Skip to main content

An Arrogant Wiener

What is wrong with Anthony Weiner?


Most of what is wrong about a lot of us!  Especially men!  Or maybe it is just most obvious with men.


The problem is not that Weiner (pronounced like "wiener":  someone from Vienna, as in "Wienerschnitzel") is sexual, or even sexually out of control.  All the evidence is that most people--that's right:  most--are not strictly monogamous, or even faithful to their mates.  More couples than we would like to know about deal with infidelity; often successfully.  


That Weiner only recently married, and that his wife is pregnant with their first child while, at the same time, Weiner was playing sexual games online with several women he had never met, suggests a serious problem with his commitment to his wife.  That is a character issue, and it is not flattering.  It makes one wonder about his fitness to be either a husband or a father.


A lot of people are like that, too.  It might be lamentable, but it is scarcely an astonishment.


Anthony Weiner is a human being.


What is astonishing is Weiner's stupidity and arrogance.  It is the arrogance of power.  It is the arrogance of aristocracy; the arrogance of political power.  And arrogance is always married to stupidity, because arrogance always assumes a lie about one's own superiority.  


We have all seen and heard politicians interrupt people talking to them--lecturing them about interrupting a Senator, or a member of Congress--because of their high position.  "I will speak to you as I please:  you cannot speak like that to me!"  


Arrogance corrupts:  absolute arrogance corrupts absolutely.  Anthony Wiener is arrogant.  And stupid.  


Any sensible person, any ordinary, sensible person, knows that sending pictures of your crotch to people you do not even know, on the internet, is stupid.  to think it won't become public knowledge is stupid, and it is a stupidity resting on arrogance; the belief that you are above ordinary people and rules and ethics.  


The issue is not sexual dalliance.  It is that, but more than that.  It is the assumption that being king, or bishop, being rich or titled or a member of Congress puts you in a special class, beyond the rules of decency and accountability.  


People like Anthony Weiner are arrogant and foolish.  They are Prince Philip in plainclothes.  


It is his judgment that is the issue.  Good judgment is not guaranteed by intelligence. 


Anthony Weiner might or might not stand for what pleases us politically.  He is out of touch with common sense.  He has believed a lie about himself, and he lied about that, too.  


Arrogance does not elevate you.  It humiliates you, because it is self-delusion.  


"I'd rather be. . . ." 
.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...
Post a Comment
Read more