Rabbi Boteach writes for the Jewish Journal:
…Weiner needs help to overcome self-destructive tendencies that border on a death wish and that will consume him if he ignores them. Any elected official who tweets his swollen male appendage to a complete stranger and takes pictures virtually naked in the congressional gym is throwing his life and career in the air with no knowledge of where it will land. This is the behavior of someone with a subliminal desire for total self-annihilation. And no doubt it is the degree of his self-destructive tendencies that is giving his wife pause about staying with him much more than any bizarre sexual fetish.
Bill Clinton exhibited the same inclination to self-immolation when he had sex in the Oval Office, the single most watched and guarded place on earth. He knew full well what his staff and Secret Service must have thought when a young intern – with no official business with the President – went in repeatedly to claim so much time of the busiest man on earth. But Clinton didn’t care. He shared the same self-destructive tendencies that were also demonstrated by Arnold Schwarzenegger in having sex with a woman that worked in his house and was around his wife day and night, even keeping her on staff for a dozen years after she had his child. These are the marks of men who have become so deeply cynical about life that the only adrenaline rush that will satisfy is one where they their lives off a cliff. These are all men who live with an unending craving for love and incessant need for attention, forever proving themselves, and therefore despising their very existence which involves an eternal feeling of inadequacy and unworthiness. Men who hate themselves this much and strive eternally for the validation of others harbor a secret wish that, in way or another, the inner torment will cease. That’s why they play Russian Roulette with their lives. Anything to dull the pain.
To say that Weiner has a death-wish sounds serious but is actually quite common to the Broken American Male. They are looking for anything that will deaden the never-ending inner ache. That’s where numbing agents like alcohol, workaholism, and drugs come in, with sex being the anaesthetizing drug of choice. Sexual climax brings a feeling of emotionlessness, detachment, and numbness which quiets the feeling of anxiety and nervousness, however briefly. Here is also why sex becomes so deeply addictive, as it’s being pursued for the instant ‘hit’ it provides. But since it involves no deep connection to another human being, it is insubstantive in nature and thus the hit can only be sustained in ever-increasing doses.
Anthony Weiner will not resign. They’ll have to push him out, pry his cold hands from the door of his Congressional office. In his mind this seat is all he has. It defines him. Take it away and in his mind he becomes the proverbial tree in the forest that falls without anyone witnessing or hearing it. Without the bells and whistles of success Weiner sees himself as non-existent. No doubt he fears that his wife will leave him as well, convinced as he is that she only married him because of his office.
I am of a serious mind to run against Congressman Weiner to highlight the broken state of American manhood and how we must finally address it rather than watch more decent men combust.
