Michele Bachmann vs. Huma Abedin.

This is a weird story, which I first noticed in the context of Ed Rollins and John McCain denouncing the accusations as ugly and unsubstantiated. It wasn't anything to me until I heard them saying it's nothing. Now, I need to search to figure out what it was that drove Michele Bachmann (and 4 other Congresscreatures) to say Abedin is part of some Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the federal government.

They pointed the finger first at Abedin, who is deputy chief of staff to Secretary Clinton and has been one of her closest aides for nearly two decades. Abedin, who was born in the U.S. and is of Pakistani descent, has been described by both Hillary and former President Bill Clinton as a daughter.

But Bachmann and the others wrote, "Huma Abedin has three family members -- her late father, her mother and her brother -- connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations."...

In a statement, Bachmann did not back down, saying she would "not be silent as this administration appeases our enemies" and saying she wants a full investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood.

Bachmann's antagonists have long been portrayed her as crazy, but this seems crazy.

NY Post is still kicking Anthony Weiner, this time for buying "pathetic" flowers for Huma.

They only cost $22.97, purchased at a — gasp! — bodega:

"It's ridiculous, and it could make her angrier," said Elayne Rapping, a professor of American Studies at SUNY Buffalo. "He knows there are photographers and reporters outside of his house. He could have easily called up a florist and had flowers delivered to her -- this seems to be more of a gesture for the press than for her. A way of him saying, 'I'm being a good husband.' "

Well, let's make sure that gesture backfires. (Can't the guy get some credit for patronizing a neighborhood shop and for not being snooty?)

A clerk at the ritzy Madison Avenue Florists identified Weiner's peace offering as orange roses, white carnations and blue agapanthuses -- and added that they're a lame way to say, "I'm sorry."

"It's ill-conceived," the clerk said. "Carnations are not really popular among women these days -- and orange roses? He should have stuck to red."

Call in the ritzy clerk to sniff at the disgraced Weiner! I love the remark "It's ill-conceived." I'm going to use that in casual conversation when I get the chance.

CORRECTION: The headline originally said "... flowers for Human."

"But a marriage is between two people and – this is going to come as a shock to some women..."

" ... you’re not in it."

Should people who don't know Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin talk about their marriage?
	No. A marriage exists within a sacred closed circle of 2.
	No. We don't know enough to have an intelligent opinion.
	No. Leaving them alone will help them avoid divorce and divorce is bad for society.
	Yes. It's an interesting subject to speculate about even without full information.
	Yes. A spouse needs to hear from others in order to make good decisions.
	Yes. A marriage is intermeshed with society and that makes a high-profile marriage a public issue.
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Weiner's resigning!

Oh, no no no no no! Don't do it, Anthony!

Mr. Weiner, a Democrat, came to the conclusion that he could no longer serve after having long discussions with his wife,  Huma Abedin, when she returned home on Tuesday after traveling abroad with her boss, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Oh, no! What will he do now? Become a stay-at-home dad and write a memoir about it all?

I would love to know what those conversations between Huma and Hillary were like, not that Anthony will ever know what that was. I suppose some clever novelist could write a roman a clef and make up what those 2 women might have said to each other. Did Hillary ever speak directly to Anthony? Did Bill? Did Bill, Hillary, and Huma ever confront Anthony at the same time?

AND: I hope the widdle weiner within is all right. That's the important thing.

The 6 Possible Meanings of Anthony Weiner's Announcement that He's Checking into Treatment.

1. Anthony Weiner has realized, in all sincerity, that his masturbatory use of the internet is an illness for which there is effective professional treatment, to which he will submit because he desires wellness, because wellness is good and because he needs to be well to do his duty to his wife, his expected child, and his constituents.

2. Anthony Weiner would like to deprive us of the capacity to criticize and mock him him, and if he can successfully impose the illness template on the controversy, the mockers and critiques will — instead of him — seem like the bad people. He hopes.

3. After the "Huma is pregnant" gambit failed to turn off the criticism, Weiner had to move beyond the manly, dignified insistence on privacy and on to the more pathetic, humble cry to be left alone.

4. If he's in treatment, he's physically out of sight. He's off somewhere, and that might work to close the door. Perhaps we'll wait until he emerges again. Time will have passed. Things will have cooled off. And the reemerging Weiner will be the new Weiner, the after-treatment Weiner, and people will — he hopes — speak about who this new man is.

