Anthony Weiner Acknowledges New Sexting Scandal
Former Congressman Anthony Weiner, currently running for Mayor of New York City, finds himself in the middle 0f a new sexting scandal that apparently dates to well after his June 2011 departure from Congress:
New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner said again Tuesday that sexual Internet conversations are behind him, after a Web site posted screencaptures of what it claimed were explicit Facebook exchanges between the former congressman and a young woman.
Not everything published Tuesday is accurate, Weiner said in a statement, but some of it is. He and his wife, Huma Abedin, “have worked through these issues” and “are focused on moving forward,” he added.
The conversations, posted on gossip site The Dirty, allegedly took place after Weiner resigned from Congress, some time last year. They were posted under the alias “Carlos Danger.”
“I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have,” Weiner said. “As I have said in the past, these things that I did were wrong and hurtful to my wife and caused us to go through challenges in our marriage that extended past my resignation from Congress. While some things that have been posted today are true and some are not, there is no question that what I did was wrong. This behavior is behind me. I’ve apologized to Huma and am grateful that she has worked through these issues with me and for her forgiveness. I want to again say that I am very sorry to anyone who was on the receiving end of these messages and the disruption that this has caused. As my wife and I have said, we are focused on moving forward.”
The Dirty editor Nik Richie writes that, according to the woman who sent him the messages, the online relationship took place last year and lasted six months. Weiner resigned from Congress over sexual online exchanges in the summer of 2011.
The exchanges in question, which you can find here (Warning that some of the content is NSFW), is not dated but Weiner does not appear to be denying the allegation that they took place within the last year rather than being part of the exchanges that came to light prior to his 2011 resignation. Whether they’ll impact his Mayoral campaign, though, is another question. Despite everything the public already knew about him, Weiner quickly vaulted into the top tier of candidates for the Democratic nomination for Mayor and current polling shows him still remaining there. Whether he will remain there after these new revelations and the inevitable New York tabloid jabs that will come starting tomorrow morning remains to be seen.
“Carlos Danger”? Really? I don’t know if that would make me more or less likely to vote for him, frankly…
How is sexting a scandal?
I mean…if he was like Lary Craig, or Ensign, or Vitter, or others who wanted to limit the freedom of others to do exactly what they themselves were doing…maybe that’s a scandal. But I’m not aware of Weiner trying to limit the ability of others to sext.
@C. Clavin: Actually, I think he could have weathered it if he hadn’t lied / obfuscated. That moved it from a personal to a public matter. Also, once you’ve yelled at the press “there’s nothing there” when there was, the press will never believe you again.
@Doug Mataconis:
Well. The exchanges are not dated because someone chose to remove the timestamps.
Ask yourself this, why would someone do that?
Sex Scandals without sex are boring.
@ Pinky…
So the scandal is that a politician lied?
If Weiner wants to be involved with sex scandals he should at least have the decency of getting some sex from the scandals
@ Andre Kenji…
My guess is that he is…but it’s solo style.
See my
snarkypointed remarks at the Faulkner Estate post.@C. Clavin:
Yes: or rather, that a politician obfuscated. We’re not talking about selecting statistics to make one policy choice sound preferable to another. During the average policy debate, there are dozens of studies floating around, and it’s natural to refer to the ones that persuaded you, the ones that support your position. They may even be more false than “it could be anyone’s penis”. But when a politician obfuscates like Weiner did, the intention is to deceive. A people that elect a man like that have no one but themselves to blame.
*COUGH* Iraq *COUGH*…
I hear that Ryan Braun has endorsed Weiner.
You know what would be awesome? If he sent Weiner pictures to Elliott Spitzer.
Weiner should have seen this coming a mile away.
I mean it’s National Hot Dog Day today…
@legion:
Carlos Dangler is a sure vote getter….
Dear God, what is wrong with him? How does getting caught by the national media sending dick pics to young women over social media not stop you from continuing?!
There’s a lack of shame here.
@C. Clavin: Because he wasn’t sexting with his wife.
If it was his wife, it’d just be personally embarrassing, but since it’s other women and they’re not his wife, it shows a lack of fidelity. That’s something a politician doesn’t want attached to his name since the entire profession is based on making promises, and if you can’t keep a marriage promise, what’s to convince your electorate that you’ll keep promises to them?
@An Interested Party: And that applies to this conversation how?
Sexting is infidelity?
It provides context…it is one thing to be deceptive when that only really hurts a politician’s spouse…it is quite another thing when that deception causes the unnecessary loss of American lives and treasure…
I have a hard time getting worked up over this when you have clowns like Steve King saying that for every Dream-kid valedictorian there are 100 drug smugglers.
Idiots like King in Congress is a scandal.
People like Weiner and Clinton are distractions.
The reason why this isn’t a career-killer is because Weiner is a Democrat. Republicans are supposed to have at least some shred of morality and scruples, so such actions are most often very damaging (Vitter is an aberration, which is why he’s almost always mentioned). No one expects Democrats to have any kind of sense of morality, respect for their marriage and marriage in general, decency, propriety or anything, so when they’re caught being despicable, vile people, folks just shrug and ignore it.
Plus, his wife, Huma Abedin, spent years as Hillary Clinton’s protege. Apparently one thing she learned quite well is how to handle having your husband completely crap all over you in public and keep on smiling.
