While watching the now infamous Rep. Anthony Weiner Sexting Confession, I heard a very brave reporter ask if Mr. Weiner felt that the Democratic leadership was being hypocritical since he was not resigning when, just five years ago, they called for former Rep. Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, to resign when he was caught sending lewd texts. He replied something along the lines of not wanting to speak about other people’s situations. Good for him. He’s obviously not willing to throw Mr. Foley under a bus, but the reporter’s question does merit some retrospective.
Mark Foley was caught sending lewd internet messages to a 16 year old former male page. The then House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi demanded an investigation into his actions. The House however voted unanimously to send the matter to the Ethics Committee. The result was Foley resigned when it became known that a message that Foley initially said described as an innocent message to see how the young man was doing after Katrina hit his hometown area was found out to be rife with sexually explicit descriptions of actions and male body parts. Thus, his lie exposed, he resigned and faded into the annals of bad decisions. Let’s call him the “apple” in this discussion.
Link it if you will:
Here comes the “orange”.
Fast forward until yesterday: Rep. Wiener made his humble and ostensibly sincere apology to the media, his family, and his constituency by admitting that a message intended for a Seattle woman was posted on Twitter by mistake. His initial reaction was his system was hacked and nasty rotten no-good people were trying to ruin his reputation. What I’m sure was curious to most, particularly sharp eared and eyed reporters hungry for scandal was the fact that Mr. Weiner indicated he was not reporting this to the FBI. Very curious that a very outspoken and visible Representative who claims his reputation was being besmirched horrifically won’t involve the law enforcement agency specifically geared, nay drooling, to rush to his aid.
Okay, perhaps some hyperbole can be detected, but you get my point. This raised the smell detector to all time highs for me, and apparently for several journalists as well.
So it all came to a head when Meagan Broussard, a pretty, young , single mom from Texas was prepared to be interviewed by ABC with a fair chunk of sexually charged photos, emails, and other communications to be released for the public’s eager consumption. These days scandal is the wind in our sails, ain’t it? Knowing that the doom was upon him, Mr. Weiner came clean, admitted his faults, and apologized to the world.
During the confession however, he said he had contacted Nancy Pelosi, his fearless leader, detailed what was about to happen, and because of that conversation, he stated he would not resign. Interesting. I right away wondered if that was a blatant display of home team hypocrisy. Then, Pelosi later stated she wanted an ethics violation to see if any government resources were used to transmit the messages. Link it:
So perhaps she is not in the flip-flop contingency. She wants us to find out if Tony’s texts were done using taxpayer tools. That’s reasonable. What he did wasn’t illegal since the targets in his case, converse to the “apple” story involving Mr. Foley, were all of majority age and heterosexual in nature. Mr. Foley also ran into problems when he avoided and denied questions of his sexual orientation whereas our “orange” Mr. Weiner has not had to do so. He just got caught sexting some woman across the country. Unethical? That’s for the House to decide. Illegal? No. Immoral? That’s between him, his God, and his wife. I’m not a stone thrower without sin, so I refuse to comment.
Now to my conundrum: was Mrs. Pelosi worried about the nature of Mr. Foley’s messages? It certainly seems so when the story came out since she wanted rules to protect pages in place to prevent these types of things from happening again. But then she later prevented further investigations into Mr. Foley’s trawling operation when the investigators continued their efforts in 2008 two years after his resignation (link it: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4143280&page=1). As soon as the House determined no government resources were used to send his messages, she said it was hands off. She certainly seems to be very concerned that these guys, in both instances, may have used tax payer provided services to do their dirty work (pun intended) not that they were doing it to begin with. But why isn’t she outraged that people whom we elected are doing some pretty racy stuff while working for the people? Why is it the means and not the ends? My theory: Mrs. Pelosi must be keenly aware that there are more of these shenanigans going on than we probably want to know. Let’s be honest, the people we send to Washington on our behalf are human even though they have a bigger-than-life persona and an assumed higher expectation of behavior than the rest of us who put them in office. Frankly, they should be more cognizant of what they do for jollies since if some reporter finds out, they’ll be the next flavor of the month on the talk show and lecture beat, with the reporter potentially cashing in on the big memoir splash. Foley got ousted and was crushed, ultimately resigning in disgrace. Will Weiner suffer the same fate? Maybe, maybe not, but it is easy for us to forget that the talking heads and politicos have the same issues we do. We point the shame on you finger while surfing for our own peccadilloes.
The common thread in all of this is Nancy Pelosi. At least, to her credit, she is consistent. She wanted both investigated. We’ll see what happens next. If she stays true to form, she’ll protect Mr. Weiner from further scrutiny if he does indeed end up resigning. I hope she does. A consistent politician is refreshing, even if she is someone I disagree with politically. I also have a problem with the potentiality that public resources could have been used. You can be risqué, but do it on your own dime and own time. There is a line of ethical conduct when you’re fishing for thrills on the taxpayer’s expense sheet. If he didn’t use government stuff, leave him alone and let the House, his family, and his constituents decide if he is worthy to be their representative.
I also believe, as a man of experience, that Anthony Weiner made a huge error in judgment and has had to lay his soul for the world because of it. I feel for him and can sympathize with him completely from mistakes I have made in my personal life that made life difficult for me. I was given a second chance, dusted myself off, and made a new start. I hope Mr. Foley has received the same opportunity.
I only hope Anthony Weiner gets the same chance. We all deserve a fresh start after we fall down.
Chip Grefski
