Just In Time

The Congressman Weiner idiocy has been unfolding in about the same span as my finding out Joanna Russ had passed away and as he has gone from flat denial ("...an internet hoax...I am the victim....") to tearful (bragging!) admission of chatting women up and sending icky piccies -- to many women, over several years -- to that last refuge of the sexist jerk, I-can't-help-it-the-little-Weiner-took-over-it's-just-too-easy-nowadays, I can only ask myself what she might've thought about the situation.

It's a generalization, but if any boy was gonna be foursquare for treatin' women as something other than toys, I'd've thunk a liberal Dem from the greater NYC area, married to a successful high-level political operative, would be the guy. (An' prolly humorlessly sincere about it, too -- but noooooo, he's a Grade A Clueless Tool. My new rule: whatever any Congressbeing presents itself as, it is instead the exact opposite. That would explain the drugged-up, sex-fiend, contemptuous of the common man spendthrifts we seem have elected, wouldn't it?)

I would've been wrong and not just a little; the tone, tenor and story arc of his reaction to being caught out has been straight out of a (supposedly) long-outdated playbook, right down to his winking undertone that it wasn't all that wrong, after all it was just (over18 but under 30!) girls. Frekkin' pig.*

Russ likely would've had something pointed and poignant to say and perhaps -- with the wisdom of age -- she would not have been much surprised. As it is, she got out just in time.

Gun culture, conservative as it is, has more than once been accused of sexism. Maybe it is; I doubt there's been a whole darned lot of consciousness-raising, at least not without well-deserved snickering, but speaking as a woman who shoots, I have never been treated as shabbily therein as Congressthing Weiner has treated his Twitettes. There's some sort of a moral in there but I'll leave it for the reader to winkle out.

Update: Carl B. offers his own take. Man's got a point; I'll point out that though it takes two to tango, it only takes one to stop the dance. Or is that his point?
_________________________________________
* I don't mind the cheating-spouse aspect of this -- that's between him and the missus (I'll loan her a rolling pin or a cast-iron skillet if she's not had time to get one) -- nearly so much as his trivialization of it. Sheesh, Tony, get a pinup calendar or subscribe to a men's magazine: they're intended to be disposable media. Real women in real time are not toys and your offense was not the sending of the crotch shot, the flirting or the getting caught, it was when you confused "woman" with "candy bar," something sweet and forgettable to refresh your idle moments.
Come to think of it, that was my beef with Mr. the President Clinton, too.