Weiner Roasted

If you can forgive us for obvious puns about a congressman's demise, you can probably forgive Anthony Weiner.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, the Democrat congressman with more one-liners than sense, has admitted to sending intimate photos of himself to a slew of women who are not his wife, but he won't resign his position. As “the first national politician since Bill Clinton whose penis dimensions are a matter of public record,” Weiner's become an overnight embarrassment for his party, writes Slate's David Weigel. But Weiner's biggest problem isn't his online impropriety; it's that “he spent 10 days lying” about the photos. “The picture of Weiner that emerged this week was of a publicity hound who was more concerned with celebrity and status than with actual sex,” says Weigel, one that even someone as verbally gifted as Weiner won't recover from any time soon.

Ross Douthat of The New York Times is a little more forgiving of Weiner, but chastizes him for not having the, erm, gumption to resign. “A confession is just words, so much sound and fury, without an act of contrition,” writes Douthat, “and the act of contrition appropriate to Weiner’s offences is the resignation of his office.” A Democratic ethics investigation of Weiner's misbehaviour might yet lead to just that, but by holding on to his job, Douthat says Weiner hasn't earned a second chance. “When there are real consequences for a shameful act, there can be a second chance – but the whole idea of a second chance implies that you’ve given up your first one.”

Taking a step back from the American mindset over the sexless sex scandal, the National Post's Araminta Wordsworth defends Weiner for having only committed the crime of “stupidity – and one suspects he’s not the only politician to be guilty of such.” Recalling Pierre Trudeau's oft-used saying that the state has no place in the nation's bedrooms, Wordsworth figures the matter should be between Weiner, his wife, and however many 20-somethings he sexted. “Nobody appears to have been harmed, and the exchanges were certainly no worse than the sweet nothings cooed by Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles in their pre-marriage days.” Compared to, say, the alleged sex assault of a chambermaid or the reported use of campaign funds to conceal an affair and a love child, Weiner's dalliances are pretty small fry – but none of those had a name so perfect for lazy headline writers.