Weiner’s main sin: his behavior reveals him as anti-woman

The robotic liberal commentator Kirsten Powers had a three-month relationship with Anthony Weiner nine years ago and had remained friends with him. Last week he told her the lie that he told everyone, and she believed it and defended him. Now that the full extent of his lies has come out, she says in an article in The Daily Beast that no one can trust anything he says and that he must resign from Congress:

In an interview with Greta Van Susteren the evening of Weiner’s tearful press conference, I told her I didn’t believe he needed to resign because his behavior was not related to his official capacity and that this was between him and his wife and, ultimately, the voters. Yes, he lied, I acknowledged, but everyone lies in sex scandals.

This is my general view of sex scandals. But there is lying and then there is what Weiner did. Due to nonstop meetings, I had not had time to watch his media blitz prior to my Greta interview and was slack-jawed when I saw clips of him the next day sneering and pointing fingers at other people for what he knew he had done. I am of the general view that politicians are not the most honest group of people, but, even using that very low standard, what I saw in those interviews was deeply disturbing. There is no way anyone can ever believe anything Weiner says again after that. In fact, I highly doubt that what he said in his press conference is even true.

Narcissism doesn’t begin to describe this kind of behavior. It seems there was nobody he didn’t lie to. The New York Times reported this morning that he told donors a week ago that the scandal was the result of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” and that “everything [would] be fine.” We also learned after his press conference that he coached a former porn star with whom he had communicated online on how to lie to the media.

However, while Weiner’s pathological lying bothers Powers a lot, what bothers her even more is his sins against feminism. His tweets were, she avers, “textbook sexual harassment.” Of his X-rated Facebook conversations with a Las Vegas blackjack dealer, she says: “This is not about sex. It’s about dominating and inflicting physical pain on a woman.”

She even says, in kneejerk feminist mode: “what Weiner did had zero to do with sexual satisfaction and everything to do with his own mental issues and attitude toward women.”

And here’s something else that deeply offends Powers:

As for his other views of women, he tells her [the blackjack dealer], “I hear liberal girls are very, uh, accommodating of other[s],” playing on a bogus stereotype that politically liberal women are promiscuous.

There’s Weiner’s offense in Powers’ eyes—he believed in the “stereotype” that liberal women are promiscuous. As though his own career-long experience of having liberal women throw themselves at him didn’t give him reason for thinking that.

She concludes the article:

Despite my disappointment in his behavior and my concerns about his capacity to be in a leadership position, my heart still aches for him and his family. We are all flawed human beings, and this is not about meting out judgment. It’s about having some sort of standard for what the Democratic Party stands for—especially regarding treating women with dignity and respect—and Congressman Weiner has fallen far short of even the low standard to which we generally hold our elected officials. It’s time for him to go. [Italics added.]

Seen through Power’s feminist eyes, in the vast landscape of Weiner’s spectacular misbehaviors, his main sin is that he is anti-woman.

If this knee-jerk ideologue wrote an article about the Russian Revolution, she would find that the most objectionable thing about the Bolsheviks was that they didn’t respect women.

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Paul Nachman writes:

Droll comment:

If this knee-jerk ideologue wrote an article about the Russian Revolution, she would find that the most objectionable thing about the Bolsheviks was that they didn’t respect women.

The last one I remember was you saying that, compared with Ron Paul supporters, mosquitoes are like songbirds.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 09, 2011 09:14 AM | Send