EDITORIAL

Just go, Mr. Weiner

7/29/2013

Anthony Weiner, the former congressman and current candidate for mayor of New York City, makes Eliot Spitzer look good. Heck, he makes Mark Sanford, Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Michael Douglas, and Pee-wee Herman look good — at least their vices were more or less traditional.

Aren’t we better than this? Isn’t New York? Could we talk about something else — such as how to make our cities better and how to build community?

Mr. Weiner’s do-it-yourself pornography suggests, at the least, that he is unhinged. The virtual world he is part of — sending salacious talk and the most personal of personal pictures to total strangers — seems sick as well.

Such electronic exchanges are referred to by some of their partakers as “relationships.” They are not. And Mr. Weiner’s online photos and text messages are not “erotic.” They are creepy.

Nothing about this second scandal that emerged last week, and Mr. Weiner’s spinning of it in a hastily called press conference, is real or honest — including his wife standing by him. Mr. Weiner called his wife an “asset.” She’s a person, not an asset. The woman is a wronged and humiliated spouse.

Mr. Weiner needs therapy more than he needs a political campaign. He is too unbalanced and immature to hold any public office.

For the sake of the rest of us, he needs to disappear, keep permanent silence. He has diminished our political climate, which is already low enough and desperately needs uplift.

Mr. Weiner got his shot at redemption, and blew it. Just go away — for good.