It's the finger-wagging that grates most. It was bad enough when Congressman Weiner feigned indignation when ABC news correspondents tried to get him to answer a simple question about why he wasn't planning on pressing charges against those who allegedly hacked his Twitter account and then insisted on talking about the issues "he was elected to discuss" (e.g., the debt ceiling). Round and round they went, with the reporters repeating their questions and Weiner getting more and more indignant. Yes, that was bad.
But I watched him in one video (now apparently removed from You Tube) actually scolding the ABC interviewer, Jonathan Karl, for asking whether it was "inappropriate for a member of Congress to be following young women on their Twitter account." Listening to this interview one day after Weiner's public admission that he lied for days about this issue, one can't help but be stunned at the ease with which this man not only lies but how he manipulates the story by attempting to humiliate, demean, and denigrate the reporter.
A few of the more odious examples:
"It is your responsibility, and I want you to take it seriously, when you ask a question like that, it is charged with implication, and it's simply not fair. It's not fair to me, it's not fair to my family, it's not fair to that poor girl who has now been besieged, because of the implication...
"And I would urge you, I would urge you, my friend, to refocus on what you think the actual issue is. This is a Twitter hoax, a prank, that was done. I am a victim of it, this poor girl is a victim of it. And to somehow draw a larger line here about people who have done nothing wrong..."My. What a loathsome, arrogant, condescending, imperious, unprincipled man.
Some people felt sorry for him, standing there before the media yesterday, weepy and apologetic. Not me. I'm onto him. I know it's all an act. He's fighting for his political life. Sleazy men like him will do anything, including grovel, to keep from drowning.
Here's the issue as I see it. It's bad enough when an elected official (or anyone given the trust of leadership) gets seduced by power and becomes sexually and morally reprobate. Such behavior should not be tolerated, people of both political parties should be appalled when it happens, and not only to people of the "other" party.
But it's the lying--and more to the point, the effortlessness, the facility, the ease with which they lie--that's troubling to me. It's almost as if lying is second nature, this innate ability to distort, to blame, to accuse, and then to chide those who dare to ask. And we're seeing it more and more in political figures. We saw it in that Blagojevich person. We saw it in John Edwards. We're seeing it in Barack Obama, especially when reporters dare to ask him "tough" questions. He gets all defensive and prickly and tries to make the issue about the questions, the questioners, the implications behind the questions. He's very good at it. Maybe not as good as Weiner, but pretty good.
This is not a good thing.
I've never trusted a smooth talker. Me, I prefer the bungler, if he's honest, to the glib, the verbally dexterous, the artful dodger.
