November 1, 2016--Ode to J. Edgar

With the current flap about FBI director James Comey making an even bigger mess of the already-messiest presidential election in history, reading recently about the reign of J. Edgar Hoover, during this politically perverse year I've been asking where is J. Edgar when we need him?

Hoover was all the terrible things you know about him and then some. And I'm not talking about his penchant for black sheath dresses and extra-high heels. By today's standards that makes him more interesting and even amusing.

What I am missing in Hoover is his ability to get things done and to keep certain kinds of high-level matters where they belong--under control and out of the public eye.

For example, he had the goods on John F. Kennedy both before and after he assumed the presidency. He told brother Bobby, who was JFK's Attorney General, that he, Hoover, would keep the lid on Kennedy's womanizing (now there's a word for you), philandering that makes Bill Clinton seem celibate, as long as Kennedy let him remain FBI director and cooled his fooling around with Mafia mistresses. In other words, Hoover was devoted to his own prerogatives and to keeping things running on a version of even keel.

Comey, in contrast, whatever the email denouement, is nothing if not totally disruptive.

When in July he issued his report on the first swatch of Hillary emails, finding that she had been "extremely careless" but not indictable, Democrats raced to praise him while Republicans saw a pro-Hillary conspiracy involving Comey, attorney general Roberta Lynch, and Bill Clinton who, now famously, had a tarmac tete-a-tete with Lynch during which he allegedly promised her that she could continue as AG after Hillary is elected if she squelched the FBI probe.

And now, when on Friday Comey sent his incoherent letter to the congressional committee investigating Clinton's emails, just 10 days before Election Day, Democrats are excoriating him (Harry Reid says he may have committed a crime) for supposedly sandbagging Hillary.

And though Comey is a registered Republican and was an appointee of George W. Bush's, the same Republicans (i.e. Donald Trump) who lambasted him for his initial findings, this time around are praising him for going rogue with the now renewed investigation.

About this resumed scrutiny, here is one paranoid scenario about what is unfolding.

(Note--during this literally psychotic election season nothing one might imagine happening is paranoid since the craziest behaviors have become the norm--at least once of day in Trump's case.)

Though he is a Republican, Comey is of the old school of Republicans--a rare moderate--and thus he despises Donald Trump and wants to see him soundly defeated.

So he issues this seemingly inappropriate letter even before anyone in his office has looked at any of the emails recently found on Anthony Weiner's laptop (talk about psychotic) and then, after being massacred in the mainstream media, appears to backpedal, saying that FBI agents will fast track an analysis of these emails and report to the public perhaps even before Election Day if there are (or aren't) any emails that haven't been seen before that might convince him that Clinton is indictable.

The fact that nothing remotely like this has ever happened in all of American history aside, we are where are and, for sanity's sake, here's what might really be going on--

• Agents using metadata search methods will quickly review the Weiner emails and Comey will report by the end of this week, three days before the election, that there is nothing new and Hillary is finally and fully in the clear.
• The voting public goes crazy. 
• The Trump people cry foul and claim this shows once again that the election is rigged.
• The Hillary people are ecstatic and rush to the polls in record numbers.
• She wins in both a popular vote and Electoral vote landslide--52-45% in the vote count and 450-90 in Electoral votes.
• Comey sees the results he wants and goes down as a footnote to history.
• Two years from now, when his FBI job ends, Comey secures a $5.0 million advance to write his memoirs. He makes the rounds of all the talkshows. This is the last time he is ever heard from.
• Hillary doesn't take Huma Abedin with her to the White House. She hires a replacement "body woman." So Huma, after finally dumping Weiner, joins CNN as a political commentator. On the side, she resumes her no-show job at the Clinton Foundation.
• Anthony Weiner is convicted of sexting a minor and gets 3-5 in the slammer.
• And, yes, the Trump disaffiliates do not march on Washington with pitchforks and torches. They retreat to their finished basements more devoted than ever to six-packs of Bud.

August 12, 2013--New York, New York

The line from the song New York, New York, "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere," has never been more untrue.

Just take a look who's running for mayor and, even better, for comptroller.

In a city that unashamedly calls itself America's foremost city, the self-proclaimed most important metropolis in the world, where most of the nation's major financial institutions are headquartered, where there is to be found the Great White Way--Broadway--where the advertising and communications industries are centered, where penthouse apartments can go for upwards of $100 million, there are more mediocre candidates running for citywide office than in Detroit.

The leading candidate for mayor, Christine Quinn, speaker of the rubber-stamp City Council, is a go-along-get-along politician who is better known for her out-of-control temper than for her record of public accomplishment. If elected she would be the first woman to hold the job and the first who is openly gay.

Then there is former comptroller, William Thompson, the Harold Stassen of New York who emerges to run for mayor every four years. His best credential--president of the Board of Education that oversees the more than 1,000 public schools in the city. His only problem--test scores and high school graduation rates plummeted while he was in office. His boldest idea is to hire 2,000 more police. Good luck with that in an era of cutbacks and layoffs.

