The take aways from Weiner's mistakes

Last semester I wrote a paper on John Edwards and his affair. My advice to politicians in this paper, and based off of the crisis situation which is John Edwards, was do not cheat. If you cheat, you will get caught. If you are dumb enough to cheat, and it comes out, do not be so dumb as to lie about it. You will not get away with it and you will simply dig yourself a bigger hole. We’ve seen it with Edwards, we’ve seen it with Clinton and we’ve seen it with many others. It’s just not a smart thing to do.

Ah, if only Congressman Anthony Weiner had taken this advice. Late in May, a photo emerged of a man in his underwear, which was sent on Twitter to a young Seattle woman. Weiner took down the post and claimed he had fell victim to a hacker attack. For days the Congressman stuck to this story. And many of us believed him. I mean, why would someone with any knowledge of social media or of Twitter post a picture like that of them? It just doesn’t make any sense. After seeing it day after day on the front of the Washington Post, and reading his answers to some questions (he didn’t know if the picture was of him, calling a reporter a jack ass…) it did make you think about his innocence. And then he came clean. In a nearly 30 minute press conference, Weiner explained that, unfortunately, he had posted those pictures, and there are others, but that he was going to stay in office regardless.

So what is the moral of the story other than “don’t cheat on your wife”? The answer- “Be careful what you put on the internet.” Although most of us are not putting lewd photos of ourselves online, we are putting a lot of other information. It is important an important lesson that even when you are trying to do something secretly (Weiner meant to send his photo through a personal message) mistakes happen and it can still get out. Even if he had successfully sent the image through a personal message, once it’s sent, it would be in this other person’s procession, and they too, could have released it. As we’ve heard in the past “don’t say anything you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the New York Times,” don’t do things online you don’t want to see on the front page of the New York Times, or spread all over the internet for that matter.

And to the politicians out there- people are waiting for you to fall, they will take any opportunity to help nudge you down that slippery slope. Not to sound overly paranoid, but people are watching you. Be careful what you do. Be careful what you put online. It has happened over and over again, but these things do surface, and once they do it’s hard to go back.