prurience. Every modern person has a porn fascination if not compulsion. You'd have to have no curiosity to be otherwise. That's part of the reaction here: there but for the grace of God go I. We're projecting our own shame on Weiner. | All the more now. The internet, that revolution in auto eroticism, is built on mass prurience. Every modern person has a porn fascination if not compulsion. You'd have to have no curiosity to be otherwise. That's part of the reaction here: there but for the grace of God go I. We're projecting our own shame on Weiner. |
| Voters were apparently quite willing to forget about Weiner's first round of digital excitement; the issue returns because we are freshly mortified, forced from agreeable denial. | Voters were apparently quite willing to forget about Weiner's first round of digital excitement; the issue returns because we are freshly mortified, forced from agreeable denial. |
| Then there's the pundit's version: it's not what he did, but that he lied to the voters about doing it. It's not the deed, it's the cover-up. And yet, of course he lied! There wasn't really an option. What could he stay? "I can't stop. It's what gets me off. It's what gets me up in the morning." Like most people with a porn habit, he's leading something of a double life. He's in the closet. | Then there's the pundit's version: it's not what he did, but that he lied to the voters about doing it. It's not the deed, it's the cover-up. And yet, of course he lied! There wasn't really an option. What could he stay? "I can't stop. It's what gets me off. It's what gets me up in the morning." Like most people with a porn habit, he's leading something of a double life. He's in the closet. |
| The issue ought to be more precisely framed, not as about ickyness or dishonesty, but, rather about what, on the slippery slope of sexuality, constitutes a transgression nowadays. And about the level of transgression we are willing to tolerate in our elected officials (after all, the governor of New York lives with a woman not his wife, something that would have been political anathema not too long ago). That'd be an arresting debate. | The issue ought to be more precisely framed, not as about ickyness or dishonesty, but, rather about what, on the slippery slope of sexuality, constitutes a transgression nowadays. And about the level of transgression we are willing to tolerate in our elected officials (after all, the governor of New York lives with a woman not his wife, something that would have been political anathema not too long ago). That'd be an arresting debate. |
| Weiner's transgression is obviously a most curious kind in that there was no physical contact. In effect, he had sexual fantasies and masturbated, like, presumably, most of his colleagues. Inconveniently, he left a record of those fantasies. And, alas, everybody is a cheese ball in their sexual fantasies. (Weiner might seem less ignominious if he'd had a real affair.) | Weiner's transgression is obviously a most curious kind in that there was no physical contact. In effect, he had sexual fantasies and masturbated, like, presumably, most of his colleagues. Inconveniently, he left a record of those fantasies. And, alas, everybody is a cheese ball in their sexual fantasies. (Weiner might seem less ignominious if he'd had a real affair.) |
| The minor dispute over Weiner's refusal to characterize his behavior as an addiction, which actually might have played better in this context than free will, perhaps comes down to the nature of masturbation: is it a compulsion or a normal reflex (whether aided by porn or virtual surrogates)? Anyway, it's a hard public discussion. Obviously, you look differently at someone who's been caught wanking. | The minor dispute over Weiner's refusal to characterize his behavior as an addiction, which actually might have played better in this context than free will, perhaps comes down to the nature of masturbation: is it a compulsion or a normal reflex (whether aided by porn or virtual surrogates)? Anyway, it's a hard public discussion. Obviously, you look differently at someone who's been caught wanking. |
| Losers do it. Well, everybody does it. But you're not a loser until people know you do it. So now it's a character issue. | Losers do it. Well, everybody does it. But you're not a loser until people know you do it. So now it's a character issue. |
| But what if we weren't talking about Anthony Weiner, not naturally loveable in any circumstance. What if we were talking about a great leader who might save us from economic ruin, or ennoble the human cause? What if Nelson Mandela were caught wanking? Is it different when you do it in a chat room, or with an anonymous social media fantasy partner (the complication is that anonymous people, like Weiner's self-dramatizing Facebook surrogate, might have aspirations beyond anonymity)? Is that more of a Pee Wee Herman type situation? Does the entire nature of masturbation change if it is no longer secret? | But what if we weren't talking about Anthony Weiner, not naturally loveable in any circumstance. What if we were talking about a great leader who might save us from economic ruin, or ennoble the human cause? What if Nelson Mandela were caught wanking? Is it different when you do it in a chat room, or with an anonymous social media fantasy partner (the complication is that anonymous people, like Weiner's self-dramatizing Facebook surrogate, might have aspirations beyond anonymity)? Is that more of a Pee Wee Herman type situation? Does the entire nature of masturbation change if it is no longer secret? |
