Anthony Weiner, Bobby Kennedy and Me

I liked Rep. Anthony Weiner a lot.
I liked his sense of humor, I liked that he was friends with people like Ben Affleck and Jon Stewart, I liked the way you could still detect a hint of Brooklyn scrapper in his mannerisms even on the floor of Congress.
But what I liked about him most of all was what I think most of my fellow fans liked most too: the fact that he didn’t pull any punches on issues he cared about, even at the cost of diplomacy. Last summer, I saw him on the House floor furiously railing against an attempt to obstruct a package that would provide 9/11 first responders with health care, wielding words like “gentleman” and “shame” with such righteous fury that he might as well have been saying “motherfucker”. At a time when I was thoroughly disillusioned with the complacency of Democratic leaders in Congress and the White House, Rep. Weiner came off as a dedicated rogue cop, waiting outside Chief Pelosi’s office to be told that he got results, but dammit, she did NOT approve of his methods. Clearly, he was a man unafraid to fight the good fight.
Then it turned out he’d been sending pictures of his dick to women who weren’t his wife.
I think his decision not to resign over it was the right one; unlike Eliot Spitzer or current Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, he didn’t do anything illegal, and it doesn’t affect his ability to serve his constituents. That said, I’m still really pissed about the whole thing.
First of all, I’m angry that Weiner’s deception has given credibility to notorious liar and journalistic Antichrist Andrew Breitbart, who helped break the story; we sure as hell didn’t need to see Breitbart’s rumpled, petulant, perpetually drunk-seeming ass on television any more than we already do. But more than that, I’m pissed at a man who seemed so genuine for turning out to be so completely full of shit.
I’m not so naïve that I believe any politician is spotless; you don’t get there in the first place without having a lot of the same skills that make people effective used car salesmen. And yeah, I knew that a lot of Weiner’s high profile had to do with his not-so-secret desire to succeed Michael Bloomberg as mayor of New York (a goal I imagine he’s scratched off his list by now). But Weiner was just so relentless in his attempts to avoid owning up until it was absolutely unavoidable that I was a little revolted by it (that, and the betrayal of his wife). The Anthony Weiner I admired would have come clean early and gotten back to doing his job. Again, I know I probably deserved it for thinking any congressman was above it all, but it was a nice idea.
Speaking of nice ideas, today is the 43rd anniversary of the death of one of my heroes, Robert Francis Kennedy; what always struck me about Bobby was that he seemed like America’s last hope, an ideological pallbearer for first his older brother, then for Dr. King (and even, if you want to get really metaphysical, the badly damaged idealism of the beginning of the Johnson years) who had survived it all and could help renew us. And yet, I’m well aware Bobby wasn’t perfect; he authorized a wiretap of King when he was attorney general, and he had a reputation as a ruthless political operator. And I honestly don’t know what kind of president he would have been; things were so fucked up at that point that it honestly might not have been possible that anyone was good enough to be the right man to fix things. But none of that really matters, because Sirhan Sirhan’s bullets both shattered that hope and canonized Bobby, making the man not just a fallen human being but, post-mortem, the very idea of hope. Maybe that’s why, long after his death, he still captures my imagination so much. And this isn’t just some starry-eyed, liberal idealist thing; there’s no way Ronald Reagan’s divorced, tax-raising, former union-president, amnesty-granting ass would ever win a primary today. But that doesn’t matter, because his admirers are in love with Reagan the idea, not Reagan the man. And sometimes, for better or for worse, that’s what matters. Me, I’m trying to get off the idea of heroes. There’s nothing wrong with finding a role model and using them for guidance, but if you want somebody to do everything according to how you would do it, the best way is to do it yourself.

Alachua Kedavra

This is Florida Gov. Rick Scott:

This is Voldemort:

Think about it... won't you?