Poor Weiner

Well, it seems another politician has another sex scandal. Often funny and friend of Jon Stewart Congressman Anthony Weiner admitted that he sent a picture of his weiner in his undies to a woman on the Twitter. He says he meant it as a part of a joke, and that he has done other inappropriate things on the interwebs and the phone, both before and after marrying his wife. He also says he has never met any of these women in person, clearly implying that the hyper-flirtation only happened from very long distances.

I think that as far as political sex scandals go, this is really quite ethical, assuming that Congressman Weiner is not still lying. It’s really nothing compared to Eliot Spitzer and his adulterous use of hookers, or Bill Clinton and the jobs he had his interns doing while he was married. As Congressman Winkie, I mean Weiner (sorry, I had to) said, he didn’t break any laws, and he will cooperate fully with an ethics investigation insuring he didn’t break any House rules. He also didn’t make his wife stand there with him while he confessed as some Eliot Spitzers did. He mentioned that his wife understandably thinks he’s an idiot, but is not divorcing his dumb a**.

I’m comfortable making these statements about Congressman Weiner’s relative morality, assuming that he is not still lying, because, like David Letterman, he took full responsibility for his immoral actions; he made a point to state that the woman who was the recipient of his bulging photo is not responsible for this at all, and should never have been dragged into this mini-scandal. His apologies, his remorse, his shame, and his tears seemed sincere to me. Of course, he could be a good actor, or I could be an idiot who feels bad when boys (or anyone) cry and take responsibility for their actions. Conversely, as much as I love Bill Clinton for his politics, his intelligence, and the nice things he does for the world, he is a good example of a disgusting immoral sex-crazed adulterer who tried desperately not to take responsibility for his actions.

Anthony Weiner didn’t admit to his tweet until, I assume, he realized his past inappropriateness was going to be disinterred. According to the NY Times blog, he made his announcement after another bout of inappropriate internet behavior from a month ago was revealed. Nonetheless, less than two weeks of lies followed by a full confession is really rather impressive for a politician.

If you’re sensing that I hold politicians to much, much lower moral standards than I hold normal humans to, you're absolutely right. Thanks to people like Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, and probably millions more, I have learned to assume that all politicians are either evil in some power-hungry way, or are whores. Perhaps the hunger for power facilitates the slutty behavior, since the slutty behavior might simply be another way to gain or use their power. I don’t know if this hunger for power is a pre-existing condition for politicians, or if it’s something that happens after a person has been in politics and the power they are inherently given morally corrupts him…or her I suppose, but we never seem to hear about female politicians being adulterous sluts. Perhaps the direction of the power-politics causality depends on the individual.

Anyway, the point of all this is that while Anthony Weiner’s wife is absolutely correct in saying her husband is dumb, and while he clearly does have some moral issues, if he is not lying, it’s really nothing compared to the real sex scandals out there, and in my mind, it does not and should not affect his ability to do his job well, and to do good things for the world. If the far-more-sexually-immoral Bill Clinton could do it, then the much-more-moral-because-he-accepts-responsibility Anthony Weiner can definitely do it. I’m glad he is not resigning.

(Note: I added the link to Jon Stewart's coverage of this scandal after I published this blog posting.)

UPDATE June 14, 2011
Here's someone else who doesn't want Anthony Weiner to resign, and who also feels bad for the remorseful virtual adulterer.

UPDATE July 14, 2011


On June 16, Anthony Weiner unfortunately resigned.

Three Things that Irritated Me about Leno’s Oprah Appearance

Everyone seems to be upset with Jay Leno (I mean more than they were before) because when he was on Oprah on January 28, he admitted to lying. He explained that he told a white lie in 2004 when he said he would be retiring in 2009.

This lie isn’t what bothered me. I don’t think I really expected Jay to retire – I only expected him to move on from The Tonight Show. When celebrities say they’re retiring, I generally don’t believe them; I actually share Jay’s view on this, where he told Oprah that while he believes that Oprah believes she will be “retiring,” he doesn’t believe she actually will. Of course she explained to Jay that she has not said she’ll be retiring, rather she is just leaving her show, but the point Jay was making about celebrities in general is the view I share with him.

