Where Was Huma?

Welcome to Clintonia. Or, I should say, welcome back.

You remember your last trip to Clintonia. You recall the semen-stained dress, flashing Paula Jones, groping Kathleen Willey, raping Juanita Broaddrick, the cigar that was not just a cigar and, God help us, the new Clintonian use for one White House sink.

It’s as though Bill Clinton was flashing the world, making a perfectly shameless public exposure of his private parts. We will note in passing, for those who care about such things, that the dowager Empress of Chappaqua has never been the subject of such exposure. Heaven knows what that means, but in Clintonia only men expose themselves.

In any event, the Clinton sex scandals revolved around the president’s virile organ. Similarly, the sex scandals that have now engulfed Clinton’s mini-me, Anthony Weiner, also concern the same organ. Say what you will about Huma but, as opposed to the wife of a certain presidential candidate, there are no naked pictures of Huma floating through the internet.

First, it was Carlos Danger exposing himself to a woman he didn’t know. Now, in what was supposed to have been the last straw for Huma, Weiner has exposed his bulge while lying in bed with his four year 0ld son. Apparently, this was the end for Huma. It has also, and quite properly, provoked an investigation from Child Protective Services. What kind of father does such a thing?

Whatever kind of father does such a thing, Weiner is a Democrat, so liberals feel some need to exonerate him. After all, he did not hire a prostitute and did not, like Bill Clinton, assault any women. You know and I know that Bill Clinton is so far above it all that when he abuses a woman it doesn’t count. Evidently, Weiner did not understand that just because he was Bill’s adopted son, his mini-me, he could get away with what Bubba was getting away with.

Anyway, a good liberal like Michelle Goldberg does yeoman work rationalizing Weiner’s dereliction:

Even jerks, however, don’t deserve the sort of gleeful public shaming visited on Weiner. It was enough to almost—almost—make me root for him when he was running for New York City mayor, simply as a victory for second chances. And then, in the midst of that race, he lost his chance at redemption with yet another sexting scandal….

It shouldn’t surprise any of us that Weiner, a man with a bottomless need for affirmation, was unable to give up virtual sex in the aftermath of his first epic humiliation, before his attempt at a comeback was fully underway. Think of your worst habit, your most shameful vice. Imagine trying to quit it immediately after losing your job, at a time when your marriage is uncertain and your professional future bleak. Nor should it surprise us that, with his most cherished ambitions thwarted, he’s still trading naughty pictures on the internet. Shame rarely makes people better than they were.

Among the errors Goldberg makes—this is a blog post so I cannot detail all of them—she is wrong to suggest that shame rarely makes people better than they are. It is rare that people better themselves without a soul wrenching experience of shame. Assuming that she knows the difference, guilt is far more likely to cause recidivism. When you feel guilty you can confess and do penance. Then you can go out and sin some more.

Be that as it may, and before we try to make some sense out of all this, we will note the one question that no one was asking. While Weiner was at home in bed with his son, doing his best Mr. Mom impersonation, where was Huma? Where was the child’s mother?

We all know the answer. Huma was running around the country with Hillary, managing her campaign and sharing a hotel suite with her. Somehow or other, and it is surely a symptom of something in our culture, we are not concerned by the fact that a mother has effectively abandoned her son. We shrug. 

In all of the media discussion of this situation, Huma’s abandonment of her child is what Sherlock Holmes called: the dog that didn’t bark.

Huma’s dereliction does not rate with Anthony’s, but we do know that men who are humiliated into playing the role of Mr. Mom very often cheat. I was going to say that they do not take it lying down, but, under the circumstances, that would not be the best image.

Anyway, when Weiner’s bulge-shot appeared on the cover of the New York Post, it was the final straw for Huma. She declared that she was separating from her sometime husband. The world cheered her courageous choice, but no one asked who was going to have custody of the child.

All of Hillary’s supporters rushed to the airwaves to explain that this marital fiasco—and I think that that’s a nice way to put it—had nothing to do with the Clinton presidential campaign. Fair enough. But it does tell us something about life in Clintonia.

After all, the marriage of Anthony and Huma was an arrangement. It was arranged by the Clintons: Bill’s surrogate son married Hillary’s surrogate daughter. Bill Clinton presided over the wedding. Moreover, it was very multicultural: a Jewish man was marrying a daughter of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It may or may not have been a happy marriage, but I do not recall seeing a picture of the couple together in which Huma cracked anything resembling a smile. If you can tell anything by looking at a couple together, the Anthony-Huma marriage was a political arrangement. One suspects that the Clinton marriage—another political arrangement—had worked so well for both of them, that they sold the formula to their mini-me’s. And one suspects that Weiner, an ambitious man on the way to becoming the mayor of New York at the time, happily embraced a formula that had worked for the Clintons and that had surely larded over with promises of political support.

And that is the nice way to look at it. But, this explains nothing about Carlos Danger and about Weiner’s utter foolishness and lack of judgment. Perhaps he was emulating Bill Clinton, thinking that he too could get away with just about anything. But there must have been more to it.

Let’s try this. The point of the Anthony-Huma marriage was to provide cover for Huma’s relationship with Hillary. Weiner was simply Huma’s beard. This suggests that Bill Clinton was Hillary’s beard. And, for all we know, that might well have been the case.

If such is the case, the psychology become clearer. Let’s say that a man has married a woman who is radically disinterested in his virile organ. Let’s say that he has married a woman who is not interested in men at all. Might he not suspect that his decision reflects badly on his own sexuality? Might he not suspect that people will look at him as less than manly? Might he not suspect that people will believe that he too is more attracted to members of his own gender?

Obviously, if a man’s wife is not interested in having sexual relations with him or with any man, he has carte blanche to find other women. It has happened before and it will happen again. But, if he wants to show the world that he is all man and that he does not have an ounce of attraction for members of his own gender, he will need to make his sexual conquests a matter of public record. If he wants to do so, he can reduce the chances of discretion by amassing a large number of sexual conquests and by treating them with less than respect. Ultimately, if he is president of the United States, he can ensure that his affair will go public by getting involved with a 22 year old intern. There is no way that a woman that age will keep secret her having fellated the virile organ of the most powerful man on earth.

Apparently, Anthony Weiner was more uxorious than his surrogate father. And yet, he also needed to affirm that he was a virile male, by showing off his organ to the world entire. Again, choosing to do so over the internet with women he did not know was a very good way to get caught. You are more likely to get caught sexting than you are availing yourself of the services of a high-priced escort.

And besides, one suspects that Weiner now knows that he was had, that he was tricked by the Clintons into marrying someone he did not care for and who did not care for him. And, let’s assume that he does not have any good feelings about having to stay home to act like Mr. Mom. By getting caught he has also humiliated his sometime wife and made the Clintons look bad. His actions were self-sacrificing, but they were less irrational than everyone thinks.