The Advent of the Weeping Politician

Reality to Earth . . . What a wiener!

The same old tune has come around again, in its usual sequence and with all of the notes we expect to be hit in such a song. It goes as follows:

"I'm innocent, I'm innocent
(Though I may be slightly guilty)
I'm innocent, but it was not my fault.
Alright, my dear constituents, in fact I really did it!
And now it's time to cry my tears of salt . . ."

Representative Anthony Wiener, who's been accused of displaying the casings on his sausage through his twitter account, as well as a few dirty jokes to the young and pretty who didn't mind seeing them, started out by crying 'hacker' with the sort of brio the boy who cried wolf . . . Cried wolf with.

In short, he lied in public. He tried to get away with something which, while of certainly questionable taste for a recently married man, wasn't particularly illegal. The problem with this, of course, is that by his actions he simply reinforced the image of 'Politician as lecherous, lying sack of slag' . . . As if we needed further reinforcement of the image when it's been, to be quite frank, done better. (The hot dog puns will stop here.)

In watching the public self-flogging, complete with the sort of eye-wiping, wife-praising insincerity we've come to expect in these cases, a certain boredom at the representative's performance starting to overcome me; a sort of "Yeah, we get it, you're sorry, now can we get back to watching the real news now?" feeling. Politics or not, I've been watching this show for years . . . Saw the Tidal Basin Bombshell case, saw Teddy when his driving skills failed him, saw Clinton after Monica, even saw Falwell carry the Ark of Tears after he sinned . . . Been there, done that. Now get it over with and go tweet yourself.

I'd like to say I don't care about this sort of thing, but there is something deep down at the base of this which bothers me. People voted for this nimrod, just like scores of other nimrods; placed their trust in him to do his job for the period of his term. They didn't sign on for this. They asked for two things when they elected him; to do his job and not make them look like morons for trusting him with the seat.

Maybe that's the problem. A good deal of the elected officials of this, and to be fair, other countries, don't seem to give a damn about how their personal behavior reflects on the people who put them in office. I'm not saying they have to act like perfect little "Miss Manners" robots while they're on the job, that's not going to happen, but maybe they should be reminded of their responsibility when they swear to uphold the constitution on the day they take office.

How about that? When the public servants we elect take the oath of their office, a line should be added somewhere in the text where they promise not to make grand, tear-stained asses of themselves and embarrass the people who trusted them while they're on the job they were elected to fill. I think I'd be willing to follow the leader willing to raise his right hand to that.

To be sure, no one's going to take the initiative on such a measure. That would involve the usual finger-pointing nonsense and a session or two of barking across the aisle at them. It would also require a level of common sense few in the political arena seem to want to display. It would be nice, though.