What did bother me – what drove me insane actually – was the following three things:

1) Leno, as usual and as expected played the victim; he did not take any responsibility for what he did. He refused to accept that he had anything to do with killing Conan’s dream. He blamed the network (as he should), and he blamed the low ratings of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. However, he couldn’t admit that he had anything to do with Conan leaving The Tonight Show. He didn’t seem to have any awareness that Conan’s ratings were low most likely as a direct result of the low ratings of The Jay Leno Show, as well as the very existence of Jay’s 10 p.m. show. As many have stated, when Leno hosted The Tonight Show, he had dramas such as Law and Order as his lead-in before the local news – shows that, as David Letterman said, keeps people staring at their TVs for days. Conan didn’t have that; Conan had as his lead-in the low-rated Jay Leno Show whose low ratings almost caused the NBC affiliates to revolt. If NBC didn’t have to remove Jay from 10 p.m., and if Jay had chosen to leave NBC, as one would have expected him to, NBC would never have put Leno back at 11:35 p.m. either to push back The Tonight Show to 12:05 a.m. or to remove Conan from The Tonight Show. Without The Jay Leno Show, The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien would have had better ratings and therefore would have remained on the air. In fact, even if for some other reason (such as the fact that it was a transition or the increased ratings Letterman got from his scandal) Conan’s ratings hadn’t been good enough, his Tonight Show still would have remained on the air. After all, Leno’s ratings weren’t good for his first three years on The Tonight Show, but NBC kept him on the air. Which brings me to…

2) Leno told Oprah that Conan has been removed because of Conan’s poor ratings. He also claimed that this was the first year in The Tonight Show’s 60-year history where it would lose money. However, if losing money translates to poor ratings, then Jay seems to have forgotten about his first three years on The Tonight Show, where he had poor ratings. No one watched Jay’s Tonight Show until Hugh Grant kindly granted him an interview (that was previously scheduled) after being arrested for prostitution usage. Three years of bad ratings, and NBC didn’t cancel Leno’s Tonight Show. Yet Leno seems to really believe that NBC is canceling Conan’s Tonight Show after seven months of bad ratings. It just doesn’t make sense. (Yes, I do realize NBC cancelled Leno’s 10 p.m. show after five months because of bad ratings, but that is only because of the damage he was doing to their affiliates. When Jay had bad ratings on The Tonight Show, I don’t believe it was affecting the affiliates in such a way.)

3) Jay whined to Oprah about Jimmy Kimmel’s alleged “sucker punch,” where Kimmel made a joke about the Conan-Jay brouhaha. Of course, as Jimmy explained, he thought that since Jay used to be a comedian, he could handle a joke made about him, and go with it, rather than continuing to robotically read cue cards and later rat Kimmel out to Oprah. So Jay whined about Kimmel making a timely and relevant joke about him, yet Jay felt there was nothing wrong with his own “joke” about Letterman, which, really, was a sucker punch…to Dave’s wife. Jay’s joke was in response to Dave’s relentless and hilarious Leno jokes and discussions since this began, and Jay felt that one joke in response to Letterman was sufficient. But Jay’s joke was personal, it was more hurtful to Dave’s wife than to Dave (I would think), it was not timely since the tale of Dave’s infidelity is no longer a current topic at all, and, most importantly, no one found it funny. I didn’t fid it funny, the audience responded with “Oooo”s, and Oprah made it clear that she did not find it funny, and that she felt the joke was beneath Jay. But Jay thought it was funny.

Maybe that’s the problem: Maybe Jay isn’t funny anymore because he just doesn’t know what is funny anymore.

Double Standards

Tiger Woods and his wife (Elin Nordegren) have provided a real-life alleged example demonstrating the point that I made in a previous blog posting, when the former appeared to have been scratched and beaten with a golf club by the latter before and/or after an alleged car accident, allegedly resulting from an alleged argument between them regarding Woods’ alleged adulterous affairs. The alleged domestic violence portion of all this was denied by Tiger Woods, and dropped quickly by the Florida Highway Patrol, according to this article from The Examiner.