| Okay, nobody really wants to look under these rocks. That's one aspect of why so many people seemed willing to have let sleeping dogs lie and lifted Weiner in the polls. Until he did it again. | Okay, nobody really wants to look under these rocks. That's one aspect of why so many people seemed willing to have let sleeping dogs lie and lifted Weiner in the polls. Until he did it again. |
| Up to the same old tricks. He didn't stop. He likes doing it! He's spitting in the public eye. He's a risk taker. He has reckless impulses. It's his judgment. It's his ego. Powerful men, even when they are doing something that poor bastards do too, are over the top. He's a narcissist. | Up to the same old tricks. He didn't stop. He likes doing it! He's spitting in the public eye. He's a risk taker. He has reckless impulses. It's his judgment. It's his ego. Powerful men, even when they are doing something that poor bastards do too, are over the top. He's a narcissist. |
| New York Magazine's Jennifer Senior last week diagnosed Weiner's narcissism on the basis of a) him being a politician and b) being a politician who is not ashamed enough of his embarrassment to stop being a politician. | New York Magazine's Jennifer Senior last week diagnosed Weiner's narcissism on the basis of a) him being a politician and b) being a politician who is not ashamed enough of his embarrassment to stop being a politician. |
| "It seems pretty clear," said New York, "that the same traits that drove Anthony Weiner back into politics prematurely are exactly what made him promiscuous with young women online: He's short on impulse control and long on self-regard". | "It seems pretty clear," said New York, "that the same traits that drove Anthony Weiner back into politics prematurely are exactly what made him promiscuous with young women online: He's short on impulse control and long on self-regard". |
| Does it? Or might not he be retreating to the hoi polloi of the internet to escape his ambition? Or both. He's ambitious and cocksure (no pun, really), and yet desperate for some private (okay, erotic) respite, too. Politicians along with actors obviously have a preternatural need for attention, but, at the same time, they lead a public life of the greatest insincerity that is insupportable. You can't perform 100% of the time. Or you had better not. | Does it? Or might not he be retreating to the hoi polloi of the internet to escape his ambition? Or both. He's ambitious and cocksure (no pun, really), and yet desperate for some private (okay, erotic) respite, too. Politicians along with actors obviously have a preternatural need for attention, but, at the same time, they lead a public life of the greatest insincerity that is insupportable. You can't perform 100% of the time. Or you had better not. |
| Curiously, we seem to have accepted that actors can do whatever gets them off – their private lives are their own, or at least not a social sin, or at least they don't lose their jobs – where once we did not, where once deviations from the straight and narrow ruined careers. | Curiously, we seem to have accepted that actors can do whatever gets them off – their private lives are their own, or at least not a social sin, or at least they don't lose their jobs – where once we did not, where once deviations from the straight and narrow ruined careers. |
| Now we take the private lives of politicians as personally as we used to take the virtue of actors. (When actors had it toughest, say around the era of the Kennedy presidency, politicians could get away with anything.) There is another more modern element too, the widening gulf in politics between men and women. This is not just between conservative men and more liberal women, but, on some level, a more general gender divide and resentment. | Now we take the private lives of politicians as personally as we used to take the virtue of actors. (When actors had it toughest, say around the era of the Kennedy presidency, politicians could get away with anything.) There is another more modern element too, the widening gulf in politics between men and women. This is not just between conservative men and more liberal women, but, on some level, a more general gender divide and resentment. |
| Many women profess that they are less appalled by what Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer did than by what they did to their wives, forcing them to become bit players in the farce of male heterosexuality. (Although, there is a further analysis that finds that the public ultimately forgives the husbands but continues to think less of the wives.) | Many women profess that they are less appalled by what Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer did than by what they did to their wives, forcing them to become bit players in the farce of male heterosexuality. (Although, there is a further analysis that finds that the public ultimately forgives the husbands but continues to think less of the wives.) |
| Anyway, wanking. It is among the long list of last taboos. We may scale the hurdle of electing a lesbian mayor, but the wanker hurdle seems still too high. | Anyway, wanking. It is among the long list of last taboos. We may scale the hurdle of electing a lesbian mayor, but the wanker hurdle seems still too high. |
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