December 3, 2016

I'm skeptical about this story that Anthony Weiner left sex-addiction treatment early because he ran out of money.

Page Six says he was supposed to stay 90 days, but he bailed out after 35 days because he ran out of money.

I assume the reason for leaving is that the election is over, Hillary lost, and there's no reason for him to hide away and pretend to be reforming himself. Freed from the obligation to stop impairing Hillary and Huma's rise to power, he can lunge toward freedom.

Page Six calls him "unemployable," but I assume he's writing a memoir. Tell it all, Anthony. You've got great material, and you love to write about yourself. You're not shy about sharing sexual details. I'm sure you'll be just fine. What a great tragicomic character!

I know, it will be a problem not hurting Huma and the son you two had together. Maybe you can't write the great memoir you have the material to write. Maybe you'll end up bullshitting about addiction and treatment and hawking it on women's TV, duly abasing yourself. Please don't do that. Write a real memoir. Tell the truth.

As David Foster Wallace wrote in "How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart":
Obviously, a good commercial memoir's first loyalty has got to be to the reader, the person who's spending money and time to access the consciousness of someone he wishes to know and will never meet. But none of [Austin's memoir's] loyalties are to the reader. The author's primary allegiance seems to be to her family and friends....

33 comments:

Michael K said...

Then, of course, there's the gigolo racket. It worked well for Kerry.

Rob said...

Yes, lunging toward freedom. Thrusting. Plunging. Ramming. Althouse, you missed your calling. There was a fortune to be made in soft porn.

cassandra lite said...

He'd end up like Congressman Russo in House of Cards.

Wilbur said...

Tracy Austin? The tennis player?

Rae said...

He craves attention and revels in his own destruction. He'll appear on a reality TV Show in the next year. Is Celebrity Rehab still on the air? Maybe he'll start his own.

mockturtle said...

A 'tell-all' involving pedophilia may become a best seller and, even worse, it might embolden pedophiles to see their degeneracy as, if not 'normal', at least common and even acceptable.

After the big transgender phase, I wondered what was next. Now we know. And it gets worse than Weiner, folks. Much worse.

Jupiter said...

"Tell it all, Anthony. You've got great material, and you love to write about yourself."

Does anyone really want to know *more* about this sorry creature? The poor bastard managed to destroy his own life by taking pictures of his underwear. What do you want to read about? The f-stop he used? The lighting? How he framed the shots?

I expect he has some interesting insights regarding the Clinton-Abedin relationship. Those two are still in control of the Clinton Foundation, and Abedin is quite young. We haven't heard the last of those two. But as you say, Weiner can't dish on that without harming his wife and son. And now that they are separated, Clinton would have no compunction about arranging for him to shoot himself in the back of the head six times. Do you suppose he has life insurance, supplied by the Foundation?

campy said...

"Clinton would have no compunction about arranging for him to shoot himself in the back of the head six times."

With his non-dominant hand, no doubt.

Clyde said...

Althouse, the truth is not in him. Most people tell themselves little white lies about the bad things they've done, and almost everyone has done something bad or stupid over the course of their lifetime. Weiner has done more bad things than most people, and has a whole mountain of little white lies piled up. There may be a truth buried under them somewhere, but it's needle-in-a-haystack territory. Or given the effluent Weiner has sent our way, maybe it's a pony buried under there.

Fabi said...

Sounds like a ghost-writing gig for Laslo! I'd buy two copies.

tcrosse said...

It could be a fun parlor game to think up titles for his tell-all memoir.
'Weiner in the Rye' , anyone ?

Eric said...

He didn't run out of money. He ran out of a willingness to spend it on this nonsense. Party time is back!

mccullough said...

I liked the memoir The Kid Stays in the Picture

tcrosse said...

Bravo mccullough

YoungHegelian said...

Page Six calls him "unemployable,"

I doubt that. I doubt that very much.

The only problem with Weiner's sexual shenanigans among the NYC crew that Weiner ran with is that he was stupid enough to get caught.

I mean, jeezo-peep, maybe he can just move to Massachusetts & run for the Senate. The electorate of MA seemed to have a bottomless well of tolerance when it came to Ted Kennedy's sexual indiscretions, even when they were fatal to the other party involved.

Bill Peschel said...

Clyde, that's the fun of a memoir: To see how the person handles this.

It's like reading "Sex Object," Jessica Valenti's memoir. With each revelation, you really understand how little she understands herself and the consequences of her choices. Some of it can be blamed on the culture, which fails to recognize that heavy duty drug abuse, even if you get out of it unscathed, apparently does a number on your chromosomes and affects your future children.

I mean, this is a woman who book opens with the aphorism from Joan Didion's "Play It As It Lays," 'I am what I am. To look for 'reasons' is beside the point.'

