Anthony Weiner’s chances of toughing it out and holding onto his seat got a little worse today with the report from TMZ that Weiner tried to coach porn star Ginger Lee to lie about their salacious correspondence. While my initial reaction to House Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s call for an Ethics Committee investigation of Weiner was that it seemed like an attempt to bluff Weiner into resigning, this tidbit might actually constitute something approaching a genuine violation of the rules of the House rather than mere bad behavior. If true, Weiner can’t survive.
As for the reaction to Weiner, the indignation about his week of lying and disgust over his antics is nearly universal, with even liberal papers like the New York Times showing the former champion of House Democrats no mercy. Democrats whose initial and quite understandable first reaction was to defend Weiner are now quiet. While some Republicans were busy distributing quotations from Democrats supporting Weiner, this is a mistake. Weiner changed the national political conversation from Medicare to lewd photos on Twitter. The GOP should merely give him a silent vote of thanks and move on. Going into a homerun trot just makes them look small.
But as much as the few politicians who regarded Weiner as a friend or ally should be left alone, one of his defenders deserves a bit more attention. Comedian Jon Stewart is considered the gold standard on political satire these days, and he is often funny enough to cause the unlike-minded to forgive his liberal bias at least some of the time. But Stewart was a personal friend of Weiner, which meant that rather than jumping on him with both feet, as he would have had he been a conservative Republican, he soft-soaped the story while also abusing those in the press who were pursuing the truth. Perhaps it was too much to hope that Stewart, who likes to pretend to be an equal-opportunity offender, would come clean as well and apologize, once Weiner admitted the truth. But last night he did not. He didn’t acknowledge his own defense of Weiner or his disparagement of CNN reporters who asked tough questions. Nor did he own up to the fact that Andrew Breitbart, whom he had particularly abused, turned out to be right all along.
The Anthony Weiner story may have no lasting political significance other than the end of the career of an arrogant bully who couldn’t face up to the truth about himself. But this episode also ought to go on the permanent record of Stewart, whose perch as America’s premiere political funnyman ought to be a bit shakier today than it was last week.