Also in the race is the current comptroller, John Liu. He is best know for being Asian and under investigation by the FBI since it is hard to know exactly the source of most of his campaign funds much less discover how they were spent. It is suspected that somehow much of that money found its way more to the comptroller and his cronies than to his campaign. If elected, he would "fight" to increase the minimum wage in the city to $11.50 and hour. About the price of a hamburger with fries at the typical New York luncheonette.

Lurking in second place in the polls is Anthony Weiner, internationally famous for his Internetting but not for much of anything else. His boldest idea is to institute a single-payer health care system for the city. As they say in my old Brooklyn neighborhood, "Fat chance." The very idea that this creep could become mayor is unfathomable to old-line New Yorkers. But then again there he is, perhaps the favorite of the Jewish and African-American communities, both of which believe deeply in redemption, and thus he is potentially electable.

This is the city of larger-than-life mayors such as Peter Stuyvesant, John Lindsay, Robert Wagner, Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani, and currently mega-billionare Michael Bloomberg, not pip-squeaks such as Sal Albanese or Erick Salgado, other no-name candidates who would be more appropriate mayors for, say, Jersey City.

The good news--it is rumored that lurking in the wings, considering running, is Kelsey Grammar of Cheers fame. I'll drink to that.

Now let's get to the really good stuff--the race for comptroller. There are two candidates to whom I wish to draw attention--

First, former New York attorney general and governor, Eliot Spitzer. Yes that Eliot Spitzer, forever to be known as "Client 9." Also incredibly in the race is Kristin Davis, a former madam whose foremost credential is her claim to have supplied prostitutes to Mr. Spitzer. He denies that but nonetheless, they are locking horns as two of the best known candidates for city comptroller. And "best-know" counts for much when it comes to elections among mediocraties and reprobates.

In the middle of this hotly contested race, Davis last week was arrested for illegally buying and selling hundreds of drugs containing controlled substances. It is not disputed that Ms. Davis sent the following text message to her dealer--

"I got you 30 Xanax. If u run low let me kno!! Ur the best! . . ."

Spitzer is likely to win but wouldn't it be more fun if Kristin did.

And New York, in addition to being known as the Big Apple and the City that Never Sleeps, has also been known as Fun City.

She the best.

August 1, 2013--Oscar Weiner?

Now they're trying to figure out why he did it. Anthony Weiner.

He had the world in his hands. Sorry, let me put that another way--he was a prominent member (sorry again) of Congress, on TV all the time since he was such a provocative and quotable guest, he weaseled his way into the extended Clinton family by marrying Hillary's number-one assistant and surrogate daughter, Huma Abadin, and he even had a decent change to be elected mayor of New York City. The field of 12 candidates was and is so weak that even someone like Anthony Weiner, in spite of his confessed proclivities, stood out. Again, let me rephrase that--he looked good by comparison.

So, what's the story with him?

Now, after Weiner was forced to acknowledge he was not cured of his propensity to talk dirty on the Internet, the New York Times, in an effort not to let go of such a titillating story, assembled a few therapists and asked them to speculate about why Anthony Weiner can't seem to stop.

Some said he can't stop being bad because he may have a neurological problem. It's either hard-wired in his DNA or he has some sort of abnormality in his brain.

But, most psychologists and experts on sexual behavior offered more interesting possibilities--

Maybe there's trouble in his marriage. He's not getting enough of whatever it is he needs at home. Poor Huma. It's always the wife's fault. She not only has been accused by Michele Bachmann and everyone on Fox News that she and her family are members of the Muslim Brotherhood, now it's her fault that hubby can't stop sending around raunchy pictures of himself (actually, only certain parts of himself) because she can't satisfy him.

Other shrinks suggest he may have feelings of inadequacy about his masculinity (hello) that can only be assuaged by women he has never met. Or maybe he is insecure about his body image and so he sends around beefy images of himself to see if anyone on the Internet finds him attractive. So far, it appears, that none have.

Cornell's Dr. Richard Friedman says, "There's a type of narcissism that's based on self-esteem problems, in which the person then defensively covers up by saying, 'Aren't I wonderful? Look at my beautiful organ [not the musical kind]. Isn't it beautiful?"

I say, "Ugh."

Dr. Friedman adds, "It's as if you were being exposed [his word, not mine] to the mental processes of a 9-year-old boy."

Maybe he's a sex addict, some speculate, even though there is no agreement in the field of sexuality that there is such a syndrome. Dr. Scott Haltzman, a psychiatrist and author of books on infidelity claims that behavior such as Weiner's, even in the face of public humiliation, is a "hallmark of addiction."

And it is not helpful to think that these problems derive from being famous. Dr. Carol Bernstein says that, "Very talented people have the same potential issues for self-destructive behavior that everybody does."

Though being well-know may have some advantages: the fact that his problems--whatever their cause--are so publicly known could actually help him to recover. There is evidence that getting caught being naughty and then universally scorned is powerful motivation to seek treatment.

With all due respect to the sexuality experts and psychiatrists, I have a simple explanation for Weiner's behavior--he's just a jerk.

Two more things--

Can't the New York Times find some experts on this tender subject who aren't Jewish?

And, related, as Anthony Weiner thinks about next steps in his life--since becoming NYC's mayor is no longer an option--shouldn't he have his nose fixed and also do something about that name?

Maybe Oscar Meyer?

Still too Jewish.

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.