Blonde on Blonde on Weiner. That's Pretty Much It.

Blonde on Blonde was fractured this morning, with Lis Wiehl at the Fox studio in New York and Deirdre Imus at The Imus Ranch in New Mexico. No matter how many miles separated them, the two ladies agreed on at least one thing: Rep. Anthony Weiner is a pig.
 
According to Lis, an attorney, he’s also possibly a criminal, if allegations are true that he misused congressional resources to engage in—and then try to cover up—his misdeeds. But Imus wondered how or why anybody should trust random women Weiner met on Facebook and Twitter, who, he said, “are every bit as salacious as he is.”
 
“If they were really so into it for the media,” Lis began. “Don’t you think that might have come out before he admitted what he did?”
 
Deirdre would be fine with Weiner flirting, or sexting, or sending disgusting pictures of himself to women via e-mail IF he was not married (he is) and IF he was not a congressman (ditto).
 
“He’s a creepy, diabolical misogynist,” she decided. “He’s like Bill Clinton, and Eliot Spitzer, and these kinds of men—this is what they do…they basically use and abuse and disrespect women.”
 
Having represented the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee during Clinton’s impeachment trial, where she had access to The Starr Report and the infamous blue dress, Lis argued that what Weiner did is by no means worse than what Clinton did with Monica Lewinsky (and other women), even though Clinton held on to his job.
 
“He was impeached!” she cried. “The man paid a price for what he did.”
 
Lis and Deirdre made a few ancillary points, but the entire time Imus was distracted, and anybody who pays at least half-attention to this program knew exactly why.
 
“Did you actually see the love ick itself on the dress?” he asked Lis, who reminded him that this is a family show (it’s not), and refused to answer.
 
Having witnessed their interaction firsthand, Lis thinks couples like Bill and Hillary Clinton have an arrangement, where she stands by him for her own personal gain. Deirdre took a different tack. “There’s no way, when stick by a man like that, that you have an ounce of self-esteem left, or any dignity,” she said.
 
The problem, in Lis’s view, is not so much that Weiner sent racy sexual pictures and messages to women that were not his wife. “It’s more, to me, the lying,” she said. “The betrayal of the lie, again and again and again, to me, is unforgiveable. That’s a deal breaker. You walk out.”
 
Also haunting the Congressman is the possibility that some of these women might have been underage, though none appear to be at the outset. Deirdre chalked this up to one more example of risky online behavior, but Bernard brought the conversation back to reality.
 
“What’s he supposed to have them do?” Bernard said. “Send a birth certificate over?”
 
-Julie Kanfer