THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

Representative Anthony Weiner’s press conference Monday was a case study in the rhetoric of moral evasion. I have extracted some key moments and added commentary. 

WEINER said: “I’ve exchanged messages and photos of an explicit nature with about six women over the last three years.” It seems like a genuine confession, but it is not. Notice the equivocal about. Is it five? Is it seven? Numbers under ten are easy to count and easy to remember. Numbers larger than ten are more difficult to count and remember. Almost certainly “about six” means more than six, likely many more than six.

WEINER said: “I’ve done things that I deeply regret.” Notice what Weiner does not say. He does not directly say, I did perverse and wicked things. He says merely that he did things (things – a vague and neutral word-choice) that he now regrets. However, regret is also equivocal; coupled with things, it lacks a moral context and appears pragmatic only. Regret in this locution implies discomfort over having been caught, not remorse over having committed sexual transgressions. 

WEINER said: “I came here to accept the full responsibility for what I’ve done.” The phrase, I… accept full responsibility, is again evasive and equivocal, primarily because it is purely verbal. When the sandlot baseball player accepts responsibility for breaking Mr. Smith’s window, this entails his paying for the window. Weiner proposes to pay for nothing, least of all his misdeeds. Payment in context would be relinquishing his position, as a GOP congressman did recently merely for sending a photograph of his hairy chest.

WEINER said: “I am deeply regretting what I have done, and I am not resigning.” This is a strange locution, linking the first of its two intentions with the opposite of what the intention would be under normative morality, as when Newt Gingrich (even he) admitted shenanigans and resigned, more or less in the same sentence. Also, this locution emphasizes that the previous invocations of regret and responsibility were purely verbal, having no commerce with any plan for demonstrative contrition or atonement.

WEINER said: “You know, I don’t know what I was thinking. This was a destructive thing to do. I’m apologetic for doing it. It was deeply, deeply hurtful to the people I care about the most. It was something I did that was just wrong, and I regret it.” The disclaimer about conscious action is another way of distancing the sinner from the sun, as though on the occasions of his mischief Weiner came under possession of a sinister power outside himself that overwhelmed him against his will. The dubious regret appears again, but no more meaningfully than elsewhere. 

WEINER said: “I’m deeply apologetic first and foremost to my wife, to the many people that put so much faith and confidence in me, that watched me make this terrible mistake. But everyone that I misled – everyone in the media, my staff, the people that I – that I lied to about this – they all deserve an apology.” The congressman again refuses to own up to perverse deeds, which become collectively “this terrible mistake.” The use of the singular is interesting. Weiner himself has earlier admitted that he was in contact with “about six” women over a three-year period. Now miraculously this has shrunk down to a unique “mistake.” The word mistake implies non-intentionality; even an accident. This part of the conference comes after a reporter asked Weiner about blaming the episode on Andrew Breitbart. Weiner was extremely reluctant to apologize in a simple, unqualified sentence to Breitbart. Notice how, at the beginning of the response, Weiner invokes his (conspicuously absent) wife once again. 

Weiner said: “I don’t know the exact ages of the women, and I don’t know if you do. I’m going to respect their privacy. But they were all adults – at least to the best of my knowledge they were all adults – and they were – and they were engaging – and they were engaging in these conversations consensually.” Weiner would have respected the privacy of the now-publicly-implicated women by not bothering them in the first place. He claims not to have known “the exact ages of the women” as if that exculpated him, as if their “age” was the primary objection to what he did. Also, it is not clear that the women “were engaging in these conversations consensually.” Presumably in each case, Weiner contacted the other party through “social media.” Later, having established communication, he sent salacious or pornographic images of himself. Did he first politely ask, do you mind if I send a naughty picture of myself to you? One doubts it.

                                                                          — Comments —

Fred Owens writes:

Thomas  F. Bertonneau seems to think that Congressman Weiner owes us an explanation for his behavior. I disagree. Weiner owes his complete apology and the fullest truth to God. But not to us. Doesn’t it say in the Bible, in Psalms 116, that all men are liars? Have you ever told a lie, Mr. Bertonneau?

Yes, Weiner equivocated, about a matter that was no one else’s business. And my anger is not at him, but at those who asked the questions. I say this as a matter of protecting myself from similar inquiries. I wish to protect Weiner’s privacy in order to secure my own.

Laura writes:

It was reasonable for journalists to ask these questions and it was the public’s business. Weiner is an elected official. This is improper behavior and a poor reflection on his character. It shows a lack of restraint. The public deserves to know who he is. Having discovered these photos, journalists were obliged to publicize them. You are not an elected official and so this scrutiny of Weiner is no threat to you and your security. It is irrelevant whether Mr. Bertonneau has ever lied; the accusation of hypocrisy is unwarranted. His point is that Weiner’s apology is insincere. It would have been better to have acknowledged what he had done and offered no further comment or clearly stated that it was wrong. 

