Published: July 23, 2013
At some point, the full story of Anthony Weiner and his sexual relationships and texting habits will finally be told. In the meantime, the serially evasive Mr. Weiner should take his marital troubles and personal compulsions out of the public eye, away from cameras, off the Web and out of the race for mayor of New York City.
Mr. Weiner, who resigned from Congress two years ago after sending lewd messages and photos of his crotch to women he had not met, was forced to revisit the issue
on Tuesday, and so were we all. A Web site called The Dirty had another
woman’s story, another round of sex texts, and another picture of Mr.
Weiner’s penis. The startling news was that this new episode apparently
took place last summer, only a few months before Mr. Weiner was to begin
another run at public office. The marital trauma that Mr. Weiner and
his wife, Huma Abedin, had said was behind them was not as far behind as
we thought.
When the first texts were revealed two years ago, Mr. Weiner lied about
it, saying he had been the victim of hackers. Then he owned up,
tearfully abandoned his office and retreated into private life.
Then he
was back, telling the world that therapy and his wife’s forgiveness had
turned him around and that he was ready to begin a new chapter. That
turned out to be the mayor’s race, which he entered in May. What he did
not say then, and what voters did not realize until Tuesday, was that
his resignation had not been the end of his sexual misconduct.
The timing here matters, as it would for any politician who violates the
public’s trust and then asks to have it back. Things are different now,
he insists. “This behavior is behind me,” he said again on Tuesday. He
suggested that people should have known that his sexting was an
unresolved problem well into 2012.
That’s ridiculous and speaks to a familiar but repellent pattern of
misleading and evasion. It’s up to Mr. Weiner if he wants to keep
running, to count on voters to forgive and forget and hand him the keys
to City Hall. But he has already disqualified himself.
It’s difficult not to feel for Ms. Abedin. The couple deserved privacy
as they worked through their problems — and they had it, until they
re-emerged in public life and Mr. Weiner decided he was a good fit to
run New York City. Mr. Weiner and Ms. Abedin have been saying that his
sexual behavior is not the public’s business. Well, it isn’t, until they
make it our business by plunging into a political campaign.
Mr. Weiner says he is staying in the mayoral race. To those who know his
arrogance and have grown tired of the tawdry saga he has dragged the
city into, this is not surprising.
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