WeinerGate: Are There Any Grown-Ups in Congress?

I have been patiently waiting to see how our elected representatives would manage the national 'crisis' that is 'WeinerGate' - the juvenile twittering, sexting, and banal facebook postings that the media have foist upon our attentions, with the regrettable and unpalatable participation of Representative Andrew Weiner.

My patience has been futile.

On the Republican side, there appears to be no mercy and no sense 0f irony in their lambasting of the man. On the Demos side, to which Rep Weiner has been a long-time (ahem) member, we have seen little but confusion and deer-in-headlights indecision, which has been followed recently by a distinct and inhumane move toward cutting losses by tossing Weiner onto the nearest convenient trash heap. That's something we'd expect from the Palinites, not the Pelosians.

My take on the whole sordid affair?

Simple:

A. The man's an idiot, albeit an understandably human one. He is weak-willed and easily succumbs to frat-boy ideas of silly, stupid, and digusting 'fun', when he should be a sober-minded public servant. Andrew Weiner is essentially a congressional adjunct member of the 'Jackass' crew, absent the physically dangerous stunts (although we haven't seen all the emails and facebook stuff, so who knows?).

B. Our press are mostly idiots. They drop everything else of importance to cover a story that only affects the majority of us in the most peripheral of ways. And they hang on to it like it's as golden to the 4th Estate as Watergate once was. There's an element of pandering to the public's delight in watching someone powerful self-destruct, which is sad to see in play here. Feeding our guilty pleasures this way isn't in our best interest or the media's. It may bring short term viewership through titillation, but it will reap long-term self-disgust and a backlash towards the press.

C. Sadly, our elected representatives are a pretty idiotic bunch too. All of them, not just Mr. Weiner. The course of action should be obvious, but doesn't seem to register: whether the representative should be censured or should resign is a matter between Mr Weiner and his wife, his constituents, the congressional ethics committee, and the criminal justice system. If the representative is found to have committed a felony he should resign (even before conviction, in my opinion). If his constituents decide he's too idiotic or too bold (or bad) a liar to represent them, then he will be recalled or voted out at the next election. If the House Ethics committee finds against him, he should be censured. Everything else is a personal matter for Mr Weiner and something neither we, the press, nor his fellow congressionals should be following. We all have better things to do, don't we?

At least those of us who watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report got something out of this mess to soften our depression over it all. Jon Stewart and Colbert did a remarkable job of turning the satiric mirror on the press, our leaders, and on us, letting us laugh a bit at ourselves to keep from crying or breaking down, or dropping into a nihilistic funk.

We witnessed Jon Stewart visibly struggling with commitment to his viewers in the face of his admitted friendship with Mr. Weiner. Whether you feel he did well in that struggle or failed will largely be subjective, but the struggle itself was refreshingly non-cynical.

Which is a good thing, helping offset the rock hard cynicism with which most of us view Congress - and the Press.