The biblical expression in Psalm 116 refers to the false hopes offered by those who do not believe in God. It does not mean literally that all men are liars and are incapable of telling the truth.

Mr. Owens responds:

Your reply to is quite excellent and to the point. I define the term “liar” as someone who lies habitually and carelessly, and I say that I am not a liar. But I have lied a time or two — I’m not very good at it, and I usually get caught. My ears turn red and my conscience bothers me — but still I have told a lie a time or two. Haven’t you?

As for adulterous behavior, I will not admit to that, but for entertaining lustful notions about women, and about certain women, yes I admit to that, and I would say almost every man who reads this blog has done that — which is short of sending explicit photos, but hardly innocent.

Laura writes:

All lying is wrong but lying to journalists as a public official is an especially serious form of lying. Anyone who is elected to office knows he will be subject to scrutiny and prying questions. He either decides to respond to these honestly or in a way that is acceptably evasive, or he becomes a liar. 

Desire is not wrong. Setting one’s will and actions behind improper desire is wrong. And that’s what Weiner did.

Mr. Bertonneau writes:

Fred misses an essential point. If Weiner had announced that he was resigning his position or if he had done anything else that would count as a noticeable act of contrition then his “apology” would not require quotation marks in the discussion of it. Once Weiner had finished his performance on Monday, not only was he still guilty of his misdemeanors, but also he had compounded them by uttering a phony mea culpa in which such phrases as “I take full responsibility” were empty and repellent.  

Fred is also misled by Weiner, who tried to shift the discussion from his perverse acts to his having lied about them; the “apology” was more about having lied than it was about having committed the acts. This is again weasel-like and despicable and yet that is where Fred goes. 

What, short of resigning, might have constituted a noticeable act of contrition? Here’s a suggestion. Weiner could have said, I am scheduling a town-hall meeting with my constituents a week from today; I will ask them then and there whether they think I should resign, and I will abide by the majority opinion. That would at least have shown a willingness to submit to third-party judgment. But Weiner’s words drew a narcissistic circle around his actions, the purpose of which was to evade and shield himself from third-party judgment.

Mr. Bertonneau adds:

Another thing: Weiner not only lied; he accused another person, Andrew Breitbart, of being the responsible party, and of having committed the crime of hacking his Twitter account. Is a false accusation of that sort not itself a crime?

Laura writes:

“Weiner could have said, I am scheduling a town-hall meeting with my constituents a week from today; I will ask them then and there whether they think I should resign, and I will abide by the majority opinion.”

That would have been a great way to handle this.

Mr. Bertonneau writes: 

Desire is constitutive of human nature, as Plato and Augustine and Sigmund Freud remarked. Putting restraint on desire is constitutive of a mature and responsible social being, as Plato and Augustine and Sigmund Freud remarked. An intact society does not judge people merely because they experience natural desires; it judges them when they fail to restrain anti-social desires – when they act on them. It is the fact of his having acted on anti-social desires that differentiates Congressman Weiner from Fred Owens and T. F. Bertonneau and throws him open to judgment. Human nature being weak, morality recognizes that people will occasionally let base impulses get the better of them. When that happens, what society looks for is proneness to contrition. Such proneness can only be demonstrated by penance. Merely saying “I’m sorry” does not count as penance although that is what Weiner wants us to think it means.

Mr.Bertonneau adds:

I’d like to add one more word about Fred Owens’ response to my original remarks concerning Anthony Weiner. Mr. Owens wrote: “Thomas F. Bertonneau seems to think that Congressman Weiner owes us an explanation for his behavior.” Not at all! I think that Congressman Weiner owes society a demonstration of his contrition; it is only through noticeable contrition that he can guarantee to others that he possesses a conscience and is not the creepy instance of egomania and perversion that he appears to be. As for the explanation – we already know it. It is moral weakness compounded by a sense of entitlement and invulnerability. Augustine referred to this as superbia.

Charles writes:

I was thinking about this very same thing this morning. Mr. Weiner was – as we say in these parts – crawfishing like crazy – as he was explaining that he was hacked, that he was going to get to the bottom of it, while he was doing his apologetic – non-apologetic tap dance. No one bought it. Sorrow is one thing. Regret is another. And crawfishing backwards quite another. What the man needs is genuine repentance. He needs to say this is a sin, a moral evil, I need forgiveness from god and my wife ….. and I resign. 

In fact, if he would have admitted all this at the beginning, it would have been over by now. His stubborness will make his exit from office even more painful for himself. 

Fred Owens wrote: 

Yes, Weiner equivocated, about a matter that was no one else’s business. And my anger is not at him, but at those who asked the questions. I say this as a matter of protecting myself from similar inquiries. I wish to protect Weiner’s privacy in order to secure my own. 

