Answer: You comb over before you're elected and you shave (then tweet) after you win.
Hopefully this is the last article you will ever see discussing either Donald Trump's political aspirations or Anthony Weiner's weiner.
This is a before-and-after story endemic to politics everywhere. Self-aggrandizing, rich assholes hide their true motives to get elected. Once elected, rich assholes (and they are all rich assholes after they are elected) play golf and play with themselves in public.
What's Under the Comb-Over?
When dickheads like Ted Nugent started sporting long hair, hippies and counter-culturalists finally understood their own message spouted for half a generation--you can't judge a person by his or her hair. But in Donald Trump's case you can.
If you look at Trump's photos and think, mangy old dog's butt, are you considering his comb-over or his politics? In fact, Trump's hair-do is a wonderful metaphor for everything sleazy in American politics.
Trump was dominating the polls in the election for the Republican presidential primary on April 15. He had a 9 point lead over Mike Huckabee (who subsequently withdrew from the race) and an 11 point lead over Mitt Romney. Now Trump is gone.
Trump is gone largely because Fox News decided not to support him. When he was "running" his supporters simply forgot or refused to ask, "What's under the comb-over?"
It's only because Trump's buffoonery has been so public for so many years, that it was easy for the media to look under the rug(?).
Trump's portrayal of himself as a business scion was simple to unravel--his properties and companies have declared bankruptcy four times. And like so many rich assholes before him, he made his money the old fashioned way--he inherited it. Not to mention that making money in real estate was a no-brainer until 2008, given the Ponzi banking of the previous two decades.
The mainstream media forgot to remind us that Donald Trump's Taj Mahal Casino shared in an $89 million subsidy for retail and entertainment space in Atlantic City--a subsidy diverted from a New Jersey tax on casino profits to eliminate urban blight and provide housing to the poor. (Free Lunch, David Cay Johnston, pages 104-105.)
The hyperbole generated by Trump's "candidacy" was stunning. To China: "Listen you motherfuckers, we're going to tax you 25%." Obama was born in Kenya. Trump's implicit message that he understood our pain is an example of comb-over politics. How can a big-time landlord really care about losing jobs to China if he was, at another point in his career, willing to take from the poor to line his own pockets? Like the Big Oil shill politicians from Alaska and Texas, this guy has his own agenda--"creating jobs" by opening up all national parks for gambling, "Bet baby, bet!
The pros may be more subtle than Trump, but rich assholes, none the less. You have to look under the comb-over.
Whoopee, I'm in Congress, I Can Finally Get Nasty
Why should anyone give a rat's ass if Anthony Weiner tweets shots of his bulge or his shaved balls? To paraphrase Janeane Garofalo on Real Time, last Friday night: He hasn't broken any laws; his actions did not impact anyone negatively and Weinergate is a distraction created by a media too lazy to do its job.
Ms. Garofalo is essentially correct. This is not a moral issue. Weiner's detractors who would have him resign due to the immorality of his acts are wrong. But so are his defenders who love him for his liberalism.
Come on, it ain't that hard to be a liberal in an era that would consider Dwight Eisenhower a raving commie, but that's another topic.
In his Salon article, "Behind the selective Weinergate outrage of Democrats," Steve Kornacki says of Weiner: "In 13 years in the House, he’s developed a reputation as a showman who’s uninterested in hard work -- or in cooperation. For the first decade or so of his tenure, he focused more on New York City politics than on the national scene, positioning himself for a mayoral bid."
Obviously the media should be focusing on things like John Boehner's golf--"180 junkets in six years, most of them golf trips, and [Boehner] reportedly copped to playing 100 rounds a year." Boehner's political action committee spent almost $83,000 on golf events in 2009. Crass corporate bribes like these should be reported with same titillating verve as sex scandals, but they're not.
Unfortunately for some, being a Congressperson is sort of a 24-hour job. Taxpayers pay a their representatives very high salaries which, when added to the perks and benefits, catapult them into the 98th percentile of American income. One might say we pay for our representatives' private actions as well as their public ones.
Weingate is not a partisan issue, nor is it a morals issue. It's a morale issue.
People are not stupid. They barely tolerate the fact that Congressmen and Congresswoman join an elite club of rich assholes when they get elected. That they tolerate it at all is a modern-day mystery. They certainly will not tolerate it when their representatives flaunt their wealth, power and prestige like Marie Antoinette.
Should you be pissed off that Anthony Weiner tweets his penis on the public time clock? Do you get to tweet your privates at work?
Like so many of his (more) corrupt colleagues, Anthony Weiner fiddles while Rome burns.