Huma and Anthony: What do YOU think?

This power couple just won't go way, will they? But maybe
they deserve a fair shake? You decide below.
Let me try to be as fair as I can to the record of former Congressman Anthony Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin. To their credit, the couple don't shy away from expressing their views and sticking to their positions. 

Anthony Weiner
If we ignore Anthony Weiner's personal scandals for a second, he
was by any measure one of the most dedicated Democrats in
Congress during his terms in office.
Let's set aside for a second, as Weiner would prefer, his embarrassing personal scandals. Here are the things that he did accomplish as a US representative:


  • Many of the organizations including NARAL, EMILY's List and middle class advocacy groups like the Drum Major Institute gave Weiner extremely high ratings. 
  • He hat high favourability among his constituents due to his very responsive connection to his home community. 
  • During debates about both Medicare and the Obamacare legislation during the early year's of Obama's presidency, Weiner unlike other Democrats was a fierce and unapologetic advocate of the new legislation and publicly sparred with both Republican representatives and media figures like Joe Scarborough on the issue.
  • Both as a congressman and a mayoral candidate Weiner was a very powerful debater, and he never shied away from a challenger. He was famous for getting into on-camera fights with enemies like Republican Rep. Peter King.
The right-wing media like to portray Huma Abedin as some villainous
Jezebel. But could she really just be guilty only of associating with the wrong employer
and marrying the wrong man?

Huma Abedin

As for Ms. Abedin, much of the negative attention toward her is due largely to the negative image of her boss former Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton or ridicule due to her husband's sexting scandals. The accusations against her family for being Muslim Brotherhood affiliated may have some substance, but even so they are not material crimes against her. In fact, Abedin is known to have advised Sec. Clinton against maintaining a private server. Is Abedin a problematic actor in Clinton's scandals? Yes, but very few of her actions are taken on an independent basis. She is mostly guilty of being loyal to her boss. Her conflicts of interest as a Clinton Foundation administrator and aide at the State Department are just as much Hillary's fault as they are her own. 

So why can't they catch a break?

Weiner's photo from the puff piece
last week with the New York Times.

The truth is that it all boils down to three problems: publicity, publicity, and publicity. Despite all of his scandals, Weiner has never gone soft on his addiction to tweeting. This week the New York Times published an interview with Weiner from the week of the DNC where he revealed he's been working as a consultant for several (wealthy) clients. In the article he once again refused to comment on whether he had stopped sexting. That proved to be an ominous event, as he was subsequently busted again by media outlets like the New York Post's Page Six for exchanging randy texts with a person he thought was a college coed named "Nikki". After claiming that he saw through the catfish's ruse, Weiner has been unable to answer reporters' questions as to why he gave "Nikki" his name and phone number. So much of the criticism for Weiner has been unconnected to his job performance, but to his refusal to learn his lesson.

 Abedin herself has been forced to go before the media in order to soften the media image of her as Hillary Clinton's top toady. But the problem that continues to crop up is that the only thing she is known for besides that is standing at the side of her bumbling husband during his ridiculous apologies. And consider this, outside of her associations with Clinton and Weiner, how many other things is Abedin even known for? The accusations against her family for Islamist leanings certainly aren't things she would like highlighted. 
Vogue magazine ran this photo as part of its profile of Huma
Abedin. Like the rest of the media, they are in love with this
image of the debonair and graceful woman, yet behind her
packaging Abedin just seems to be an appendage of her hated boss
and blundering husband.

 In a recent Vogue interview and portrait Abedin had glowing praise heaped on her by Democratic power brokers such as New York Sen. Charles Schumer and California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. Yet the only thing gleaned from it by other papers was that Abedin had by no means been smitten by Anthony Weiner, and even stiffed him during their first meeting. They also preferred to focus on her struggle to deal with his scandal rather than on Vogue's far reaching survey of her life. And why would they not? The other facts that are featured in the article are either meaningless  fluff like praise for her classy fashion sense, to unremarkable details of her childhood abroad in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere attending swanky British schools. These are not things that make her more relatable to the public, on the contrary it just makes her seem more cosmopolitan in the New York way. 

Can't they take a hint?

I don't predict that the couple will change their behaviour anytime soon. In fact, it seems to me that they have both become captives of the political lifestyle, or more specifically the lifestyle of the Clinton Political Machine. Part of that is that when something either unethical or embarrassing is discovered the first instinct is to deny, deflect, and downplay. That may work for the most powerful woman in politics up to a point, but not them. During his mayoral campaign Anthony Weiner agreed to have a pair of documentary filmmakers and their crew follow him around and present him in a more intimate life. What they hadn't bargained for was that during the filming his second sexting scandal would break out and his campaign would fall apart. Now that it's been released Weiner claims that Abedin never agreed to be shown in the movie. It's issues like these that make this couple seem incompetent and detached from reality. If they really wanted to be treated with respect and have their privacy, they would not be doing the rounds with the media while getting busted for the same nonsense that has happened before. In those long boring pieces by the Times and Vogue the public laps up their idiocy like snack pack pudding in an otherwise bland and repetitive school lunch. 








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