No so Fred. Once Mr. Weiner sent photos, text messages, etc., he placed his sexual peculiarities on the net, where everything is public and nothing is censored…………well almost nothing. The originating address from the photos was from a sitting U.S. congressman. I believe that, due to Mr. Weiner’s high profile position and national responsibilities that the journalists were obliged to ask about this. I would say the same thing if it was a Republican. Our national leaders should be above this, yet, they are increasingly being exposed as exhibitionists. 

The only anger Mr. Weiner should have is for his own failings. He will resign soon. 

By the way, what is with these folks who want to post pictures of their semi-clothed bodies on the web? Whatever happened to modesty? I do not recognize my own country anymore.

Laura writes:

How can someone be so intoxicated with his own image? I can’t understand why a grown man would get pleasure exhibiting himself this way. No one could take him seriously as a major politican after this.

Mr. Bertonneau writes:

You wrote: “I can’t understand why a grown man would get pleasure exhibiting himself this way.” Neither can I. I will turn fifty-seven this year. When I was twenty or thirty, I was a not unhandsome, despite my thick glasses. Part of my spiritual maturity, I believe, is that I recognize that passing through middle age means an alteration in physical appearance. I try to be as distinguished as I can, but I don’t have any vanity – or any delusions – about my attractiveness. I’m slab-faced, flabby in the waist, and I have loose flesh under my eyes. Weiner is younger than I am, but the signs of male aging are evident in his face. He apparently thinks of himself, however, as still a teenager, or a “twenty-something.” That would be consistent with his narcissism, or what I assert to be his narcissism, which is in tension with his reality principle. His flirtations with college-girls bolster the plausibility of the analysis. 

We can push this intuition further. The pleasure that someone like Weiner gets from exposing his middle-aged body to young women must in part be the pleasure of springing the trump of his unattractiveness on his victims. I earlier used the words perverse and wicked to describe Weiner’s misdeeds. I come back to those words now. Pleasing oneself by springing one’s ugliness on young women is a troll-like activity indicative of a wicked person. We should not let the flashing gadgets distract us. Weiner is a “flasher,” a type of criminal whom actual policemen used actually to clap into jail.

Laura writes:

I agree he is a flasher but I don’t think he was aware of his own unattractiveness. The photos suggest gargantuan vanity and pleasure in his own body. It looks like he has been doing some weight lifting. Extreme vanity seems to be a common result of spending hours in front of mirrors lifting weights and observing isolated muscles defy middle age. It goes to the head. It’s the male version of anorexia nervosa.

Lawrence Auster writes:

Thomas Bertonneau writes: 

“…as when Newt Gingrich (even he) admitted shenanigans and resigned, more or less in the same sentence.” 

I don’t think this is correct. Gingrich’s resignation as speaker had nothing to do with any shenanagans or scandal. There was a lot of unhappiness with Gingrich in the GOP House caucus, and then the Republicans lost seats in the 1998 elections, and Gingrich, acting in the manner of a parliamentary leader who has been defeated, stepped down.

Mr. Bertonneau writes:

The Wikipedia article on Gingrich says this: “In the mid-1990s, Gingrich began an affair with House of Representatives staffer Callista Bisek, who is 23 years his junior. They continued their affair during the Lewinsky scandal, when Gingrich became a leader of the Republican investigation of President Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with his alleged affairs. In 2000, Gingrich married Bisek shortly after his divorce from second wife Ginther. He and Callista currently live in McLean, Virginia.” 

I recollect that infidelity rumors about Gingrich surfaced in the aftermath of the impeachment and that they influenced Gingrich’s decision to step down. I recall him mentioning or at least alluding to those rumors in his speech. Whatever the specifics, in a compromised situation, Gingrich acted contritely, whereas Clinton did not and Weiner has not. To me this says that Gingrich despite his moral demerits might actually have a conscience, which Clinton and Weiner, on evidence, do not. This is not a defense of Gingrich; it is merely the citation of a difference. The year 1998 was effectively pre-Internet and I cannot find a video record of Gingrich’s speech.  

Mr. Auster replies:

I suppose it’s possible that there was non-public knowledge of the affair among House members at that point and that that was a factor in Gingrich’s stepping down. But I do not remember any reference to it at the time. If Gingrich in his resignation speech had alluded to but not specified some personal impropriety, that would have been most unusual and would have been discussed. 

In my knowledge, which may be incorrect, there was no public knowledge about the relationship until spring or summer of ’99, after Gingrich had left Congress and divorce proceedings had been initiated. That’s when Callista testified under oath about their relationship. 

However, here’s another speculation: maybe Gingrich stepped down as Speaker in order to be free to divorce his wife and marry his mistress. He couldn’t have done that while being Speaker. He knew his personal life was incompatible with high public office, so he removed himself from office.

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