Year: 2011

“Just perfectly innocent. A married 46 year old Congressman private messaging a smitten, hero-worshipping, bad-girl-talking 17 year old girl who ‘loved’ him. What could be more innocent than that?”
— Ace of Spades

Before proceeding to examine the really troubling question here, let’s begin by reviewing what we already know:

• Anthony Weiner’s “online relationships” (as he called them in his June 6 press conference) apparently “fit a pattern,” according to the New York Times: “[I]n rapid and reckless fashion, he sought to transform informal online conversations about politics and partisanship into sexually charged exchanges, at times laced with racy language and explicit images.”
• A transcript of Weiner’s Facebook exchanges with Lisa Weiss (the accuracy of which has not been disputed) shows Weiner asking if “your p**** [is] still tight and w*t for me baby?” and talking about “my rock hard c***.”
• Weiner admitted at his press conference that the May 27 Twitter message including a link to a photo of his bulging crotch, which began the so-called WeinerGate scandal, was accidentally sent as a public message, when he intended to send it as a private direct message (DM).
• The intended recipient of that May 27 message, 21-year-old Gennette Cordova, has repeatedly denied having had any “inappropriate” private communications with Weiner.
• Another of Weiner’s “online relationships,” porn performer Ginger Lee, says Weiner urged her to lie about their communications, sending her an e-mail suggestion that she issue a statement saying, “‘This is silly. Like so many others, I follow Rep. Weiner on Twitter. I don’t know him and have never met him.” (In fact, Ms. Lee says she and Weiner “exchanged scores of sexual emails over a long period of time.”)
• Among the messages Weiner sent to 26-year-old single mother Meagan Broussard was a nude photo showing his erect penis.

From these facts it seems obvious that Weiner’s online sexual adventures were so recklessly indiscriminate as to demonstrate an out-of-control compulsion. This is particularly true if we accept Cordova’s assertion that none of her private communications with Weiner were “inappropriate,” so that the congressman would have been sending her that bulging-crotch photo unsolicited, without any previous indication from Cordova that she had a sexual interest in him. (Broussard has also said that none of her communications with Weiner could reasonably have been viewed as an invitation for the congressman to send her the penis photo of himself.)

Weiner’s complete disregard for the dangers of sending these kinds of photos and messages to women he never met is important to note because, by his own public admission, he also disregarded other dangers:

Q: These were young girls, very young, 21 years old. Does that bother you, that they’re — the youngest —
REP. WEINER: I don’t know the — I don’t know the exact ages of the women, and they —
Q: Young enough to be your children.
REP. WEINER: I don’t know the exact ages of the women, and I don’t know if you do. I’m going to respect their privacy. But they were all adults — at least to the best of my knowledge they were all adults — and they were — and they were engaging — and they were engaging in these conversations consensually.
Q: But if you don’t know how old they are, how do you know they’re adults?
REP. WEINER: Well, all I know is what they publish about themselves in social media. Someone could theoretically be — have been — have been fibbing about it, and that’s a risk.

A close reading of that brief exchange raises real problems. Weiner seems to believe that, in light of the graphic content of his online communications, all that matters is whether “to the best of [his] knowledge” the recipients were adults. Continue reading Did Anthony Weiner Send Obscene Messages to Teenage Girls Online? →