Former Democrat politician Anthony Weiner is in the news again. The erstwhile congressman, forced into early retirement when he accidentally tweeted pictures of his penis, and was then caught doing the same thing during a bid to be mayor of New York, is still engaging in his favourite pastime of sending pictures of himself with an erection to women who are not his wife.
On Monday, the New York Post covered its front page with photos Mr Weiner sent to an unnamed young woman and, worse, a Trump-supporter. The photos showed a shirtless Mr Weiner with the now familiar erection but, perhaps most notably, his young son had crawled into bed and fallen asleep next to him. The boy was visible in the photo.
But… why is this newsworthy? The man, no longer a congressman nor a mayoral candidate, is now nothing more than a consultant, according to a recent New York Times article (and — full disclosure — a meeting I had with him last week). In other words, he is an entirely private citizen, no longer at the disposal of the “public interest”.
Does his proximity to America’s presumed next president actually justify this kind of scrutiny of the man’s private life, to say nothing of his child’s (surely the Post’s crime in publicising that shot was much greater than Mr Weiner’s in taking it)?
Apparently this is still news. The web was ablaze with the story, especially when his wife, Huma Abedin, announced that she would be separating from Mr Weiner, and begged for some privacy.
In the past, the couple have not shied away from the limelight, including a recent film, Weiner, documenting the implosion of Mr Weiner’s 2013 mayoral bid, supposed to be his comeback. But those were days in which Mr Weiner was still a public figure.
On Twitter, someone suggested that Mr Weiner would be susceptible to blackmail, since a person who tweets images of his penis for the entire world to see surely does other, even more embarrassing things. Really?
Does it get more embarrassing than that? Indeed, the moralising around all of this would make you think he had violated someone, or at least touched someone, rather than simply exchanged a few lewd photos.
The moralising has been trumped only by the pathologising. Mr Weiner has an illness! He is a sex addict! A compulsive liar! He cannot control himself! But in the digital age, isn’t his behaviour rather typical?
Who among us has not pressed send and for a brief, unending, moment thought we had sent that inappropriate joke to an entire email chain? Who among us has not texted something regrettable, in a moment of weakness, and been graced by the gods that our indiscretion was overlooked?
Mr Weiner embodies a kind of “There but for the grace of God go I” for the digital age. And, as such, his public flogging has an air of catharsis about it, the feeling that someone else is being punished for a crime we ourselves have committed and miraculously gotten away with.
It is our own prurience, married with a particularly American fear of sexual desire, that we should we see when we look at Mr Weiner. But really, we should look away.
Batya Ungar-Sargon is a journalist based in New York
