Welcome to the Sexting Age, Rep. Weiner: Tweeting Dick Pics Is Cheating

Like Rep. Chris Lee, the New York congressman has derailed his political career by forgetting that the Internet is a public forum

Is this the age of the virtual affair?

Rep. Anthony Weiner claims his indiscretions with at least six woman never moved from sexting to actual sex, but by photographing his junk, the Democratic congressman is helping to usher in a new era of political peccadilloes.

He’s had help. Weiner’s social media slip-up comes on the heels of Rep. Chris Lee’s shirtless Craigslist pictures just a few months ago. Both men are married.

Lee resigned within hours of the scandal breaking; Weiner has pledged to stay in office.

Also Read: Rep. Weiner: 'Terrible Mistakes' With 6 Women Online

While Eliot Spitzer needed a bankroll and a rolodex of high-class prostitutes to bring his governorship crashing down, the likes of Lee and Weiner demonstrate that any politician with a Twitter handle or a Facebook login have the tools to send their careers veering into the scandal sheets.

As for John Edwards, he may have had good old-fashioned sex out of wedlock and a baby to boot, but he and Rielle Hunter compounded the public relations albatross by taping their encounters. 

Were “The Good Wife” ripped from today’s headlines, chances are Julianna Margulies would be coping with a husband who Twitpic’d rather than something as, 2008, as say solicited hookers.

We are constantly warned that the Internet is a public forum, yet even political leaders are unable to fully accept that the photos and messages they email, post or Tweet are less easy to control in an increasingly interconnected world.

The Internet may be host to all manner of pornography and perversion, but its borders are frighteningly porous. 

Still, Weiner’s sexting might have remained secret had he simply sent the photo of his manhood via Direct Message as intended, rather than mistakenly posting it in his public feed.

“Once I realized I had posted to Twitter, I panicked, I took it down and said I had been hacked. I then continued to stick to that story which was a hugely regrettable mistake,” Weiner said.

Yet Weiner wasn’t just tripped up by technical errors. He made the equally damaging mistake of buying into the illusion of familiarity that social networking creates. In a searing, nearly hour-long press conference, the New York congressman said he had come to consider the women he sent explicit pictures to as friends.

“These were people I’d developed relationships with online,” Weiner told the assembled media throngs. “I didn’t think of them strangers.”

If he is to be believed, Weiner said he never met the women in question. Despite sharing snapshots of his nether regions, so vague was his knowledge of his Facebook girlfriends, that Weiner admitted he did not even know the women’s age. All he knew was he read on their profiles.

This new kind of online infidelity, moreover, meant that Weiner’s “girlfriends” had only a tenuous link to the married congressman and less of a reason for keeping the dirty talk from seeping off the instant messenger and into the blogosphere.

More orthodox affairs carry with them an underlying intimacy or at the very least a sense of co-conspiracy, whereas digital encounters can be forgotten or shared in the flick of a cursor.

Though the image of his bulging crotch has made Weiner a national punchline, the congressman said he did not regret reaching out to constituents via Facebook and Twitter.

With regard to social media, Weiner did assure the press: "I don't believe I'll use it the same way, that's for sure."

That's probably a lesson that other political figures will have to learn for themselves, perhaps even in the glare of the Klieg lights. 

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