5. Pelosi, Wasserman Schultz, and other Democratic Party leaders told him he had to get the hell out of sight, and he followed orders.

6. Weiner is not really going into treatment. He just needs some time by himself, with his computer, and his wiener.

"Even if scandal-stained Rep. Anthony Weiner didn't want to stay in office, he needs to stay in office."

The NY Post explains:

Unlike many of his peers in the House, Weiner doesn't have a business or even a law degree to fall back on.

Weiner, 46, took home $156,117 in 2010, according to his federal tax returns released by his staff. His humiliated wife, Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, earned $154,000 in 2009, federal records show....

[H]e could grovel to cable TV execs for talking-head "analyst" gigs... 

Wow. Any ideas for jobs for him? Does this affect your analysis of whether Huma should leave him (if you stoop to analyzing things like that)?

I think this means he'll stay in Congress, at least until 2012. I'm glad about that. I want politicians to weather these sexual scandals. There must be hundreds of them waiting to burst out, and if Weiner is destroyed, it means all those other men with their Twitter and Facebook peccadilloes are sweating it out and susceptible to blackmail and various other manipulations.

His love for "I Only Have Eyes For You" by The Flamingos must be a kind of blind love.

Jaltcoh says: "I almost regret finding this, since I've been watching it compulsively over and over. It might not be the best song ever, but it's at least in the running."

This lushly romantic old song makes an interesting soundtrack to the news of the last couple weeks. Why didn't Anthony Weiner only have eyes for Huma Abedin? You could say that if he'd stuck to sexting — i.e., writing — he'd have saved his eyes for her. But he only started the writing when he liked the woman's photograph.

Is there really any love so fixated on one woman that the man can't even see other women? What a grand fantasy of love! I have no idea if this is the best song ever, but it is surely in the running as the song that creates the most unrealistic expectation of what love will be like.

"A Muslim woman from Saudi Arabia and a Jewish native of Brooklyn — 'the future of the world to be.'"

That was Bill Clinton's wedding toast to Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner last July.

Oh, that's an unfortunate prophecy for the world!

Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin, is pregnant.

The NYT reports.

ADDED: Isn't this convenient? Turn off the criticism, lest it hurt Huma. We're supposed to accept the assertion, of course. Is it true. Oh! Shut up! How terrible to question this! It’s really outrageous. The implication is outrageous. It's outrageous.

Kirsten Powers on Anthony Weiner: "This is not about sex. It’s about dominating and inflicting physical pain on a woman."

Powers, who dated him a decade ago, and defended him last week, is now calling on him to resign:

By far the most disturbing information that we have been privy to—there is, no doubt, more out there that we don’t know—is the transcript of a nine-month "sexting" relationship Weiner had with a Las Vegas blackjack dealer. Radar Online posted the transcript, and it is rife with misogyny and distorted views about women. In referring to oral sex, Wiener tells her, “You will gag on me before you c** with me in you” and “[I’m] thinking about gagging your hot mouth with my c***.” This is not about sex. It’s about dominating and inflicting physical pain on a woman, a fantasy the hard-corn porn industry makes billions of dollars on selling to men. You don’t want to gag a woman with your penis unless you have some serious issues with the way you see women.

Hard-corn porn? Hilarious typos aside... let's not go all Women's Studies about the man's efforts at writing about sex. It is not an easy literary task.

Okay. I just went and read the entire Weiner/Weiss transcript. (PDF.)  Read it out loud, in fact! A few thoughts:



1. This is my favorite exchange. (Boldface is Weiner.)

are you as passionate in the sack as u are about politics? I'm getting bored of my f*** friend

baby you'd be crawling for the door to prevent me from f***ing you silly

nice, just what I'm looking for. I want to bang the future mayor of nyc!

making me h**d

It's the idea of getting to be mayor that really excites him.

2. I don't think it's "rife with misogyny and distorted views about women," as Powers put it. The quotes she extracts follow an approach to texting that the 2 have established in which they get each other going with blunt sex talk.

aahh...wish I was in the shower with you to help

you give good h**d?

i've been told really good...I love doing it

wow a jewish girl who sucks c***! this thing is ready to do damage

and swallows every drop. god damn how do I get you here to f*** me?

<= thinking about gagging your hot mouth with my c***

the anticipation of f****** you is driving me crazy! come to vegas so I can suck your c*** for an hour. you must be in the shower...i am getting very nice visual before bed. I'll probably have some filthy dreams about you (again!)"

