We're Partying Like it's 1998, Baby
by digby
Hey kids! Heads up. If you always wondered what it was like during the Great Clinton Panty Raid, we're having a little tribute to that inanity from the beltway press as we speak. Chris Matthews, Mike Isikoff and Joe DiGenova are getting the band back together! But they've gone full one roots and aren't even trying to hang their teen-age prurient obsessions on "the rule 'o law" anymore. This time they are are just openly drooling over the pictures all while pretending to be the representatives of bourgeois American morality in Smalltown USA.
Here's one random example of the discussion:
Matthews: Mike Isikoff... I listened to someone on the TV this morning I think it was on Morning Joe. And someone said, to be blunt about it, Congressmen can call up their mistresses or their girlfriends if they're married, there's nothing illegal about it or professional about it. Obviously there's a moral issue. But is there anything in the rules that says you can't use your electronic equipment of any kind for any reason you want as long as it's not criminal?
Isikoff: You start out with the line from the House ethics manual which says you can't do anything that brings dishonor upon the House and I think using any government .. look if there's any government equipment used here at all, a telephone a computer, I think that's one more nail in the coffin...
Matthews: really? It doesn't matter if he's yelling through a dixie cup. Does it really matter?
Isikoff: This was a textbook example of how to inflict maximum political damage on yourself. He took what was a pretty bad situation and made it so much worse by the way he handled it starting out with his arrogance, attacking the press, lying brazenly and then having to come before the press and say almost everything he said last week was a complete lie. That doesn't give you a lot of confidence that everything he said yesterday is going to hold up. There's that electronic trail...
Matthews: Joe old buddy I never talk to you long enough. I've got to have dinner with you soon. You're always so rich in seeing these things for what they are.
Let's just put this in a little perspective for the older viewers like me. Suppose this was like the more traditional British sex scandals, a kinky scandal like the famous Profumo scandal without Soviet spies involved. Suppose it was just a congressman who had a lot of girlfriends. He was married but he had a lot of girlfriends. That's not unheard of.No virtual use of electronic equipment No emails, no weird use of the phone, no twitter. The real kind of sex. Would that be at all an ethics issue?
Joe DiGenova: That's a very interesting question Chris. I think it would depend on who the congressman was. Because one of the things that's at work here is who Weiner was. He was the lead attack dog for the Democrats in the House if not in the Senate. He is a nasty arrogant vicious attack dog. And part of his problem is that because he was the lead dog that way, when you fall, you fall very hard. Look at the absence of supporters. And whether or not he had girlfriends, that probably wouldn't not have made a difference. What made a difference was the photographs. The actual realistic photographs of body parts.
Matthews: that's worse than having girlfriends, you're saying...
DiGenova: Absolutely, absolutely. Because it also reveals a very serious psychological problem and everyone knows it. This guy has a very serious psychological problem.
Matthews: Well, this is strange Michael. It's like avatar sex. It's the strangest thing ... I'm thinking of a case like a celebrated role model like Tiger Woods... or Wilt Chamberlain... But this is like exhibitionism, is that what you're saying Joe? Just putting it out there so everybody's sharing .
DiGenova: Yes it is partly that. But remember Chris,a prt of the problem is that you hear from people how he treated his staff, the bullying, and I think that's part of this. You have to look at the entire character of a guy like this. This guy has a series of deep seated problmes and I don't think he has a lot of friends in the Democratic Party.
Matthews then called it "brain soup." I'm only surprised that Isikoff didn't weigh in on whether or not Weiner is a "sex addict." He usually holds strong opinions on such things. (And don't be surprised by their tolerance for "the real kind of sex. They pretended to be equally appalled at Clinton and Lewinsky's "deviant" practices too.)
To think that was the conversation we had on cable shows night after night for years in the late 90s.
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