The Wednesday Word: Non Sequitur
We are screaming from the rooftops on a daily business that Anthony Weiner has shown his tumescent penis on the Internet to more than one woman. We have also discovered that he can talk dirty with the best of them. Shock and horror. Whether he stays or goes is unfortunate in that the first responders of the World Trade Center tragedy who needed assistance have lost a passionate advocate.
There are conservatives who are gleeful over this progressive politician's pending political demise. There was mention by his fellow Democrats that he resign before he does the Party further damage. Seems that some people are after him to make up for the loss of New York State's Congressional District 26 to the Democrats. They believe that Weiner's disgrace will help maintain a Republican majority.
Before people make bigger fools of themselves than Mr. Weiner has of himself, it does not follow that solid progressive principles are no longer worthy of becoming law because a man showed his penis to the world. As if: "the guy is a perverted sex addict, let's dismantle Medicare and throw out Obamacare." Get real. Get serious. Grow up.
If he resigns, it does not follow that his district will vote for a Republican "just because." In the last gubernatorial election Andrew Cuomo won with a huge landslide following Spitzer's disgrace and resignation followed by beleaguered Governor David Paterson's term. They were all Democrats.
Non Sequitur 1: an inference that does not follow from the premises; specifically : a fallacy resulting from a simple conversion of a universal affirmative proposition or from the transposition of a condition and its consequent
2: a statement (as a response) that does not follow logically from or is not clearly related to anything previously said
Comments
The original crotch shot on the Twitter feed was Weiner’s own fault, to be sure. And yes, he is a jackass and I’m so mad at him I could spit. Mainly because I don’t think any of this is any of my business, and yet unless I go into seclusion it’s rubbed in my face day in and day out. Weiner deserves the pain. (And now it turns out his wife is pregnant??? OMG.)
Notwithstanding all this, here is my point: There is more than one moral trespasser confronting us in this affair.
Weiner, according to who tells it, did something incredibly stupid, or he grievously sinned. But what he did (the original sin before the lying-about-it part) isn’t any of our business. And, jackass though he is, he apparently never intended to hurt anyone. What Breitbart did, and Meaghan Broussard did, is our business and I think there’s a lot that could and should be said about it.
Why is it OK that Andrew Breitbart acquired and published these pictures? Or that somebody gave (sold?) them to him? And that Breitbart is now holding an allegedly X-rated picture over Weiner’s head, threatening to publish it in case he, Breitbart, is “attacked?” Is blackmail is okay if you do it in public?
So much energy is being expended on trying to get our technologically-fixated and ethically-challenged youth population not to spread around dirty pictures of each other, and to refrain from bullying, cyber- or otherwise.
I ask you: What does it do to our credibility with these young people that Andrew “The Vindicated” Breitbart and his associates have publicly, ostentatiously and self-servingly cyber-bullied Anthony Weiner, intentionally damaging him and causing tremendous collateral damage to his wife and family, apparently with impunity?
I'm just asking.
[from kelly74nyc on dailykos.com]