Somebody needs to make a Carlos Danger movie
To be quite honest, I really don’t care about Anthony Weiner’s proclivity for sending lewd photos to women far too young for him who aren’t his wife. I don’t think this sort of thing is as big a deal as everyone makes it—I just sort of expect it out of a politician, and I don’t think it matters when it comes to policy nearly so much as many of the other awful things our leaders do. It’s just fun to talk about a guy named Weiner sending photos of his…well you know.
But what I love about this latest Weiner scandal is his handle: Carlos Danger. That’s just brilliant.
Someone needs to snap that up post-haste and make it into a movie. It could be about a politician who doubles as a super-hero vigilante who doubles as a guy who sends pictures of his nether-regions to women on the internet. And it could have some sort of cascading scandal where the politician’s fall from grace leads to the super-hero’s fall from grace which leads to some Dire Circumstance or other and…well, I’m probably getting ahead of myself.
The simple fact is, I don’t care about the scandal. It means nothing to the broader problems we face in this society. But I would like to someday have a national politician elected with the name Carlos Danger. I sort of want to start making signs that say “Carlos Danger for Mayor!”
In a statement, Weiner politicked:
“I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have. As I have said in the past, these things that I did were wrong and hurtful to my wife and caused us to go through challenges in our marriage that extended past my resignation from Congress. While some things that have been posted today are true and some are not, there is no question that what I did was wrong. This behavior is behind me. I’ve apologized to Huma and am grateful that she has worked through these issues with me and for her forgiveness. I want to again say that I am very sorry to anyone who was on the receiving end of these messages and the disruption that this has caused. As my wife and I have said, we are focused on moving forward.”
Gender aside, I could never be a politician’s wife.
Oh, and P.S. you can get your very own Carlos Danger style handle via Slate’s name generator. Which is beyond silly, but precisely what the internet is good for. Mine is Victorino Violence. Not quite up to the Carlos Danger pedigree if you ask me.
“You just sort of expect it out of a politician”. You are writing about Weiner because he pulls these kind of stunts 540 and other people in Congress do not.
You’ve all succeeded in your goal of creating a classless society – where people are perfectly blase when the leaders of the community reveal they do not have any class at all. Thanks for nothing.Report
Oh pish posh. That’s a bunch of malarkey disguised as some sort of argument. Sound and fury old boy. Sound and fury.Report
Pete Domenici, David Vitter, David Wu, Chris Lee, Mark Souder, Eric Massa, &c.Report
While I get your point, I feel compelled to point out that David Wu was a Democratic politician.
But otherwise all Republican highlights. Of course there is the golden NewtReport
So is Eric Massa.Report
Eric Massa was accused years after the fact of having velcro mittens and immediately resigned from Congress. Christopher Lee actually did something roughly similar to Weiner, and immediately resigned from Congress and went back to Buffalo. That’s what you are supposed to do when you are disgraced in this manner. That’s part of the deal between prominent people and the rank and file in a culture in passable condition. Kain professes not to care.
David Vitter was discovered years after the fact to have spoken to a hooker over the phone. He made some admission of having been a customer. Personally, I would prefer he do something else with his life, but that is near-beer as these scandals go and does not much resemble Weiner for sheer absence of public dignity. As for Domenici, he admitted after having left office to having fathered a bastard child 35 years earlier. The question of what he should do was rendered moot by having retired four years earlier.Report
What’s golden about Newt? He resigned from Congress and failed in the one subsequent electoral effort he made.Report
I just can’t see how Killer Kain isn’t your handle.Report
I know. Makes me sad.Report
Mayne it’s Victorino because Kain rhymes with Shane?Report
I dunno. I kinda feel like “don’t send pictures of your junk to people on the Internet” ought to be one of those no-brainers that anyone serious about politics should be able to master. Like, rudimentary skills. As much as we may lament that people shouldn’t care about crap like this, they do care about crap like this. *gestures toward vast desert of American popular culture called “reality TV”*
If you can’t even figure out a way to philander without your wang getting 24-hour news coverage, you’re in the wrong biz.Report
Don’t send unsolicited pictures of your junk to people on the internet just seems like common decency. It’s not just being smart, it’s not being a pervy asshole.Report
We are never going to normalize the sending of unsolicited pictures of one’s junk to strangers unless more of us send unsolicited pictures of our junk to strangers.
