What a weiner

Ashley Parker and Michael Barbro have an article in The New York Times about anthony Weiner and his reckless behavior:

Gennette Cordova said she did not even think the photo was real. It was nearly 9 p.m. on a Friday when Ms. Cordova, who was preparing to head out for the night with a friend, logged onto Twitter and discovered that Representative Anthony D. Weiner had sent her a suggestive photo of himself in gray boxer briefs. “It didn’t make any sense,” Ms. Cordova, a 21-year-old college student in northwestern Washington State, said in her first extensive interview since Mr. Weiner confessed in a news conference to sending her the photo. “I figured it must have been a fake.”
Ms. Cordova’s experience with Mr. Weiner appears to fit a pattern: in rapid and reckless fashion, he sought to transform informal online conversations about politics and partisanship into sexually charged exchanges, at times laced with racy language and explicit images.
Ms. Cordova, who had traded messages with Mr. Weiner, a New York Democrat, about their shared concern over his conservative critics, said she had never sent him anything provocative. Asked if she was taken aback by his decision to send the photo, she responded, “Oh gosh, yes.”
Ms. Cordova spoke to The New York Times as Mr. Weiner faced intensifying calls for his resignation because of his acknowledged online sexual communications with at least six women over the last three years. House leaders have begun a concerted effort to persuade Mr. Weiner to step down, worried that the sensational coverage of his online sexual liaisons had created political chaos and was subjecting the Democratic Party to ridicule.
The women who have acknowledged encountering Mr. Weiner on social media and then having personal communications with him varied in age, race, and location, and even in their willingness to engage the congressman in sexual discourse. But in each case Mr. Weiner’s online conduct in many ways mirrored that of his offline life; he was aggressive, blunt, feisty, and willing to push boundaries with an apparent disregard for the possible consequences.
The women came to his attention after he had come to theirs. Usually they were admirers of his scrappy progressive politics and youthful energy, and either posted an enthusiastic comment on his Facebook page or sent him an admiring Twitter message.
Ms. Cordova was first impressed with Mr. Weiner after she saw him take on Representative Michele Bachmann, a Tea Party-backed Republican from Minnesota, on Fox News’ Hannity. Ms. Cordova and her boyfriend thought the congressman was smart and funny, and they both started following him on Twitter. “I tweeted words of support for him as a politician, and I retweeted his tweets often, beginning around early to mid-April,” Ms. Cordova said, in a series of conversations by phone and email over the past two days. She added that, in mid-April, “he thanked me for the support” using a direct message— a private note sent via Twitter— and he then signed up as her follower on Twitter, meaning that he could easily read all of her posts. Ms. Cordova said that after Mr. Weiner began following her, critics of the congressman started sending her harassing messages. She said she then began communicating, always electronically, with the congressman about their shared annoyance with those critics. Ms. Cordova provided a portion of her communications with Mr. Weiner to The Times, in which they messaged back and forth about the online detractors and their tactics. But Ms. Cordova would not make all of her interaction with him available for review. “I have not sent him any suggestive messages,” Ms. Cordova said. She said she was, however, surprised by his informal tone. “He was just very casual,” she said. “It wasn’t like talking to a U.S. congressman.”
A spokeswoman for Mr. Weiner did not dispute Ms. Cordova’s account. Mr. Weiner, at his news conference on Monday, said he had sent Ms. Cordova the underwear photo “as part of a joke”, but Ms. Cordova said the image was not in keeping with the tenor of their previous interactions. “I still didn’t get the joke part of it,” she said.
Several other women who have come forward over the last several days have described a similar progression in their interactions with Mr. Weiner. Meagan Broussard, a 26-year-old Texan, said her flirtatious exchange with the congressman started with the single word— “Hottttt”— that she posted on his Facebook wall in April, after watching him speak. Ms. Broussard, who first detailed her experience in an interview on Good Morning America on ABC, said Mr. Weiner sent her a Facebook friend request hours after her post, and then instant-messaged her daily. She said that their conversations started off casually, with the congressman “just asking about Texas, that sort of thing, just joking back and forth,” but that their nature quickly changed. “He was very personal with his own business,” she said, adding that within a few days, their exchanges had become sexual, and he was sending her explicit photos. “I was like, Wow, that’s kind of out there, daredevil,” Ms. Broussard told Fox News’s Hannity.
Lisa Weiss, a forty-year-old blackjack dealer in Las Vegas, provided an account of her exchange with the congressman to RadarOnline.com. She said she first contacted the congressman, whom she called “the wonderful Anthony Weiner,” over Facebook in mid-August, to compliment his Daily Show appearance and to praise him for taking on Republicans in Congress. Just over a month later, according to transcripts of their conversations, their exchanges had turned raunchily sexual.
Ms. Broussard and Ms. Weiss did not return calls. But Ms. Cordova said that, for her, the last two weeks had brought an unwanted frenzy of media attention and, she said, misperceptions about her involvement with Mr. Weiner. “I’ve had a really hard time trying to fight these implications that I’ve been involved in an inappropriate relationship with a married congressman,” she said. She has struggled to stay out of the limelight, leaving college and completing class work by phone and email. Her interactions with the congressman since the controversy began have been spare and brief, she said. She gave Mr. Weiner a warning before she issued a statement to The Daily News when the underwear photo became public, and she heard from him the day of his confessional news conference: He sent her a text message apologizing moments before he walked onstage. Ms. Cordova said she had mixed feelings about the congressman who propelled her, and himself, into a political maelstrom. “I certainly don’t condone his behavior,” she said, “but I think that’s a personal matter between him and his family.”

Rico says that, if they're worried about subjecting the Democratic Party to ridicule, this is not their biggest problem...