Originally published by Communities @ Washington Times

SAN DIEGO, June 18, 2011 —If our sad economy has left you with any money at all, don’t bet on seeing the last of Anthony Weiner.

Larry Flint of Hustler Magazine has offered him a job. It’s safe to predict that Weiner will not accept such an invitation if he’s trying to jump-start his public image, but sooner or later somebody else will hand Weiner another consolation prize such as a reality show. That might be a good way for him to both make a living and slip into obscurity at the same time.

On the subject of fact and fiction, it may be time to offer closure by debriefing the Anthony Weiner incident. (No double entendre intended although admittedly, the graphic nature of this story makes it difficult to say anything that cannot be taken two ways.)

Certainly tabloid journalism will try to keep this going and late night comedians may not let up for a while either, cherishing Weiner as a gift who keeps on giving. Those who desire more serious discussion are reminded how this news spiraled into so many countless directions; people have difficulty sifting through the unnecessary chatter, in order to find lessons of importance.

Putting matters into perspective will demand some compartmentalization. To accomplish this, I offer a few responses to frequently stated comments or questions submitted respectfully for review and clarification

“Isn’t the Anthony Weiner story only about sex?”

That appeared to be the case early on, but time and a comedy of errors unraveled something much different; The man lied.  To cover up his lie, more lies were offered, even at  press conferences organized by Weiner himself!

Finally, Andrew Breitbart got falsely accused of hacking into Weiner’s Twitter account, courtesy of left wing bloggers. That shed the most deadly light of all.  The story is no longer merely about adultery (or something close to adultery as people parse the difference) but also another little standard on God’s Top Ten List; the one about not bearing false witness (Exodus 20).

Even those who do not believe in God must admit that accusing a man without proof is abominable. The nicest interpretation is that Weiner looked the other way while surrogate bloggers wrote things about Breitbart which were simply not true. Breitbart himself claims there was even more to it.

“I would like an apology for allowing his political protectors – and this was his strategy – to blame me, to blame me for hacking,” (Weiner Press Conference, June, 6, 2011).

Weiner did offer Breitbart an apology when he finally came to the podium but he did so without going into detail about exactly what he was apologizing for.

And so, this story is not merely about sex.

On the other hand, let us not be so quick to dismiss all sexual elements of this account. Although few today would justify adultery, many point out that technically Weiner did not have sex with other women.

Since nothing else has come out so far, we’ll presume this to be true. Still, what kind of comfort do such fine tuned details bring to his wife?

“Mrs. Weiner, we have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that your husband sent sexually explicit photos of himself to all kinds of women over the Internet and we aren’t even sure how many. The good news? Well, they never actually had sex.”

Can you just hear Huma breathing a sigh of relief? “Whew! Happy days are here again.”

Of course, if any of these women received photos from Weiner unexpectedly without requesting them or without intending to involve themselves with any erotic on-line dialogue, then a case can also be made that the man exhibited predatory behavior, something even more serious.

However, to be fair, any women who continued to interact with Weiner after the photos should not be looked upon as victims. They are responsible for their own actions. At this stage, both kinds of situations are being reported.

Meanwhile, the police have been investigating some correspondence between Congressman Weiner and a 17 year old in Delaware. Did he know she was a minor? Perhaps not, if he only met her on a computer.  The full story is not in, so definitive judgment needs to be suspended. But in this case, further investigation is warranted.

Obviously, it is comtemptible for any citizen to be involved with illegal sexual behavior, let alone a U.S. Congressman who took an oath to serve his country and uphold the law.

“OK, but if they never get the goods on him regarding an actual sexual crime, we must admit that meanwhile, Weiner’s lies posed no great threat to the nation.”

Actually when public officials display desperation to cover up scandal, they are susceptible to blackmail. Who’s to say that an enemy of our country wishing to obtain national secrets would not exploit such a situation? Weiner may not know too many secrets anyway but in Washington he could have been close to people who did.

“Many politicians have done the same thing. Weiner is merely among the ones who got caught.”

True enough. But would we refuse to punish a man who was caught at insider trading or some other kind of criminal activity simply because others do the same thing and have gotten away with it?

“But this wasn’t criminal activity beyond the alleged possibility of his social networking being with minors.”

There are also questions of where and when these Internet rendezvous took place. If any such exchanges were done on work time or public phone/ computers, that would mean they were partially funded by tax payer dollars and inadvertently supported by people who did not send their congressman to Washington for such activity.

Even more important, if it can be proven that Weiner deliberately set up Breitbart for false accusation, then he has done something just as bad if not worse than many of our country’s flat out criminals. There are defamation laws, which vary from state to state although proving defamation is often difficult.

“Republicans are the ones who always brag about their family values, not Democrats. So even though this is wrong, it is only hypocrisy when it comes from Republicans.”

Yes, that is often the spin from mainstream media commentators when Democrats get caught in sexual scandals. Rachel Maddow talks about this often and is even blasting fellow Democrats for insisting that Weiner step down:

And yet, while running against Republicans in elections, we catch a whole different song from  Democratic candidates themselves who offer passionate speeches saying things such as:

“I’m tired of Republicans acting like they have a monopoly on family values! We Democrats stand for family values too!”

Indeed, when Weiner himself took a marriage vow, he was claiming publicly that he accepted the sanctity of marriage as a family value. When he took his oath of office, he was excepting the public trust. This too is a value and Weiner says values were taught to him by his family growing up.

We must put away any nonsense which claims the bar is higher for Republicans. All elected officials have the same bar.

“Look at people like Clinton, who still did a good job, or Kennedy. He was a great president, despite his affairs.”

Kennedy was a terrific president but his extra-marital activity had not been widely known and such cobwebs were better hidden in those days. Had it come out in the open, had he been caught trying to lie and cover everything up, our memory of Kennedy would have been strikingly different.