Be the change you want to see in the world.Report
Yeah, pretty much this. There’s an important difference between sending nude pics and sending unsolicited nude pics.
About the same difference as running for Mayor of NYC and actually being elected, I suspect.Report
The voters in both red and blue regions would seem to disagree. Though I do think it’s quite vile and abhorrent. It’s just that politics is a marketplace and people seem ready and willing to settle for this sort of product.Report
marion berry was caught smoking crack and was re-elected several times. the Big Dog also had a problem with not being able to tell if a particular woman was his wife or not. JFK was banging ms. monroe. LBJ felt the need to wave his little head at members of congress whenever he felt like being a literal dick.
having extra-marital affairs does not seem to turn voters off. some of them take it as a sign of virility and power.
and at least Mayor Wiener will not go snatching that big gulp out of your hand. he knows we all need our vices.Report
Marion Berry got reelected as a fuck you to everyone else. He didn’t have enough power for anyone to actually care that he was a drug addict.Report
Russell M.
The newspapers protected politicians as a matter of course prior to about 1987. The general public and even some of the White House staff (e.g. Arthur Schlesinger) knew nothing of his bizarre sexual misbehavior until 1975. Both Lyndon Johnson’s serial adultery and public drunkenness were hidden from public view by the lapdog press. When Gary Hart’s episode with Donna Rice was made public in 1987, Pat Buchanan wrote that the media could have destroyed three of the previous five Democratic presidents and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as well. Hart’s campaign imploded instantaneously. People still had a saving sense of embarrassment about this sort of thing. It was a better world in that respect. The people advocating a culture of brazenness were professional juveniles like Michael Kinsley. Only now the juvenalia is the default setting.Report
I am very curious about what political scandals are going to be like when people my age and younger start running for political office……
Will facebook and the internet eventually make these political scandals obsolete?Report
Is this one of those old people moments or is the implication that pretty much everybody your age and younger does the equivalent of tweeting their junk?Report
Have you every browsed around flikr?Report
Over the course of N decades on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and whatever the hell the newer ones are called, it’s probably impossible to avoid.Report
Well, I think this question actually gets at the heart of the question: What exactly is the scandal here?
To me, the issue isn’t that he sent out dickpics. It is that he sent dickpics to people he shouldn’t have. And not just “shouldn’t have” as in “people who wanted dickpics but who he shouldn’t be having a dickpick sort of relationship with”, but “shouldn’t have” as in “people who didn’t want dickpics”. As Tod points out in his post, that is deeply disturbing.
I’ll cop to having sent my share of salacious pictures, but always to individuals I was in intimate relationships with and who wanted the pictures. I feel no shame for this and wouldn’t have an issue if some ex went public with a nudey pic his/her political partner had sent during their relationship.
I suppose an argument could be made that sending such pictures while entertaining even the possibility of a political career is poor judgement, but it probably registers at most a 2 on such a scale for me.Report
Aaaaaaand it’s official: I’m old.Report
Join the club…old is fine. I’m just glad to know there aren’t any salacious cave painting of me left around.Report
Now that the Mudd Clubb and CBGBs are gone….Report
Not everyone and maybe but as bad as tweeting junk but I’ve heard a fair bit of people posting embarrassing stuff on the internet and having it become the stuff of legend. Men, women, straight people, gay people.
This can range from bragging about how your summer associate position is like summer camp and accidentally hitting reply all to drunk pics openly talking about getting high on facebook (on more than just weed), etc.
When I do on-line dating stuff, a lot of women compliment me for such things like reading their profile and writing full and complete sentences with halfway decent grammar. So there are a lot of guys out there who just write stuff like “Hi. U R cute. Wanna get a drink?” and do the spamming equivalent of courting. Also from what I hear if you are a woman on an on-line dating site, you are almost destined to receive an unsolicited picture of some guy’s dick. There is a Godwin’s Law aspect to the inevitability.Report
No, because smart people don’t post pics.
