I Can’t Believe Anthony Weiner Will Keep His Job

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Luke Ford

I don’t recall any news conference like the one Anthony Weiner just gave.

He confessed to such humiliating and inappropriate behavior. OK, that’s not the big deal.

What’s the big deal is that he is not resigning. Eliot Spitzer tried to hold on for about 36 hours after the news broke of his continued patronizing of prostitutes while serving as governor of New York.

Anthony Weiner claims his wife Huma Abedin — the former bodywoman to Hillary Clinton — still loves him and he loves Huma.

Pundits keep saying that often in these cases, the cover-up is worse than the crime.

Anthony Weiner said at the end of his press conference, “I may need therapy.”

Andrew Breitbart was magnificent as he pointed out how the left-wing media such as Salon and the Daily Kos accused Breitbart of hacking Anthony Weiner.

From RCP:

“I want to hear the truth. I want to hear the truth from Congressman Weiner and I would like an apology for him being complicit in a blame-the-messenger strategy,” Andrew Breitbart said at a presser before Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) took the podium — at the same place.

“I am accused of being a hacker. He said nothing. He allowed for that to go. The minions perpetuated that false, maliciousness and he went on to CNN to attack me and I feel he was complicit. You can talk. The girl’s story, I believe, will be on “World News Tonight,” and she can talk to you more specifically. I have seen a lot of this Congressman’s body and he is in very good shape and it appears to be his body. So … okay, everything that I have said so far has come to be true.”

If Anthony Weiner had come clean from the beginning, he might’ve survived. I don’t know how. If a Republican congressman has to resign because he emailed a photo of himself topless to a woman he met through Craigslist.

Paul Begala: Brooklyn is a liberal place and Anthony Weiner is a liberal guy. [Maybe he will survive politically.]

The U.S. House of Representatives can expel him for, among other things, bringing the House into disrepute.

How long until Huma Abedin shows up at Anthony Weiner’s side in public to show that she still loves and supports him?

My web traffic is going crazy. I had 4,750 visitors in the past hour, which is more than I typically received in 24 hours.

I was curious to how Matt Drudge would cover this story because Andrew Breitbart is his long-time assistant. I suspect Matt would not like Andrew over-shadowing him. So there’s no pic of Andrew on DrudgeReport.com right now.

Report: The last question shouted at a Weiner as he left the podium was “Were you fully erect, Congressman?”

NYDN reports: As if the Weinergate scandal couldn’t get more circus-like, Weiner’s comments got a truly bizarre kickoff when conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart – who first published Weiner’s crotch picture – hijacked the press conference to proclaim himself vindicated.

Breitbart walked up to the podium moments before 4 p.m. and made a speech, then began taking questions from the assembled reporters.

Presumably, Weiner had to wait behind the scenes as Breitbart triumphantly hogged the microphone for 13 minutes.

“I’d like an apology for him for being complicit in a blame-the-messager strategy,” Breitbart said. “I’m here for some vindication.”

After earlier publishing a shirtless photo that Weiner supposedly sent an internet stranger, Breitbart said he was holding a raunchier photo in reserve.

“There’s at least one more photo,” he said. “It’s of an X-rated nature. I have no intention of releasing it. I’m doing this to save his family.”

But he called it an insurance policy.

“If this guy wants to start fighting with me again, I have this photo,” he said.

Posted in Andrew Breitbart, Huma Abedin, Politics | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on I Can’t Believe Anthony Weiner Will Keep His Job

Anthony Weiner Admits Lying

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Luke Ford

I’m watching Fox News.

At 1 p.m., when Anthony Weiner was scheduled to speak, instead the man at the podium was Andrew Breitbart.

Andrew is on a book tour. This has brought him to Manhattan. Andrew decided to show up at the hotel in mid-town for the newsconference. The journalists asked him to go up front to the podium to speak.

At 1:25 p.m., Weiner came out to the podium and admitted he lied.

When I was discussing this case over the past ten days, I said that I believed that Anthony Weiner had sent the tweet of his crotch. He intended it as a private message but got one character wrong and sent it to all of his twitter followers.

Weiner says he has never had sex outside of his marriage to former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

Weiner says he’s not resigning. I don’t see how he can hold on. He’s a butt of jokes.

Huma Abedin only found out today from Anthony Weiner that he had sent that pic of his penis and mistakenly sent it to all of his Twitter followers.

Dylan Howard reports: “Rep. Anthony Weiner used an unflattering Jewish sexual stereotype during another Facebook sexting session with a middle-aged woman, RadarOnline.com and Star magazine are exclusively reporting in a joint newsgathering operation.”

