July 31, 2013--The Weiners and the Clintons
In her Sunday New York Times column, Maureen Dowd was half right--Anthony Weiner is a "punk"; and she was also right to say that the Clintons want him out of the way since there is a connection between Weiner and them that is reminding voters about Bill's hanky-panky from 1995-97 with Monica Lewinski.
But she goes way too far when making an invidious comparison between Weiner's and Clinton's transgressions.
Somehow, Dowd feels that since Weiner is essentially a nobody (while in Congress for 12 years he managed to get just one piece of insignificant legislation passed) and Bill, to quote one of her sources, was and is "the greatest political and policy mind of a generation"; and thus what they did in private (and then was exposed publicly), to Dowd should be judged differently. "Bill," she writes, "was a roguish genus and Weiner's a creepy loser," and for these reasons we should not hold them to the same standard.
This is as if Dowd is saying that ubermensch Bill Clinton should be allowed to live and thrive in a Nietzschean world beyond good and evil, while Weiner should be required to crawl back into his hole and see if he can find a job selling life insurance.
But before we accept this analysis, let's take a moment to see what the two bad boys were up to--
On the Internet Wiener send out some creepy pictures of his appropriately-described "junk" and drew a few unsuspecting women into sex talk; whereas Bill Clinton, President William Jefferson Clinton got a 22 year-old intern to give him frequent BJs in the Oval Office and then lied about it to his family, the American public, and under oath to federal prosecutors.
There's not much equivalency there--Weiner by comparison is a small-time perv--and thus it is no wonder that the Clintons want Weiner to simply disappear and his wife, Huma Abedin, Hillary's former devoted assistant and body person, to dump Anthony so they can return to enhancing their brand and Hillary can focus on making millions while getting ready to run for president without everyone thinking about Bill and Monica and why the "feminist" Hillary stood by her man.
But she goes way too far when making an invidious comparison between Weiner's and Clinton's transgressions.
Somehow, Dowd feels that since Weiner is essentially a nobody (while in Congress for 12 years he managed to get just one piece of insignificant legislation passed) and Bill, to quote one of her sources, was and is "the greatest political and policy mind of a generation"; and thus what they did in private (and then was exposed publicly), to Dowd should be judged differently. "Bill," she writes, "was a roguish genus and Weiner's a creepy loser," and for these reasons we should not hold them to the same standard.
This is as if Dowd is saying that ubermensch Bill Clinton should be allowed to live and thrive in a Nietzschean world beyond good and evil, while Weiner should be required to crawl back into his hole and see if he can find a job selling life insurance.
But before we accept this analysis, let's take a moment to see what the two bad boys were up to--
On the Internet Wiener send out some creepy pictures of his appropriately-described "junk" and drew a few unsuspecting women into sex talk; whereas Bill Clinton, President William Jefferson Clinton got a 22 year-old intern to give him frequent BJs in the Oval Office and then lied about it to his family, the American public, and under oath to federal prosecutors.
There's not much equivalency there--Weiner by comparison is a small-time perv--and thus it is no wonder that the Clintons want Weiner to simply disappear and his wife, Huma Abedin, Hillary's former devoted assistant and body person, to dump Anthony so they can return to enhancing their brand and Hillary can focus on making millions while getting ready to run for president without everyone thinking about Bill and Monica and why the "feminist" Hillary stood by her man.
Labels: Anthony Weiner, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, Maureen Dowd, Monica Lewinski
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:09 AM
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