Ironically, Chris Brown (of all people) actually made a nice point (see the Examiner link above) regarding the double standard in our society that I delineate in my discussion of Pink’s lyrics in the above-mentioned blog posting. Our society seems to be significantly less harsh on female perpetrators of domestic violence than male ones. If this situation were reversed, would an investigation of Tiger Woods’ hypothetical alleged violence toward his wife end so quickly? Would the world be so focused on Elin Nordegren’s hypothetical alleged affairs, or would the world be unwaveringly focused on the domestic violence?

Regarding Woods’ affairs, as I’ve said regarding David Letterman’s affairs, it isn’t our business. It is unquestionably wrong, but it is not our business. If Elin Nordegren did assault Woods, that is the real issue. As immoral and despicable as adultery is, assault, even for the sake of vengeance, is far more immoral and criminal. The infidelity of a celebrity is not our business, particularly when that celebrity has spent his public life protecting his and his family’s privacy. If his wife did assault him, he is a victim; if he were a woman, more people might recognize that, and perhaps the investigation into whether domestic violence occurred might have at least appeared more thorough, or might have taken longer than four days to be completed.

If the situation were reversed, the investigation would not have ended so quickly, and people wouldn’t be so focused on the wife’s hypothetical alleged affairs. The world would be making proclamations of “so what if she had affairs, that doesn’t excuse violence against her.” The same should be true in this alleged situation.

Poor Dave

When I heard about the alleged extortion of David Letterman and his confession, my initial reaction was “Poor Dave.” This was followed by, “Wow, Dave’s a slut, who knew…But Poor slutty Dave.”

Obviously I’m talking about David Letterman’s recent confession of affair(s) he had with women who work for him and the blackmail involving that by Robert “Joe” Halderman, a producer of 48 Hours Mystery.

I first heard about it from my sister, because I had missed Thursday night’s Late Show containing his confession, and I had somehow not been exposed to any media most of yesterday.

I’ve been a fan of Dave’s since I was 14 or 15, and I’ve had a crush on him for most of that time (it dwindled in my early-to-mid twenties when he announced that his then-girlfriend and now-wife was pregnant). After seeing his confession on YouTube, and after reading this article from the AP, not only do I not hate him as some people now do, but my crush seems to be back. At first I thought this resulted from the reminder of his brooding self-criticism and the terrible things that have happened to him (such as the attempted kidnapping of his son and the crazy stalker) that the AP article spoke of.

But as I watched last night’s episode of The Late Show, and watched as the audience still loves him, I realized it was more than that. It was his honesty.

He could have easily played the victim – obviously he is a victim of alleged attempted extortion, but I mean he could have played the victim in ways that he is not – he could have, after explaining what happened with the attempted blackmail, proceeded to say “None of this is true; I did not have sexual relations with those women.” But he didn’t; he admitted that he had sexual relations with women who work for him. It’s not entirely surprising that his affairs would be with women who work for him, since both the woman he dated in the 1980s and his current wife were women who worked for him. (Much like the rest of the world seems to have assumed, I am assuming that there was no sexual harassment or other non-consensual behavior; if that assumption is proved untrue, that would change everything.)

As many have noted, including some blogging people on CNN, he doesn’t state when these things happened. The affairs could have, and probably did, happen before he got married in March, and perhaps even before his now-wife birthed his son. As the people on CNN say, we don’t know the nature of Dave and his now-wife’s relationship. Furthermore, even if he was cheating on her, we don’t know if she forgave him. And, as the bloggy people on CNN say, it’s really not our business.

It’s interesting that I wouldn’t hate someone who’s cheated on their significant other. Generally, I’m not a fan of cheating, and personally, I would never take part in any kind of infidelity. But we don’t’ know for sure that Dave’s actions constitute cheating, and even if they do, his honesty allows me to maintain my respect and love for him, and remain a fan, perhaps with enhanced fan-ness. His honesty doesn’t make cheating right, but it allows us as fans to maintain our love and respect for him. His confession also reminds us that his personal life, beyond what he chooses to reveal to us, is not our business.

