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Monday, June 6, 2011

Anthony Weiner: "To be clear, the picture is of me and I sent it."

Transcribed from the live feed.

ADDED: He's deeply sorry. And he confesses that "over the past few years, I have engaged in several inappropriate conversations conducted over Twitter, Facebook, email, and occasionally, on the phone with women I had met on line. I have exchanged messages and photos of an explicit nature with about 6 women over the last 3 years. For the most part, these communications took place before my marriage, though some have sadly took (sic) place after. To be clear, I have never met any of these women or had physical relationships at any time. I haven't told the truth, and I have done things I deeply regret. I brought pain to the people I care about the most, and the people who believed in me. And for that, I'm deeply sorry."

On to questions from the press.

MORE: A reporter asks about an "X-rated photo" that Andrew Breitbart has implied that he has: "Can you say that is not true?" Weiner: "No, I cannot."

AND: Asked what his wife has known and when, he talks about her awareness of the things done before the marriage, then is pinned down into saying that he deceived her about the famous gray-underpants-tweet just as he deceived the rest of us.

ALSO: Describing his wife's reaction, he says she called him dumb.

AND: I think Weiner did a fine job of coming clean, taking responsibility, and apologizing. I had predicted that he would "announce he's entering treatment for sex addiction. Possibly with a grim/stoical Huma Abedin at his side." I'm glad he didn't do that. He didn't blame anybody else or any "outside force." He didn't use the nonapology "sorry if you were offended" form.

Now, it seemed pretty obvious that he would have continued deceiving us if he could have gotten away with it, but having made the decision to confess and apologize, he did that well. Of course, I'm assuming that there is nothing more to this story than what he spilled today.

He's not resigning, and he's not splitting up with his wife, he said. I don't know if he can control all that. If you were his wife, would you leave him? Realize that you don't know what their understandings are. She may very well accept this behavior. He doesn't physically contact the other women. He does things on line that sophisticated people might characterize as more like enjoying pornography than like having an in-person sexual affair.

NOTE: I'm not suggesting you're unsophisticated if you don't minimize this behavior and liken it to the use of pornography. I'm not even saying that you're unsophisticated if you expect husbands to refrain from using pornography... and from masturbating. But I do think that intelligent spouses draw their lines in different places.

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