Homo Sapiens Cybens

Hal 9000 From 2001: A Space Odyssey, photo: Cryteria

In an Op-Ed piece entitled “Weiner’s Woman,” (NYT, 7/30/13), Susan Jacoby remarks that women who participate in internet sex are “not victims of men like Mr. Weiner… but full and equal participants” though she finds it “infinitely sad to imagine a vibrant young woman sitting alone at her computer and turning herself into a sex object for a man... she doesn’t know, even if she is also turning him into a sex object.” Jacoby also remarks that women are still getting the lesser end of the stick since  “men are more interested in and aroused by pornography than women” and “women who settle for digital pornography are lowering their expectations and hopes even more drastically than their male collaborators are.” What Jacoby doesn't realize is that the Weiner scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. It merely gives us a portal into the fate of mankind. If the future of the human race lies not in the body which will become an anachronism when the sun dies and the world falls apart, it certainly exists in cyberspace, where Homo sapiens cybens will be the new species--as mankind preserves the great accomplishment of consciousness while shedding its bodily form the way the butterfly escapes its chrysalis. Politicians like Anthony Weiner will be sending images of their “selves,” or avatars since there will literally be nothing else. The neurogenic pathways of sexual desire will be preserved as a memory even if there is no brain to house them and consciousnesses starved for contact will gratefully welcome cybersexual advances. One thing is certain, life in cyberspace will be far less cruel than it is here on earth where love is still a meat market and humans imprisoned in their bodies pay more attention to outer appearances than they do to the beauty of the mind. Looking at it this way, Anthony Weiner like millions of other people who enjoy cybersex, is a pioneer, a tragic figure way ahead of his time. He would have been the perfect mayor for the cyber version of New York that will undoubtedly replace our city millions of years from now.

Bill Clinton For Mayor

If the qualifications for high position in New York municipal government are a history of sexual peccadillos then why not elect someone with some real credentials, Bill Clinton? Bill Clinton not only has a history of tawdry sexual involvements with Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky, but brilliance and political savvy to boot. Of course there is the question of residency, since Clinton lives in Chappaqua. But these would certainly be compensated for by the potential candidate’s track record in fulfilling what we might call the Caligula requirement. When we think about the great presidents of the twentieth century, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Ike—they all strayed. But unlike Spitzer and Weiner they were great politicians and thinkers. In a way it’s not what Anthony Weiner did— which by any standards was mild and didn’t actually involve any sexual acts. It’s what he didn’t do in failing to exercise even minor judgment when he allowed himself to employ social networks. Social networks are used when you want to draw attention to an activity. Occupy Wall Street uses Twitter when it wants to organize a demonstration. Do we want a mayor who attracts crowds every time he literally and metaphorically drops his pants? Eliot Spitzer disqualifies himself from the comptroller’s position not because of going to prostitutes but because of the outrageous sums he paid for them. Would you elect someone to balance your budget who got taken to the bank by an organization with the hokey name of Emperor’s Club VIP? If Bill Clinton were mayor or comptroller he would undoubtedly avoid the Emperor’s Club and being a true statesmen at heart, he would only use social networks for political purposes.

Anthony Abedin For Mayor

Weiner should really change his name to Adedin. There is nothing that says that a husband can’t take his wife’s surname. Sure it could be Weiner-Abedin. That’s the politically correct way to do it, but choosing Abedin would show that Anthony Weiner is making a commitment to being a new person. Anyway there are too many Weiners in New York and we are on the verge of saying good-bye to a Bloomberg. Maybe NewYork's had too many nice Jewish boys or would be nice Jewish boys running for the mayoralty. Maybe the message is that it's time for Weiner to transform himself, to graduate. Remember The Graduate? Abedin is a nice Muslim name and if New York wants to show that it’s a truly cosmopolitan city and also the mecca of finance and the arts, we need to elect a Muslim sounding mayor. Anthony Abedin--the name has a certain gravitas and it doesn’t hurt that his other half is a prominent member of Hillary Clinton’s team. Just let it run through your lips Hizzoner Anthony Abedin. Sounds a lot better than Huma Weiner, by the way, and maybe someday Abingdon Square will be renamed Abedin Square. Abedin can also compete nicely with Jewish sounding names which connote a facility with commerce. Where are you going to shop if you are given the choice of Macy's or Saks? Why of course the answer is none of the above. You’re going to Abedin’s since it’s a little different. If I were at the airport and wanted to buy my wife a necklace, would I go to H. Stern or the new boy on the block?

Weiner Spitzel

Luchow’s was a New York institution. Located on East Fourteenth Street, it was popular with business leaders, politicians and just plain folks. It was probably one of the last bastions of the German- American restaurants which catered to a wide swathe of New York appetites. Wiener Schnitzel was one of Luchow’s signature dishes. Too bad Luchow’s isn’t still around. To celebrate the announcement that the formerly disgraced former city council member and House rep, Anthony Weiner and the formerly disgraced governor, Eliot Spitzer, are running respectively for mayor and comptroller, the restaurant might have served Weiner Spitzel with spaetzle. But let’s imagine what City Hall would be like with Anthony Weiner as mayor and Eliot Spitzer as comptroller. Would the team be like a big crunchy slab of meat--a wiener, Weiner could proudly Twitter. Spitzer was a hands on, if somewhat arrogant governor as well as one would suspect a hands on John, but one wonders about his budgetary acumen. How much will someone who paid thousands of dollars for sex fork out for something as mundane as the toilet paper used in municipal buildings? As for Weiner has anyone suggested that he change his name to Anthony Abedin—something which will give him a step up when, after retiring from the mayoralty, he seeks to get a cabinet position in the Clinton administration. For those who think anything’s better than Christine Quinn or Joe Lhota, Weiner Spitzel is a no brainer.