I mean, as a feminist who blames patriarchy for everything that has gone wrong with her, she either meant that ironically, or she really didn't think this through. Considering the flunked out of Tulane, I'm betting on the latter.

glenn said...

Maybe the clinic admin wouldn't let WeinerWagger have a cell phone.

wildswan said...

"Fabi said...
Sounds like a ghost-writing gig for Laslo! I'd buy two copies."

Probably Laslo would become disgusted and emerge as stern Puritan moralist.

SukieTawdry said...

I'm skeptical about sex addiction therapy. Hell, I'm skeptical about sex addiction. I'm skeptical Huma didn't know anything about his proclivities until Andrew Breitbart exposed them, but then, I view everything connected to the Clintons with a jaundiced eye.

As for a tell-all, I'm sure Carlos has plenty of dirt to dish that wouldn't necessarily taint his son (who already is best known for being in bed with daddy while he was sexting his package). In fact, he might know enough to make a good living not dishing it. But as for an honest, soul-searching memoir, I don't think he's anywhere near that yet.

traditionalguy said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
traditionalguy said...

And this is also the week Tiger Wood finished his latest swing rehab. Now get back in the game guys.

khesanh0802 said...

Weiner could get millions exposing the inside relationship of Huma and Hillary and the rest of the crooked women around Hillary. I don't know if anyone would dare publish it, but there has to be a ton of material!

mockturtle said...

Probably Laslo would become disgusted and emerge as stern Puritan moralist.

I suspect Laslo already is a 'stern moralist'. Maybe not a Puritan.

Mark said...

Unemployable?

Why? Because he's a slimy, scummy, low-life deviant?? That hasn't stopped Algore or Bill or other Dems. How's John Edwards doing these days? Is he scraping by on welfare or hanging out at the 7-11 for day labor, or is he still making a pretty good living?

William said...

I think, as a general rule, it takes money and leisure time to be a full fledged sex addict. It's a disease of the affluent......I don't think Weiner is a full blown (heh) sex addict like Charley Sheen or Gov. Spitzer. I would say he's more like a guy with an unusual fetish. Sexting seems like an inexpensive form of indulgence. It's probably not too time consuming either. I think it's flagrantly wrong to engage in such activities with a minor or with your own child laying in bed beside you, but the act of sexting seems relatively harmless. Maybe Weiner could step up and be a spokesman for the sexting community. He's a latter day Lenny Bruce, a martyr to America's Puritanical instincts. Sexters deserve to have their dignity and reputations just as much as the transgendered. Weiner has been a victim of press and public bullying as a result of his unorthodox sexual expressions. Maybe he could sell that narrative. It's worth a shot.

Roughcoat said...

When I came to the age of sexual awakening, I learned that there were three types of girls: those who were "frigid," those who were "nymphos," and ... Lace Curtain Irish, who alternated between the two.

tim maguire said...

William, I generally agree, and don't buy that sex can be addictive. Certainly not the way drugs or alcohol can be. But Weiner got caught three times. The first time it destroyed his political career. The second time it destroyed his comeback. The third time it destroyed his marriage and dealt a serious blow to his wife's career.

The first time, oh well. Skeezy, gross, but basically harmless. The second time, the third time...something's seriously wrong with this guy.

robother said...

I get the sense that any Weiner memoir will be less tell all than show all. Available only online, and in serialized form, targeted at the Young Adult audience.

mockturtle said...

Tim, I think the threat of being caught is part of the thrill. I remember back in the 1980's when a local politician got caught having sex with another man at a rest stop. I thought, "How stupid must this guy be??!!" but learned later that such risky trysts are part of the excitement. I even had a gay friend who would solicit sex at rest stops.

Zach said...

Regarding the David Foster Wallace essay:

1) I think he would have loved "Open," in which Andre Agassi goes into great depth about the very things Wallace is interested in.

2) I think it's a mistake to assume that the players in a drama necessarily feel the emotions that they evoke in the spectators of that drama. (To be fair, this is the point of the essay.) Watching on television, I experience Tiger Woods' making a tournament winning put as a fantasy of dominance. Woods experiences it as the reality of dominance -- a certain number of shots hit and missed, a swing which is always in a precarious balance between what he wants to do, what he can do, and what he has to do.

Weiner is a great worm, but I don't know if he feels like a worm. Checking into rehab just until the election is over could feel like a canny move by someone who knows how to play the game to someone in Weiner's position.

JAORE said...

Not a book....perhaps a short story.

mockturtle said...

Checking into rehab just until the election is over could feel like a canny move by someone who knows how to play the game to someone in Weiner's position.

Hah! You think he checked in voluntarily? I'd say he was incarcerated until after the election.

MayBee said...

He should troll everybody and open a pizza and hotdog restaurant.