ABC News reports: “On May 18, Broussard received an image from the RockOh77 account that shows a man’s erect penis. Two days later, she received a shot of a bare-chested man sitting at an office desk. The man in the photo shares facial features with Weiner, and personal photographs in the background resemble his known aquaintances.”

I think the biggest reason that Anthony Weiner is not immediately resigning is that he is left of center and secular. As such, he can not be a hypocrite for sexting with women not his wife because being left-wing and secular means you’re not accountable to any moral code.

A conservative and a religious person, by contrast, is responsible to a moral code and hence would be more likely to resign in this situation.

By engaging in this risky sexting, Anthony Weiner opened himself to blackmail.

This Fox News legal analyst Liz Wiehl says she’s not surprised he’s not resigning because he’s so arrogant.

The right-wing blogosphere, led by Andrew Breitbart’s websites BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com, nailed this story from the beginning. The MSM followed on only reluctantly, giving great credit to Anthony Weiner’s mendacious excuses. I can’t believe how the MSM treated him in the first few days of this story, bending over backward to portray his point of view and giving far greater skepticism, by contrast, to Andrew Breitbart.

I admit I love watching this humiliation of Anthony Weiner because he’s such a nasty guy. He says big lies about Republicans. He’s arrogant.

I find it gratifying to watch the fall of such a jerk.

Wolf Blitzer on CNN just said at 2:06 p.m. that Andrew Breitbart was vindicated.

Posted in Huma Abedin, Sex | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Anthony Weiner Admits Lying

What Do You Notice?

Posted on June 5, 2011 by Luke Ford

That’s the most persistent question in Alexander Technique lessons — what do you notice?

When you get in and out of a chair, what do you notice? Do you sense your neck tightening and compressing? What’s going on with your lower back? Do you find yourself holding your breath? Do you start compressing your whole torso when you simply think about sitting down? Do you lock your knees?

When you walk, what do you notice? Is one shoulder taller than the other? Are parts of your back collapsed? Do you sense yourself over-striding? What’s leading? You should lead with your head. Are you thinking your directions? Think your knees forward at all points in the stride.

When you take a breath, what happens with your neck? When you speak, what happens with your neck? Do you sense yourself compressing? Do you notice you’re tightening your whole torso when you speak? Do you notice that the stimulus to project your voice causes you to compress more than if you were having a quiet conversation?

My first Alexander Technique teacher didn’t think I was going to come back after our first lesson. For the first 15 or so lessons, she thought she was failing with me. Why? Because I had a hard time with the question, “What do you notice?”

At the beginning of our work each day, she’d always ask me, “Did you have any Alexander moments since our last lesson?” And I never had any.

I’ve seen that most people don’t have my problem with articulating what they notice in their body when they deal with various stimuli.

So why am I so disconnected from my body? I think it was trauma in early childhood. Like a budding porn star, I learned to disassociate from my body. Ever since then, I’ve spent my life in my head instead of my body. It’s a big challenge learning to connect again, to notice what is going on in my lower back as I sit down, and to articulate this back to my teacher.

Despite this problem of mine and despite my continued reluctance to engage with the question, I’ve made at least average progress through my lessons.

(A friend told me the other day, “I don’t think I’ve known any student who’s had as many doubters as you’ve had.” That’s because I was so unaware of my body when I started and had a helluva time following my Alexander directions. I appeared sunk in my hips, collapsed in my back, down in my trunk, and lost in bad habits of use.)

So perhaps it is not so important to be able to answer this question? I’ve made great progress while still engaging it reluctantly and haltingly. Perhaps the kinesthetic experience of working under the hands and verbal instructions of a good Alexander teacher are enough to guide one to good use? If so, then others can learn the same way.

Posted in Alexander Technique, Personal | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on What Do You Notice?

Lofty First Amendment Ideas

Posted on June 5, 2011 by Luke Ford

In writing class today, I was challenged to draw what I was thinking about.

I produced this:

And then I had to write about it.

My title is: “Tiger on the Loose”

I love Hollywood. I love being on set. I love walking around movie studios. I love meeting people in the business. I love extra work and hanging out at the crafts services table. I remember the excitement of auditions and call-backs. I remember reading books on how to be a working actor. I remember the seriousness of my pursuit. I was so dedicated that many people I encountered were sure I was going to make it. Yet I knew that the odds were against acting working out financially for me. I knew that my time in Hollywood was a sexy break from reality. That I would soon tire of being homeless and that I would find myself one day and set up shop in an in between world — not acting but not life insurance either. My gift was writing and I was good enough at it to earn a respectable living.

