Well I've been meaning to get this on the blog for a while now, and am just getting around to it. I'm stunned (not surprised because it has become the norm with media coverage) at how much network coverage is being given to the Weiner story. Yes he's a public elected official but is his not-so-personal life on twitter/facebook really as news worthy as the broader public issues of health care reform, social security, the war on terror, the national debt, lack of jobs, or the general economic forecast?! I could give a shit what Weiner does on his own time and if I were one of his constituents I would be most interested in what he's doing during his work day regarding the host of issues I mentioned above. How many of the protesters, bloggers, supporters could tell you how Weiner voted regarding health care reform? Or what his proposal is for funding social security? How about his stand on creating jobs? Do you hear the same deafening silence?
Another stunner regarding this story is how stupid and ignorant our "leaders" are regarding new technology. Weiner is one of a host of other celebrities, public figures or famous people who mistakenly took Facebook or Twitter as a private form of communication. Are you kidding me?! Now I'm no techno-genius but I'm certainly smart enough to know that if you take pictures of your junk and post them on any of these new communication media that millions (and I mean millions) of people will be aware of it almost instantaneously. A positive example of this was the soldiers who were screwed by Delta. They posted some stuff and within 2 hours had created a media storm that could never have been mustered through any other media form. Ah, the power of such tools. If you are smart enough (or rich enough) to be an elected public official then you ought to be smart enough to know that such tools are very powerful and very dangerous. No PR reviews, and extremely traceable and reproducible. These tools are like DNA testing in criminal cases - almost unarguable.
So rather than continuing the shit storm regarding Weiner and seeing every Tom, Dick and Harry give their opinions about whether he should resign or not ... I would suggest that we put each of those House and Senate members back to work on the real issues our country faces. And if Weiner's a no-show for those discussions and important work - fire him and bring in the next schmuck who actually might give a shit that you are unemployed, have no health insurance, have a brother in Afghanistan, aren't able to collect social security until you're 70, and spend 12 hours a day on the computer at the public library twitting and facebooking friends! Now that's a national crisis ...
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