In the wake of everyone from Larry Craig to Elliot Spitzer, from Jesse James to Ashton Kutcher, it has always seemed to me that it took more than a small measure of self-delusion and heightened sexual satisfaction for former Congressman-cum-mayoral-candidate Anthony Weiner (D) to believe that his online sexual escapades would never be made public. All but a creature of the news cycle, Weiner excelled at getting himself on camera even as, as Richard Kim at The Nation noted yesterday, he never exactly managed to be very effective at getting his bills on his own leadership’s radar. So you can’t tell me that a guy who managed at every turn to get his face in the papers didn’t realize that there would be a readership — or viewership — for something as salacious as him sexting women who were not his wife, nor a few scorned-feeling women in his wake interested in publicizing that in order to get a little revenge.

ADVERTISEMENT

But at the point at which multiple women came forward with transcripts and dick pics to share with the world at large, forcing Weiner to resign his Congressional seat and retreat in disgrace, it is impossible to believe that anyone, no matter how self-deluded or in need of a quick sexual fix, could avoid the realization that baring his shorn scrotum for the camera yet again would result in thousands, if not millions, of other people seeing that image burned into their retinas. So Weiner’s admission today that he not only bared his junk and explained his sexual fantasies in banal-but-granular detail for “between six and 10” women prior to his resignation, but that he did so for at least an additional three women after — some while he was even in the process of rehabbing his public image for his political comeback — leads me to but one inevitable and horrifying conclusion.

Anthony “Carlos Danger” Weiner doesn’t just get off on showing a few women his package here and there. He gets off on knowing we’re all eventually going to be looking at it, and talking about it.



[Anthony Weiner speaks to the media after courting voters outside a Harlem subway station on May 23, 2013. Image via AFP.]