Jess , I have to say I disagree. The fact that Congressman Weiner’s wife is pregant doesn’t change how I perceive his actions. The moral side of X-rated tweets to persons who are not your spouse is debatable. Weiner’s stupidity in disregarding the obvious consequences of his inevitable outing is why he should resign.
Congressman Weiner’s actual peccadillo is a teeny, tiny drop in an enormous history of political sexual escapades. What makes it worthy of more censure is that he must have known this kind of thing put his entire career at risk. As I said yesterday in the comments to my last post on Weiner , if you had been forced to resign last week for posting pictures of your boobs to Craigslist, I’d be able to extrapolate from that that this week, it would be a career-ending move for me to tweet my twat. If Congressman Weiner isn’t bright enough to have figured that out, he shouldn’t be in Congress. And if he did know it but chose to disregard it in favor of whatever moment’s pleasure he got from sending his missives out into the world, then he’s made it very clear what his priority is, and it isn’t his congressional role. The past scandal that this is most related to isn’t Edwards, Ensign, Lee, or Schwarzenegger.* It’s Eliot Spitzer, who used prostitutes even while prosecuting others for doing the same. Paying for sex is a proclivity others have proved you can overcome. That blind or blatant duplicity was impossible to live down.
The issue isn’t Weiner’s betrayal of his wife, pregnant or not. It’s his betrayal, whether through stupidity or hubris, of his position and his institution that matters.
*Correction: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s surname was originally misspelled.