@Jenos Idanian:
Vitter? Ensign? Gingrich? You are truly pathetic, Jenos.
nyc deserves what they get/vote for. and weiner needs the job, he has no real job skills to support his lifestyle. he’s a great democrat!
@Jenos Idanian: I don’t know, both Spitzer and Weiner resigning their positions due to sex scandals sound like “career-killers” to me (and both are Democrats as I recall). That they’re trying to revive their careers doesn’t mean they will.
Also, legion left out Larry Craig, who took a wide stance in a men’s airport bathroom, but went on to finish his full Senate term without censure, as Weiner was threatened with at one point.
@C. Clavin: If I flirt with another woman in front of my girlfriend, I think she’ll take that as a sign of infidelity. I don’t know, women are crazy.
Sexting is kind of like online flirting.
Mark Sanford anyone?
Anyway, with all the attention Weiner is getting, you’d think he did something truly evil like voting against Obamacare or refusing to expand Medicaid.
@Tillman:
No, it´s not. Flirting or something that is close to flirting can happen in a instinctive manner – sometimes, people are looking at other people just for looking. Sexting, on the other hand, it´s something that requires a minimum of work, and everyone that sends pics of its genitally to strangers know what they are doing.
To me, the point is not about either fidelity nor ethics. The point is that Weiner is not a teenager – he has a public life, he has a career in the public service and he has a family.
@ Tillman….
Agreed. 100%.
But some women are OK with it.
Apparently Weiners wife is.
In any case…in my opinion… it’s a private matter. Voters can decide.
And as I said above…compared to some things…it is simply a distraction.
@Andre Kenji: While you’re right in that it takes a minimum of effort to sext and therefore should offer time for introspection before the dive, I think most people (with constant Internet access) have started regarding online communication as an extension of everyday talking. Sure, some of the rules are different, but the concept is essentially the same.
@An Interested Party:
I’m arguing the opposite. I’m looking at intentions. There was no intent to deceive in the Iraq decision. To make the argument as forcefully as possible, yes, but not to deceive. An error that the intelligence community believes is still an error, but it isn’t a lie. Carefully-worded ambiguous statements like Weiner’s were not lies (for the most part), but were spoken with the intent to deceive.
@An Interested Party: And even with that added context, it doesn’t change the nature of what Weiner did. We could shout “Vitter” and “Clinton” and “the sinking of the Maine” at each othr, but it wouldn’t change the fact that every time you see Mayor Weiner on tv you have no reason to believe that he’s telling the truth.
Will someone tell him that he can use a phone to make phone calls. Penis pictures are just another thing you can do with a phone.
@Mike: Hey, maybe that’s it. He pocket-dials after putting his phone in his speedo.
Sorry boys but this guy is a freakin’ idiot and how can anybody tacitly condone this behavior?
It shows a total lack of judgement, especially after he had to resign from Congress because of this. How can any voter trust this guys judgement and analysis.
I hate wingnuts but as soon as the Lewinski thing hit, I thought that Clinton should have resigned immediately. Gore as incumbent President for 2 years would have cake walked over the moron Bush and saved this country great tribulations.
But its the curse of the baby boomers. No shame. Even when getting caught. Just muddle through like nothing happened. The George Costanza gambit.
Weiner is a sociopath. Must have massive inferiority complex. Flirting with 20 year olds with dick pictures. Are you serious? And the Dems shrug their shoulders because he voted for Obamacare?
What the hell has happend to us?
@the Q:
I’m not defending Weiner, I’m pointing out how insignificant this is compared to actual policy issues. I’m pretty sure this is much less important than refusing to expand Medicaid, and refuse to pretend that this makes him less respectable than all those Republicans who haven’t stopped flat out lying about Obamacare for the last 3 years. That actually matters for an elected official.
@David M: I assumed that your first comment was a parody, which is why I “liked” it. The idea of calling policy disagreements evil amused me. It’s too bad you were serious.
@David M: You’ve been Poed.
@Pinky:
There is no policy disagreement over Obamacare and the Medicaid expansion. The GOP would like people to believe their lies about those issues, but that’s not a policy disagreement.
David M. I see zero conflation of his character flaws and his voting pattern. Its the old “Hitler made the trains run on time” gainsaying.
My God, wingnuts are morons, I get that. But how do Dems look a wingnut in the eye and denouce Gingrich, Larry “wide stance” Craig or that idiot Vitter and then let Weiner get off? (no pun intended.)
I liked Clinton, but any man with a shred of dignity would have resigned. He was getting blowjobs in the Oval Office for chissakes. I don’t care what his views on the minimum wage or gay marriage might be, that behavior is repulsive for any President.
As an old timer, this personal corruption more than anyone else (greed, class inequality etc) is what has really plaqued the US since Reagan made it cool to flaunt wealth and the hiphop culture made making money “anyway possible” the primary social objective.
Weiner is so symptomatic (and his cloying wife) of everything wrong with modern society. Enough.
@C. Clavin: weiners wife is stuck with his dumbness for a while. she’s hoping ny’ers are dumb enough to elect him so he can make some money. he has nothing else to fall back on and she has his kid. child support on no income is not a good thing for her.