Anthony Weiner’s “Terrible Mistakes”

“Where is she right now?” a reporter shouted at Congressman Anthony Weiner. He was referring to Huma Abedin, Weiner’s wife. “She is not here,” Weiner said. And that was obvious to all, as Weiner stood, alone, and admitted to having “inappropriate communications” with women—“about six” of them, none named Huma.

It’s probably best for all concerned that Abedin was absent: for her own sake, definitely; for Weiner, because he had to own up by himself (though it might have been good to have someone pull him off the stage once he did); for the reporters there, who might have asked too much about some things and not enough about others (as it was, the followups about “phone sex” sounded like a chant); and for the rest of us, who were having enough trouble wrapping our minds around the sight of Andew Breitbart rushing the stage. And Breitbart has had a good enough day already; more of a spectacle might have made him permanently dizzy. A reporter asked Weiner if he could dismiss Breitbart’s claim that he had an “x-rated” photograph of him. Weiner could not.

Weiner admitted to many things—“terrible mistakes.” Some of those mistakes involved Twitter and Facebook and the telephone (the last of those sounded almost quaint). Others involved straight out lying, to his wife, without any technology, and to the public in general, by saying that he had been hacked. (“I panicked.”) He said he was sorry to everyone, even to Breitbart, who he had, after all, suggested was either complicit in a hack or the receiver of electronically fabricated goods. (As I wrote last week, the hacking scenario would have been credible, if not for Weiner’s increasingly bizarre addenda—and, then, for the many more pictures that emerged today.) And there were “abject apologies” to the woman to whom he said he’d meant to send a direct message, and not had this “visited upon her”—as have we all. Weiner said today that he was taking “full responsibility for his actions,” and yet it was odd, at times, to hear what he seemed to think of as mitigating factors: “To be clear, I have never met any of these women.” Is sending naked pictures of one’s self to strangers considered more respectable than passing them along to friends?

When asked, “Was there anything predatory about your behavior?” Weiner’s answer was that the women involved were “not young per se.” What does that even mean, and how is it an answer? (He also said that he didn’t really know how old they were—just what they said on Facebook, and, he said, they could have been “fibbing.”) We will, one guesses, be hearing from them, per se and per others.

Weiner said that he had spoken to Nancy Pelosi before the press conference, and that she had urged him to tell the truth. (He said that he hadn’t yet spoken to his wife’s boss, Hillary Clinton.) In the rambling shouted exchange that followed, it was suddenly difficult, while watching on television, to tell whether the “she” Weiner was referring to was Pelosi or Abedin, until he mentioned love and it became clear that we had moved back from the political to the personal. But not for long: “taking full responsibility” does not mean resigning, which makes one wonder how abject, as opposed to humiliated, Weiner is. He talked—though not in the most coherent terms—about regaining his constituents’ trust.

“This was a destructive thing to do,” Weiner said. “This wasn’t part of a plan.” Is it ever? And can the idea, often brought out, that a politician or other powerful person who is accused of one thing or the other couldn’t possibly do something so obviously self-destructive be put aside now?

Photograph by Andrew Burton/Getty Images.


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