It goes on like that. He's not saying anything she doesn't welcome. You can easily see that in context. Powers says "This is not about sex." But it obviously is.

3. Based on the entire transcript, I would say that the only problem with his attitude toward Weiss is not "misogyny," but the way he maintains a minimal contact with her over the course of nearly a year, when she keeps begging him to come to Vegas and to "f*** the s***" out of her. I think he knows there's no way he's traveling out there for her, yet she might imagine that he will. It would be decent to tell her that, but, really, she seems like a strong person who knows what she is doing, getting a thrill out of playful intimacy with a celebrity she admires.

4. I have no idea whether Huma Abedin objects to his fooling around like this. For all we know, she reads these written dialogues aloud to him and the 2 of them laugh about it. We do not know.

I talk with Jim Pinkerton about Weiner... and Wisconsin.

ADDED: Snippet #1: I express sympathy for Weiner and make Pinkerton laugh...




ADDED: Snippet #2: I doubt whether Weiner violated a law and make Pinkerton laugh again...



ADDED: Snippet #3: I bring up the gray underpants and make Pinkerton laugh again...



ADDED: Snippet #4: I bring up Chris Lee and make Pinkerton laugh again...



ADDED: Snippet #5: I bring up Arnold Schwarzenegger and make Pinkerton laugh again...



ADDED: Snippet #6:

"When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success..."

"... to make him feel like our hero, he's very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs. These days, women don't spend a lot of time thinking about how they can give their men what they need."

Something Dr. Laura said back in 2008... about Eliot Spitzer.

What reminded me of it? Something Chris Matthews said about Anthony Weiner's wife Huma Abedin: "But maybe she’s party responsible if she knew about it?"

Where's Huma Abedin? What should she do?

The Daily News headlines: "Huma Abedin is notably absent from husband Anthony Weiner's tearful sexting confession."

Huma Abedin wasn't standing by her man....

A top aide to Secretary of State Clinton, Abedin issued no statements of support for her embattled husband. She was a no-show Monday at two public State Department events.

"I love my wife very much, and we have no intention of splitting up over this," Weiner insisted. "I love her very much, and she loves me."

No intention of splitting up over this. Those last 2 words jumped out at me.

Several political pros cheered her absence yesterday.

"In general, it's very difficult for women constituents to look at the grieving wife up there," said Democratic consultant George Arzt. "It's bad PR."

The better move for Weiner, Arzt said, was "to look like he can take it all by himself and stand up there."

University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato took to Twitter with a similar view: "At least Weiner didn't make his wife come out and gaze lovingly at him."

Ha ha. He's a PR expert! He's not advising Weiner in advance. He's dealing with the facts he's stuck with. This is what the PR man says when the wife isn't there. What did the Democratic consultants say when Silda Spitzer stood by her man?

The New York Post headlines: "Weiner & wife worlds apart/:Snake slithers when Huma is globetrotting with Hill."

As the "body woman" to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Huma Abedin is tasked with accompanying the former first lady on diplomatic globetrotting missions.

Weiner, it seems, uses the timing of her foreign affairs to pursue domestic ones online.

For instance, last month, while Abedin and Clinton were in Rome meeting with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Weiner was chatting up Texas nursing student Meagan Broussard.

I wonder what conversations Huma is having with Hillary — the world's most famous stander by of her man.

The political power couple met while Abedin was on the campaign trail during Clinton's 2008 White House bid. By 2009, they were engaged....

Didn't Abedin know the kind of man she was marrying? He was 45, and had never married previously. As Hillary's close assistant, she had to be sophisticated about the ways of oversexed, extroverted, narcissistic husbands. What was the marriage supposed to be, anyway? They were conspicuously a glamorous "power couple," for public purposes, but what was he allowed to do in private? What were their understandings? At the press conference yesterday, Weiner said that she asked how he could be so dumb, which made me think what mattered most was that people found out and she was shamed and embarrassed. Was it the public image that mattered, or was it to be a loyal, deeply bonded marriage in private?

Unlike Bill and Hillary, Weiner and Abedin have only been married a year, and they have no children. And the husband's career is deeply compromised at this point. They're not going to become the Democratic Party's next Bill and Hillary. The glamorous power couple is defunct. What happens to the private Tony and Huma?

Will Abedin divorce Weiner?
	Yes.
	No, she'll stand by her man.
	Divorce? She should be able to get an annulment!
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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.