I looked at my time in Hollywood as I looked at my time in construction — as interesting deviations from my inevitable life before the keyboard. I could rebel against my life mission and that was fine because I would always circle around to writing again. Explorations and flirtations with the outside world would only deepen my understanding of life for those inevitable decades when I’d largely wall myself away from other people and just write.

And then there were all the pretty girls in acting class. I could do scenes with them and touch them and we could rehearse privately and it was the easiest way in the world to sleep with a lot of attractive young women and to stretch creatively as I entered those different worlds, even if for just five minutes at a time.

I could watch the predatory behavior of the big beasts in the Hollywood jungle and marvel at the girls exchanging their vitality for illusory opportunity and I could wonder if one day I too would turn into a tiger.

PS. I’ll be reading a story along with the rest of my class at Beyond Baroque at 681 Venice Blvd, 90291, on June 19 at 7:30 pm. Admission is $8. More info here.

Posted in Hollywood, Personal | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Lofty First Amendment Ideas

Hasidic Burning In New Square, New York

Posted on June 5, 2011 by Luke Ford

The New York Times reports:

NEW SQUARE, N.Y. — Last September, Aron Rottenberg did something radical.

Along with some friends, he began worshiping not at the grand synagogue at the center of this ultra-Orthodox Skver Hasidic community in Rockland County, but outside the village at a residence for the elderly.

Before long, a rabbinical court ruled that praying outside the synagogue was a serious violation of community rules.

Next, groups outside Mr. Rottenberg’s house smashed windows and dumped his daughter’s school desk and books on the front porch. And on May 22, an early-morning attack left Mr. Rottenberg with third-degree burns over most of his body.

Shaul Spitzer, 18, who lived in the house of Grand Rabbi David Twersky and worked as his butler, was charged with attempted murder and attempted arson.

Posted in Hasidim | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Hasidic Burning In New Square, New York

My Big Fat Gay Wedding

Posted on June 5, 2011 by Luke Ford

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on My Big Fat Gay Wedding

This Week’s Torah Portion – Parashat Beha’alotekha (Numbers 8:1-12:16)

Posted on June 5, 2011 by Luke Ford

I discuss the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Rabbs every Monday at 7pm PST on my live cam and on YouTube.

Watch the video here.

This week we study Parashat Beha’alotekha (Numbers 8:1-12:16).

Tonight’s show comes from The House of Rabbs.

* You can’t go before God dirty. The Torah repeatedly enjoins washing. One of the Torah’s major themes is elevating us from the animal-like. No bestiality.

* Standards vs. compassion in Num. 9:7. You never hear in Torah, that sounds uncompassionate, I’m going to drop the standards. You’re a victim. No more standards. We’re so quick to feel sorry for people that we drop obligations.

* There’s no talk in Torah about so long as you feel Jewish or act with Jewish values, you don’t need to do anything. The Torah is all about doing stuff and not doing stuff. Who would say, “I don’t have to show my wife I love her, I just have to appreciate her values”? No wife could endure being appreciated for her values but not for herself. You have to perform. (Dennis Prager)

* Numbers 9:14. One law for all residents of Israel. Debbie Wasserman Schultz complains that Republicans want to make being in the U.S. illegally a crime.

* Num. 12:1. Miriam and Aaron say that Moshe married a Cushite woman. What’s so wrong with that? Cushi mamzer (black bastard) is a common phrase in Israel.

* I want to talk about my hatred of women.

* I want to talk about my Anthony Weiner moment.

* Anthony Weiner used an unflattering sexual Jewish stereotype in private texting.

* I want to talk about how the rabbi and I are celebrating Los Angeles’s first gay, bisexual and transgender heritage month.

* At the end of his book Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction, Dr. Patrick Carnes writes that we can help addicts by the “elimination of jokes that degrade people’s struggle with their sexual compulsivity, such as “flasher” jokes, dirty bookstore jokes…” So, are people who act out sexually creeps or are they just ill and in need of treatment?

Posted in Torah | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on This Week’s Torah Portion – Parashat Beha’alotekha (Numbers 8:1-12:16)

I’m A Judaism Junkie

Posted on June 4, 2011 by Luke Ford

I love Judaism. I can’t get enough. Reconstructionist Judaism. Reform Judaism. Conservative Judaism. Orthodox Judaism. Love it! Can’t get enough.