Guys Just Wanna Have Fun

Add Crystal Harris and Hugh Hefner to the list of high-profile breakups that includes Tipper and Al Gore, Mark and Jenny Sanford, John and Elizabeth Edwards and, most recently, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. Will Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner make it through their own recent scandals? And whatever happened to Silda Wall and Eliot Spitzer? It’s Scenes From a Marriage (or would-be marriage in the case of Hef) American style. Let’s analyze the ashes of some of these marriages on a case-by-case basis. There’s a 60-year age difference between Hef and Crystal, and the breakup comes on the eve of the release of her single “Club Queen.” Hef had previously been married to Mildred Williams (the mother of Christie Hefner) and then, much later, to Kimberly Conrad. But his former girlfriend Holly Madison was the Cassandra when it came to his most recent nuptials. “I think it’s possible Crystal could break Hef’s heart,” PopEater quoted Madison as saying. Moving through the list: Schwarzenegger fathered a child with his maid and Sanford fell in love with an Argentine woman and abandoned the state he was elected to govern. Could Al Gore’s troubles have had anything to do with the kind of behavior he exhibited towards his masseuse, Molly Hagerty? Could John Edwards have been one of those men whose infidelity hides a darker truth, the inability to cope with illness, even though he insists that he strayed while Elizabeth’s cancer was in remission? Ironically, sex is the apparent pitfall for everyone but the geriatric Playboy himself. Not that reports about Hefner and Crystal’s breakup have explicitly ruled out the couple’s sex life as a cause, but one can’t help thinking that the yawning generation gap was the ultimate factor, particularly in a youth culture that Hefner himself helped to spawn. On the other hand, age didn’t deter Dominique Strauss-Kahn when he made his unreciprocated advances on the then 21-year-old Tristane Banon. And then of course there is Humbert Humbert and Lolita.

In the Media

Question: will Anthony Weiner take over Eliot Spitzer’s slot on CNN’s In the Arena and will Alan Berger, the agent who handled Katie Couric’s new deal with ABC, be able to sell syndication rights for her new show to one of Silvio Berlusconi’s television stations? And what about a Spitzer/Weiner report modeled on NBC’s old Huntley/Brinkley or PBS’s Macneil/Lehrer News Hour? If they bring on Dr. Ruth Westheimer as executive producer, there is no doubt that Spitzer/Weiner could provide the first real competition for two HBO warhorses, “Real Sex” and “Taxicab Confessions.” With Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Arnold Schwarzenegger dominating the news in the way that Pamela Anderson once did with her famed Tommy Lee honeymoon tape, there will be a need for seasoned commentators to handle the flood of impropriety generated by office holders on the international, national and state levels. For some of us it seems like only yesterday that Bill Clinton was asking Monica Lewinsky to light his cigar (or was it the other way around?), but impeachment proceedings now seem quaint compared to a two-time presidential candidate possibly on his way to jail for allegedly using campaign funds to cover up his affair. It wouldn’t be surprising to hear that Huma Abedin was covering the Edwards debacle for Al Jazeera.

Weiner's Inferno

The representative’s wiener has been roasted, but hopefully he will not end up in Schwarzeneggerdom, deprived of the loving embrace of his wife, Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin. However, if he doesn’t mend his ways, he may descend to the 9th circle, reserved for only the worse sinners, and now renamed the Strauss-Kahn wing of hell. Yes, he was bad, but he didn’t touch like Arnold or force (allegedly) like Dominique. He didn’t drown like Ted in Chappaquiddick or cajole with power like JFK or with charisma like MLK. Nor did he hit a hole-in-one like Tiger or take part in monkey business like Gary or used illegal campaign contributions to hide his extra-marital family like Edwards. He certainly didn’t run after (and devour) child pole dancers like Silvio. No, all the democratic firebrand did was show his chest and wiener. Although he didn’t solicit prostitutes, Weiner comes from the same mold as Eliot Spitzer: he’s an evangelical reformer who fell victim to the very sin he railed against, hypocrisy. But what’s wrong about “holding up a handwritten sign reading ‘it’s me’” (“Weiner Admits He Sent Lewd Photos; Says He Won't Resign,” NYT, 6/7/11)? It could easily have been homework for a phenomenology course at The New School. It all seems about as harmless as a children playing doctor. But then we get into another circle of the Inferno, occupied by Martha Stewart, who was convicted not of the crime for which she was originally called to task, but of lying to mommy and daddy when they asked, “Martha did you do something bad?” Weiner’s wiener is being roasted because he didn’t bite the bullet from day one and make his “it’s me” sign visible to the general public.