weiner and his wife / amy davidson for the new yorker
a nice take:
Measuring risk is what politicians do for a living—from when they decide to run, to voting to hire policemen or teachers or to go to war. One doesn’t want them to be completely, or even mostly cautious: politicians who never say anything that causes anyone to cringe, and never take a political risk, are useless. (That kind of risk can become routinized, of course; Ron Paul would probably make people angry if he made a safe vote.) There has to be some idiocy in idealism, as well as self-delusion. But that brand of bet is as different from what Weiner did as the gambit of putting up a Facebook page calling on people to come to Tahrir Square is different from spending hours hunched over an online-poker site. Not all hungers are alike, and courage shouldn’t be confused with mindless greed, or self-sacrifice with self-immolation, particularly because other people can easily get burned. (Did Weiner, in putting his political future in the hands of a twenty-six-year-old in Texas whom he had never met, congratulate himself for being brave?)
That is why it is, sad to say, a matter of legitimate interest that Weiner’s wife was pregnant when he sent those tweets. It widens our sense of just how careless he is with the lives of others, particularly those of people who are more vulnerable than he is. That is good to know about a politician; it is distinct from the question of whether someone who lies to his wife will lie to the public and, I’d argue, is more important.
Probably the best-written thing about what this scandal really is about.
(via pantslessprogressive)