I’m a Judaism junkie. Can’t get enough. Except for the davening and for some of the more painful restrictions. And the arduous study about arcane matters.

But aside from that, I love Jewish ethics. I love Jewish values. I love Jewish positions. Heck, I love Jewish novels and Jewish movies and Jewish women. I’m a junkie.

Posted in Judaism, Personal | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on I’m A Judaism Junkie

I Want To Reconnect With My UCLA Dorm Mates

Posted on June 4, 2011 by Luke Ford

I feel like if I can just reconnect with people from my past, I can heal the those years and move on with my life.

I’m particularly eager to reconnect with people I knew during my brief sick year at UCLA 1988-89.

The problem is I only remember one last name from that period and that is of my ex-girlfriend and she’s now married with a kid and calls me an “old man” and she’s not on Facebook so I can’t scan her friends list to look for familiar names.

Only once have I run into anyone from that time. It was a Friday Night Live at Sinai Temple circa 2002. I ran into Doug, who was on my special quiet floor at Rieber Hall.

He was this dimpled little Jewish guy who’d done some modeling.

It was great to reconnect. I think we only talked for a few minutes and this was during the days before Facebook so we haven’t had any contact since.

This UCLA year was a painful year for me. I had expected it to be the springboard to my grand future and instead it was only a springboard to another five years in bed with the whimpily-titled Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

I flashed some real promise that year, impressing several of my professors and classmates. Yet I was only a flash in the pan. I dropped out of school, never to return.

All my friends thought my illness was only in my head. If I could just talk to them now, if I could only explain it was real, but I’m doing better, I’ve overcome. I’m a fricken hero. If only I could just talk to them. If only I could find them on Facebook. Perhaps if we could get together for coffee.

There was that one girl. I did reconnect with her six years later. And I treated her wrong. I want to apologize. I was a fool. I’d thought there’d be plenty. How wrong I was.

Related: My Former UCLA Classmate Is Now A Lieutenant Colonel In The U.S. Army

Sierra Community College, June 1988, after winning awards for Student of the Year in Communications and Political Science.

On my girlfriend’s bed at Rieber Hall in the Spring of 1989.

At UCLA in August 1989.

Posted in Personal, UCLA | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on I Want To Reconnect With My UCLA Dorm Mates

My Anthony Weiner Moment

Posted on June 4, 2011 by Luke Ford

I was breaking the Tisha B’av fast in 1999 at a fine kosher establishment on Robertson Blvd, just south of Pico.

I ran into a woman a few years my senior.

“I’ve got somebody for you,” she said. “This woman — Jewish, secular — said to me, ‘I just want a man to hold me and to tell me I’m pretty.’ And I immediately thought of you.”

“I’m the man for this task,” I said. “Get me her contact info.”

So I started chatting with this girl on AOL.

“Are you a breast man?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“But do you really like them?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

And then she emailed me a photo of her in a low-cut top.

“I want to see a picture of your ****,” she wrote.

“But I’m a Torah Jew,” I responded. “My every deed is governed by G-d’s immutable moral law. There is no room in Torah for this kind of display before marriage. I’d rather die than betray my conversion to Judaism. For this Moses led us out Egypt?”

“I want to see a picture of your ****,” she repeated.

With great reluctance, I looked for my digital camera and snapped a photo of my junk modestly covered up by my shorts. Then I uploaded it to my computer and emailed it to her.

She must’ve liked what she saw because we arranged for me to pick her up on Sunset Blvd that Friday night and drive her back to her place in the Valley. That evening and the next morning, I did my best to make her feel pretty (without actually telling her she was pretty and committing the great sin of lying).

Then motzi Shabbos, I took her to four hours of live debate I did on KFI (for the first hour) and then on the Ed Powers Show on FM 97.1.

A few days later, she asked that I get an HIV test. I did, but she never had sex with me again. So I feel like I wasted $75.

And now I can never run for political office in case she still has that picture.

MARK STEYN ON WEINERGATE: “It’s the political class doing all this relentless “work for the American people” that’s turned this country into the brokest nation in the history of the planet, killed the American Dream and left the American people headed for a future poised somewhere between the Weimar Republic and Mad Max. So, if it’s a choice between politicians getting back to work for the American people or Tweeting their privates round the planet, I say, Tweet on, MacDuff. Tough on our young college ladies. But, as Queen Victoria advised her daughter on her wedding night, lie back and think of England. Download and think of America.”

Posted in Personal, Sex | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on My Anthony Weiner Moment