Anthony Weiner strides onstage at Simon Baruch Middle School and grabs the mic to talk to the good people of the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association. He takes his position beside, not behind, the lectern. He has nothing to hide.
He wears a white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, and pants that brightly violate the boundary between orange and red. "I don't usually dress like this," he says. He explains that he was just at a rally in Greenwich Village, celebrating the Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage. Is he really saying he hasn't had time to change out of his gay pants?
It's a deeply puzzling remark, if you think about it. But Mr. Weiner specializes in bafflement these days.
It started with the news that he was running for mayor (really?), only two years after quitting Congress in disgrace after flashing women on Twitter with photos of his crotch. Then it was the revelation in recent polls that he had grabbed the lead (huh?) or was tied for first with two other candidates (what?).
Mr. Weiner groveled briefly when the scandal broke, but today, like the dog with a gun in the "Far Side" cartoon, he's through begging. He has made it clear that he has gotten the forgiveness he needs (his wife's) and doesn't need yours.
There are other things that make Mr. Weiner a curious front-runner — he was a lawmaker who was no good at making laws, who saw his seat as a get-on-TV pass, who infuriated colleagues and abused staff members. It's hard to imagine a Mayor Weiner using tact and diplomacy to guide the city through a crisis, or attracting a cadre of brilliant and committed policy experts and academics into a Weiner administration.
Weiner administration? Mr. Weiner is an administration of one.
And yet.
Is it possible for people of enormous talent and skill to come together and be collectively uninspiring? (Answer: Yes. The Eagles. And New York's mayoral candidates.) As the race wades into the murky depths of summer, a half-dozen solid, serious candidates are struggling to outshine a tabloid-tested opponent whose success is improbable only to people, like me, who don't get it.
I think Mr. Weiner's sexting was creepily assaultive, and made far worse by his lies about it. But I'm surprised by the number of people who don't find it disqualifying. In this Weiner-dominated race, privacy and shame seem like irrelevant, even imaginary concepts. Regret and remorse, showing weakness — Mr. Weiner has learned that these are politically useless, as antique as the engraved 1900s brass knobs on the bathroom doors at Simon Baruch.
Outside the school, I spoke briefly with a young woman collecting petition signatures for Mr. Weiner. She said he was the only candidate who had an affordable-housing plan, and the only one who cared about Harlem, where she lives. She was wrong about both those things. But there was no disputing her enthusiasm, and to her defense of her candidate — he's only human — there was nothing I could say.
There lives on YouTube a world-famous honey badger, who keeps low to the ground and bulls forward in pursuit of what he wants, not caring about poisonous snakes and bees. That's Mr. Weiner. He said the West Bank wasn't occupied by Israel, then shrugged off the ridicule. At Simon Baruch, he was asked about his support for vacancy decontrol — the law allowing landlords to jack up regulated rents after tenants leave. For residents of Stuyvesant Town, beleaguered citadel of rent-stabilized, middle-class living, it could have been a fatal question. Mr. Weiner said cheap rents for rich people made for embarrassing tabloid headlines. Put that way, the audience couldn't help applauding.
After the forum I briefly shared the sidewalk on East 20th Street with an old couple in white, he with a cane, she with his arm, walking in the gathering dark toward the East River. "They were all good," he said of the candidates, his reply leaving plenty of room for one of them, with colorful pants and sharp claws, to brazen his way out of the pack.
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