Children look up to the president as a role model, or at least they used to. What went through the minds of kids when President Clinton was found to be messing around in the Oval Office while agents guarding the room from the outside undoubtedly made an educated guess as to what was going on behind closed doors?

By the way, Clinton, may have been “legally correct” when he said he did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky (oral sex evidently not counting in Clintonian language) but people forget that he also claimed he could not remember any details about being alone with Monica.

“I don’t recall, but as I said, when she worked at the legislative affairs office, they always had somebody there on the weekends. I typically worked some on the weekends. Sometimes they’d bring me things on the weekends.

“She — it seems to me she brought things to me once or twice on the weekends. In that case, whatever time she would be in there, drop it off, exchange a few words and go, she was there. I don’t have any specific recollections of what the issues were, what was going on, but when the Congress is there, we’re working all the time, and typically I would do some work on one of the days of the weekends in the afternoon”( Paula Jones Deposition, Jan 17, 1998).

And what about Mrs. Clinton suggesting (before hubby confessed) that the accusation of relations with Monica might be a right-wing conspiracy?

“This is—the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president” (NBC, Today Show, January, 27, 1998).

Did Hillary ever apologize?  Did her husband ever receive justice? Whatever consequences President Clinton paid through public humiliation, etc., he still finished out his term as president and now travels the world as a popular, coveted, well paid speaker.

“Isn’t it right that we forgive a man who confesses his sin? Is that not taught in the Bible?”

We must keep in mind that Weiner did not initially confess when his Tweet was discovered and lied for days on end until by, an amazing coincidence, Andrew Breitbart, claimed possession of additional pictures.

Yes, we all sin and we all need forgiveness. But in the Bible repentance from sin was supposed to accompany confession.

“If your brother sins, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him,” (Luke 17:3).

Even during Weiner’s confession, he described the Tweeted picture as part of a joke:

“Last Friday night, I tweeted a photograph of myself that I intended to send as a direct message as part of a joke to a woman in Seattle. Once I realized I had posted it to Twitter, I panicked. I took it down and said that I had been hacked.”

Then, later in the same speech, he talked about other exchanges:

“I have engaged in several inappropriate conversations conducted over Twitter, Face book, email and occasionally on the phone with women I had met online. I’ve exchanged messages and photos of an explicit nature with about six women over the last three years. For the most part, these communications took place before my marriage, though some have sadly took place after. To be clear, I have never met any of these women or had physical relationships at any time” (Washington Post, June 6, 20011.)

Is Weiner implying that all of his communications with women were jokes? If not, why is he going out of his way to suggest that only one of them was a joke? What difference would that make? And if all of it was a joke, why did he later on admit that he was going to seek professional help? Help from where and for what? A strange sense of humor? The ambiguity here, along with Weiner’s earlier established lies, makes us wonder if this was the tip of a bigger iceberg even during his “confession.”

We do know that several women who came out of the shadows at least acknowledged ongoing Internet activity from Weiner’s direction.  All mere jokes? And what about the other matter he made “clear?” Are we going to witness future females claiming that he did have sexual relations? If so, and if these women present evidence, that should torpedo any honest reception of Weiner’s confession.

The jury is still out on a lot of this one but many shoes have already dropped since Weiner’s initial attempts to bury the matter by digging a pit he couldn’t get out of. We have a right to offer forgiveness conditionally, pending the hope that where there is smoke we will not find fire.

Yes, we can forgive lying but if it should come out that the liar was continuing to lie even as he confessed to being a liar, somehow the impact of heart felt confession loses its sting.

As for Weiner’s resignation offered in the midst of Thursday’s press conference, one might wonder if it was less of a confession and more of a campaign speech.

“I had hoped to be able to continue the work that the citizens of my district elected me to do: to fight for the middle class and those struggling to make it….I got into politics to help give voice to the many who simply did not have one” (Transcript quotations from CBS, New York, June 16, 2011).

Nobody can read minds, but on the surface at least, this looks like, “Wink wink, nod, nod, the American people should care about the issues. And the issues I fight for are more important than the scandal that is bringing me down” (Ibid).

Weiner also said during his resignation, “Now I’ll be looking for other ways to contribute my talents to make sure that we live up to that most New York and American of ideals: the idea that leading a family, a community and ultimately a country is the one thing that all unites us, the one thing we’re all focused on” (CBS, New York, June 16, 2011).

Translation: “I’ll be back!”  Perhaps Wiener wanted to resemble politician Arnold  Schwarzenegger in more ways than one.

“And of course I want to express my gratitude to my family: to my mother and father who instilled in me the values that carried me this Far..” ( Ibid).

You have to hand it to the man. He managed to get through that part with a straight face.

None of this means the heckles were appropriate. Those who shouted out and interrupted Weiner exhibited disgusting behavior whether they were sent from Howard Stern or any one else. Rudeness and the silencing of speech, any speech, ought to make us sick to our stomachs. For Pete’s sake, let the guy at least talk. He’s gone through a lot of humiliation already. If additional things come out in the open, life will have its way with Congressman Weiner in due time.

Weiner’s story is not over yet and neither should our final opinion be fixed. Will additiional shoes drop?  If so, he may have gotten away with more than he deserves. Or will Weiner in the future display a more genuine looking penitence? If so, he should be  forgiven.

Short of anything else they find on Anthony Weiner, the bottom line is that a public official lied, and tried to cover up what he did, even as another man was being falsely accused. For now, that is enough with which to be glad he resigned. Whether or not the man deserves even further consequences remains to be seen.

NOTE: For a discussion of how the press initially dealt with Weiner, see my earlier article: Weiner scandal more than sexual