Ichabod's Kin
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    If not sick of this story, we all should be. Too many sexual shenanigans among the famous surely have us jaded by now. I am here to add to the fascination, but as a concluding unscientific postscript.

    Certainly Anthony Weiner’s name lends itself to parody, given his particular fall from grace. But how did a name of that spelling get to be pronounced like “wiener”? The old rule about “‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ or in sounding like ‘a’ as in ‘neighbor’ or ‘weigh’” clearly does not apply here.

    The ‘e’ before ‘i’ of his name, by all rights and rules, should be pronounced like “wy-ner.” In English, “e” before “i” is often spoken as long “e” such as the word “receive.” In German, words like “nein” are said with the sound of a long “i”. Vienna, in Austria, is “Wien” and pronounced as “Veen.” The name of the noted expert in early cybernetics at MIT, Norbert Wiener, is spelled like our hot dog and pronounced the same. So I’m confused.

    Maybe Anthony’s name isn’t the language genre I thought it was. Hence news reports and comedians have had a great time with this story. Trust me, were his name pronounced the way I think it should be, this tale of an idiot wouldn’t have lasted three days. We are an adolescent society and our nutty obsession with anything that can be construed as sexual will get and hold our attention forever.

    Fox News, of course, has no time for conservative peccadilloes, making only briefest mention of them so as to insist their news is “fair and balanced,” after which the stories are dropped like hot potatoes. Anthony the Tweeter saved them from news of another New York congressman as well as that of Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose sin quite frankly was worse than Tony’s. But both are Republican, so expect no further talk of them.

    You may think what you’ve heard on polite news regarding Weiner is bad, but I’m here to say it’s worse: cable TV is freer, like Bill Maher’s show, to tell the fuller truth, as he did by reading, with Jane Lynch of Glee, an extended email exchange between Weiner and one of his six lovelies. I’m no prude, but I don’t wanna hear that again. Anything porn-ish, in word or picture, proves that sex as a spectator sport is highly overrated. Think about it.

    I have no opinion whether Weiner should resign because I’m not his boss; his voting constituency is. By the time you read this, pressure on him have forced it. But self-righteousness on the part of others towards those who err greatly is also highly overrated.

    But let’s stop calling Andrew Breitbart a “journalist.” He’s a conservative attack dog, and that’s why the GOP likes him. He’s been behind the unethical treatment of others, like Shirley Sharrod, whose government career he ruined by selectively editing remarks she made so he could convey the opposite view.

    Better to call him Dumb-bart and Dim-bulb, of whom we shall not see the last till someday he’s caught with his own pants down. Celebrity does that to most everybody, and now that Andy’s got it, you can count on his comeuppance in the foreseeable future. Believe me when I say he is being watched, and people like him, like their victims, are themselves far from perfect.

    I don’t see how tkhe young survive celebrity, but we wrongly think older people should be wiser. Wisdom however typically is trumped by a sense of self-importance and the belief, at last, that one should be above the law or common decency.    The GOP thinks that sexual aberrations or misbehavior are unimportant unless committed by liberals, and they wink at all hypocritical insinuations made by their own pals.

       Megyn Kelley, of Fox’s midday America Live program, didn’t mind being a pin-up in a winter issue of Gentlemen’s Quarterly (GQ). There she was, quite falling out of her top, leading readers to forget she’s supposed to be a journalist.
Later, on her own show, she hosted a long segment with other women on whether it is appropriate to take children to Hooters, the place where wait staff are as close to Playboy quality as managers can find, and all, like Megyn, fall out of their tops and, for good measure, wear hotpants that leave little to the imagination.

        Megyn’s very principled stand, on her show, was that children should not be taken to such sites where their little eyes might be offended. Yet she didn’t mind being somewhat unclad in a magazine for all to see, regardless of age.

    So there is Hooters, and then there are hooters, and Kelley seems not to know the difference.

        It should be added that, in GQ, hers were both “fair” and “balanced,” marking the first such time in her “journalistic” career.