Post a pic, and the smart folks at 4chan
can get your name, address, and hack your
playstation account.Report
Aww man, “Burt Likko” = “Pascual Stealth.” Pascual Stealth kind of sucks.
But, my real name results in “Javier Hazard,” which is cool because it alliterates even though it looks like it wouldn’t.Report
That is a good one. I’m a bit jealous.Report
My real name brought back Jorge Hazard. Perhaps we’re brothers?Report
Maybe it’s a pseudonym thing? I also ended up with Pascual Stealth.Report
That means we’re not only brothers, we’re the same guy!Report
My first name was also Pascual when I used “Rodney” for the input. But when I used “Rod” (which is what I generally go by) I came up with “Diego Violence”, which I guess means I’m related to Erik some way.Report
Heh. Well, Burt, I could do worse for a doppelganger.Report
I got Julio Cesar Kill, which is going to be my new luchador name.Report
Et tu?Report
Ohhhhh I got Lorenzo Menace……so bow down before me.Report
Carlos Clandestine … sort of feel like I’m band-wagoning with Carlos.Report
If I pick the coolest parts of the Mike and Michael results, I’m Guillermo Risk.Report
Mike! we are ummm…brothers? I’m Marcos RiskReport
We’re teammates, and we both play for Tod.Report
I got Eduardo Covert for my pseudonym. Efrain Death for my real name…..too funny.Report
Leonardo Kill
I will change it to Leonardo DeKillioReport
Leonardo DeCaprio?Report
Bernardo CatastropheReport
You win the name thingReport
Elliot Spitzer = Omar Smash
David Vitter = Mariano Risk
Eric Massa = Miguel Ãngel Sly ( love the tilde!)
Bill Clinton = Manolo Peril
Gary Hart = Armando Catastrophe
Rudolph Giuliani = Santiago Verboten
Pete Domenici = Julio Kill
Herman Cain = Carmelo Clandestine
The list goes on and on.Report
Who’s the most public dick
That’s a sex machine to all the chicks?
Danger, ya damn right
Who’s the cat that won’t drop out
When there’s dickpics all about?
Danger, right on
They say this cat Danger is a bad mother
Shut your mouth
But I’m talkin’ ’bout Danger
Then we can dig it
He’s a complicated man
But no one understands him but his woman
Carlos DangerReport
Good work.
I’ll note that my first thought went to the great Patrick McGoohan spy series from the 60’s, Dangerman. It was better known in the US with the theme song Secret Agent Man. Great stuff especially if you like old school, Connery era bond except with less sex.Report
Almost none. McGoohan disapproved even of kissing hot lady spies.Report
I would give all of the bitkoins to have Weiner actually use that as his campaign theme song. sadly he will only do that in the mirror universe, where sending dick-pics is totally cool.Report
Marcelo Badass for my real name and Víctor Hazard for my x-box handle.
so be very afraid suckers, because now we are dealing with a real badass nowReport
Someone needs to embellish the story? A congressman named Weiner sends people pictures of his penis then denies it for weeks, then admits it and runs for mayor of NYC. Richard Pryor never played a character that outrageous.Report
“My only flaw is flirting online. And texting pictures of my dick. My two flaws are flirting and dick-texting. And offering women fake jobs. Among my flaws are … Wait, I’ll start over.”Report
Nobody has mentioned the obvious: the man has no trade and no real skills. From 1986 to 2011 he was a political officeholder of one sort or another and his current commercial endeavours have been driven by connections. He does not even have the demonstrated general intelligence of Barack Emptysuit. We do not need this guy. The only argument for him would be that he is more realistic about urban life and policy than the fools against whom he is running. It is an indictment of New York’s elites that of all the capable people living there, the only ones running are diBlasio, Diesel, and Dickpix (all set to undo Mr. Giuliani’s handiwork to boot).Report
From one of my favorite TV critics:
Report
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