While Dave’s celebrity status places him in the public eye, he has kept much of his personal life private. He is not an elected official who is trying to legislate morality (again, I think the bloggy people on CNN, the AP, and probably many others said something along those lines as well). He’s a comedian, and therefore, not a hypocrite for his countless jokes about politicians and other celebrities and their indiscretions, because his job is to make jokes. His personal life and his hypocrisy (if you believe he is a hypocrite) are not relevant to those jokes.

I can’t help but wonder if I would feel the same way if this were happening to a celebrity whom I don’t love. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m biased, but I think I would feel similarly, if not as strongly, if it were someone I hated, because the extortion involved is wrong – I mean more wrong than the potential infidelity.

Fun side note about my little Dave obsession: Before watching the blogging people on CNN, upon hearing that Dave’s affairs were with women who work for him, I immediately speculatively concluded that one of them (or perhaps the only one) must have been his assistant who’s made on-air appearances over the years. I won’t say her name here, because that wouldn’t be right, but one of the bloggers on the CNN thing confirms my suspicion, I assume speculatively. Before I knew she existed, when I was a teenager, I dreamed of having her job – so it should have been me…hahahaha, just kidding….maybe….no, no, I am kidding.

I Cheated on Google

Dearest Google, I’ve been unfaithful to you. I’m sorry to be so blunt, Google, but the truth had to come out, especially now, since the time of repentance is upon us.

My transgression occurred a few weeks ago. I was googling something obscure – I had heard something about heavy metals being present in calcium carbonate, the very calcium supplement I take.

But Google, my beloved, you couldn’t find any relevant results, at least not in the first pages of search results, and, Google, you know I don’t look beyond the first few pages generally.

So I tried Bing. Yes, Bing. Like you, Google, it has a cute and amusing name. I once searched Bing before, when I saw their commercial on the TV, purely out of curiosity. At that time, it appeared as though Bing’s results were very similar to yours, Google. So using Bing seemed pointless, for why stray from my beloved Google when there appears to be no additional benefit to Bing.

But on that fateful (and unfaithful) day, Google, when you couldn’t satisfy my web searching needs, I did the very same search at Bing that I had tried at you, Google (I don’t remember what I specifically searched for). And Bing found exactly what I was looking for, right there in the first web result.

There was an article from 2000 talking about a JAMA study that had found lead in a few brands of calcium carbonate, though the amounts were less than one would ingest from food and are (or at least were in 2000) acceptable by FDA standards. It stated that Caltrate (the brand I used to use until it became increasingly more difficult to find the kind I like that contains no Vitamin D since I take that separately; my stopping of Caltrate came long before I discovered its lead content) contained these detectable though safe amounts of lead, but Walgreen’s brand (the one I switched to) contained no detectable lead at all. Tums also contained no lead, which is nice. This is the thing Bing found.

But don’t worry Google, this doesn’t mean I’m leaving you. I still love you dearly, and you remain superior to Bing in other ways. I tried the Bing toolbar -- again, purely out of curiosity, and it was useless. Its only purpose is the search box, which sits in an obtrusive and unattractive blemish in my Internet Explorer (perhaps the Bing toolbar blends more nicely in Vista or Windows 7). The Google Toolbar, on the other hand, blends beautifully and modestly, and contains all those other useful thingies like Autofill, Pop-up Blocker, and other nice features. Also, Google, you have all those other products that I love so dearly, and that I surely could not be happy without.

Rest assured, My Dearest Google, that I will only use Bing on those very rare occasions when you can’t find something. This likely won’t happen often, since this was the first time it did, since that glorious day 8 or 10 years ago when I first googled, after someone on The Late Show with David Letterman website mentioned you, Google. I had never been happy with any search engine before you, Google; you almost always find exactly what I’m looking for.

Are you still upset about my unfaithfulness, Google? Doesn’t it help that my transgression was with Microsoft? You’ve known I’ve had a relationship with Microsoft since Windows 95, Google. But I understand, web searching is your territory, Google, and I’m sorry. I hope you will forgive me Google.

I love you, Google. But I also love Microsoft (most of the time).