Thoughts On Weiner

Weiner lied for a week about this scandal, displaced the blame onto the wingnut Breitbart, claimed he had been hacked - but all the time he knew he had sent the photo and had sent plenty of others in the past.

How did he think he would get away with this?

Deep, deep denial, that's all I can think.

Then today when more photos surface, he knows he has to come clean. So he holds a press conference, offers a mea culpa about the Twitter story and the hacking, says he's had inappropriate online communications with six women in the last three years, apologizes for lying, apologizes to his wife and his constituents, then takes 40 minutes of questions about masturbation, sexting, phone sex and lies.

At one point, someone asked him "Since you never met any of these women you engaged in sexting with, how do you know they were of age?"

He says he doesn't think they were underage, but, you know, how does he know?

Oy - Weiner maybe thought the presser today would make this go away, but I don't think it will.

He should have given a simple statement last week and come clean then.

Denial, arrogance and dishonesty led him to lie for a week.

After the week of lying and displacing blame, it was more difficult to njust read a statement at a press conference and walk away without questions, but I still think that would have been better than the circus that took place this afternoon.

"Have you ever masturbated while on the phone?"

"How do you know these women you sexted with were of age?"

"So you cannot deny that there is an X-rated photo of you out there?"

Yeah, this was the worst way to handle a scandal that I can think of.

The problem is that he lied from the beginning to his staff, the public and the media.

Had he come clean last week, I think this could have gone okay for him.

But he didn't and that dishonesty ought to bring him down.

He may survive this - as I wrote earlier, Vitter survived his hooker thing.

But he may not either - depends on what else the press finds out.

If one of those women turns out to be underage, yikes!

As for Weiner's mayoral ambitions, that's all done now. He can kiss that race goodbye.

I have to say, I'm kinda glad about that. Almost every politician is arrogant and egotistical beyond belief, but Weiner always seemed even more so to me.

I know he had staked his claim out on the progressive side on key issues like health care, but I really never felt that Weiner had any core values over his own career and self-promotion.

That kind of politician scares me and I for one am glad he will not be able to mount a credible campaign to be mayor.

There are going to be a lot of good candidates in 2013 - Liu, de Blasio, Stringer could all be decent mayors - and with Weiner gone, there will be more oxygen in the race for the others.

Buh-bye, Anthony.