Are this journalist and I surrounded by the same Americans?
The public outrage has stemmed in my opinion not from Weiner’s tweets, but his deception. Rep. Weiner lied to reporters, instructed others to lie and went so far as to invent a completely fallacious story that his Blackberry and Twitter account were hacked.
Seriously? This whole brouhaha came about just because Weiner lied about who sent his tweets? That’s truly an egregious lie. In a country that is passionately dedicated to hold its politicians to a high standard of truthfulness, it is no doubt that Weiner has been punished. Look what we did to the guy who told us that whopper about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was the same guy, if you remember, who said,
By far the vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum.
And his campaign promised that,
Governor Bush’s income tax cuts will benefit all Americans, but they are especially focused on low and moderate income families.
When it turned out that, in reality, the top 20% of earners received 69% of Bush’s tax cuts, we surely held him accountable for lying about something this important.
For those with a short-term memory loss of Orwellian nature, I want to offer a little reminder of how the entire presidential campaign of 2004was conducted by the progressives under the slogan “Bush Lied!” Remember the bumper stickers, the articles, the websites? If you do, then you’ve got to remember that the voters did not care. In 2000, it was very difficult for Bush to hustle up a win. In 2004 – after the lies – he won fair and square.
So one politician lies and says,
We found the weapons of mass destruction.
And another politician lies about sending naked pictures of himself. The latter is forced to resign, while the former is elected to a second term as president. And there are still people who think that it’s the deception that the voters care about? For the information about what really bugs the voters, please see my preceding post.
P.S. For those who want to start the debate along the lines of “Bush didn’t lie, he was just misinformed”, this argument is as convincing as the argument that Weiner had no idea how Twitter worked, so technically he didn’t lie. Before such arguments are made on my blog, familiarize yourselves with the issue. For example, here and here.
Clarissa's Blog 
The ridiculousness of the whole situation was summed up to me this morning: even Clinton didn’t resign, and he did worse things. Of course, Clinton had a lot more influence and charisma, but why make a big deal about this when the president–who is supposedly held to even higher standards–did something much worse, but similar, and got away with it?
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That’s a good question, actually. I might be mistaken here but I have a feeling that this is due to a much more painful economic situation we are experiencing right now. People are angry about the unemployment, the austerity, but have no idea how to express it in any other way.
If there are any other theories, I’d like to hear them.
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I know — this is completely idiotic. But Americans are such suckers for sex scandals.
I remember the Clinton scandal — the blowjob-blue dress extravaganza. I was thinking, who the f*ck cares? But I know at least one of my reasonable, progressive friends was so outraged that “he lied!” and by extension all Democrats lie and went on to vote for Bush the next time around. I could not believe it.
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This is especially strange, since where I grew up, it was understood that a gentleman always lies about sex to protect a lady’s reputation. I was under the impression that this was the ethic all over the south, not just in Appalachia. It is immediately what came to mind when Clinton was accused of lying. Of course, I myself never had to put this ethic into practice as a teenager, being one of the sexually deprived.
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Clinton actually did far worse than Weiner and then commited perjury over it, but stayed in office. This is very puzzling to me. My take is that a more powerful, well-connected politician can get away with this stuff but a weaker one can’t.
I just discovered your blog via College MIsery, by the way, and I love it!
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Welcome to the blog, Tom!
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Isn’t there a bit of a slippery slope here? President Clinton did bad things and got away with them, for a long time. Others have as well. Does that mean this should continue forever?
Mr. Weiner, like President Clinton, stepped over the line in many ways transcending his sexual conduct by telling lies and blaming others. Then, when members of his own party became concerned about the impact, they encouraged Mr. Weiner to go away and he did, in relatively short order.
For purely partisan (Republican) reasons, I would have preferred that Mr. Weiner stick around for more weiner roasts. However and aside from that, it is no better or worse when Republicans or Democrats do it and members of both parties have. I am pleased that some faint notion may be emerging that politicians — of all parties — are no less subject to the consequences of their actions than others and perhaps that they should be so to a greater extent than others. They seek our trust and convince those who elect them that they will honor it. If they don’t, perhaps they no longer deserve the trust they sought and received.
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If people had some basic decency and avoided asking questions about the sex lives of others, then those others wouldn’t have to lie in response. The sad thing is that the general public is more interested in these meaningless sexual details than in things that actually matter to the lives of voters.
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Exactly! This actually extends to endless debates on social issues such as gay rights, abortion, religion in schools… All these topics are an awesome smoke screen, they get people’s emotions running high, so people forget about the things they should actually be looking at when voting for politicians — how there are no jobs, how funding is being cut for social entitlements, how there is no healthcare, how cut breaks for the rich are never ending yet the middle class is getting shafted yet again…
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Unfortunately, it looks like the absolute majority of people are more than ready to sacrifice their own economic interests for the dubious privilege of controlling whether complete strangers get married or abort. I, for one, will never be able to understand this.
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Ensign, Gingrich, VITTER — now there’s a freak, my US senator. “Family values” guy and all, as far as everyone but himself is concerned. Lies by politicians, some of Weiner’s more important ones have been chronicled by Juan Cole – http://www.juancole.com/2011/06/top-things-anthony-weiner-has-said-that-are-worse-than-sexting.html
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