The most significant event in human history

That would of course be Weinerweinergate, or Weinersquaredgate, or the gate of Weiner's weiner or whatever you want to call it. In between acts of sadistic psychopathy in the Boston Bruins game, I clicked over to Lawrence O'Donnell to see if he really was devoting his entire program to the most world-changing event since human mastery of fire. Not quite -- only 40 minutes, or 2/3. I gather from Digby that Tweety did almost the entire program on Weiner^2. The ABC news site this morning had four separate articles on Weiner^2 at the top of the page.

Now, I understand that sex sells, but I mean come on, this isn't even sex. At least Vitter, Ensign, Haggard, Craig and Clinton etc. actually had physical contact with other human beings. I'm sure Weiner's wife is hurt and disappointed and his lies certainly don't speak well of him but that's all there is to say about it. After all he's one of 435 members of the House.

What defines a void is the stuff around it. While ABC was building up a mighty evidence of Weiner^2, they also mentioned in passing a record shattering heat wave gripping most of the country and record shattering floods along the Missouri River. But these events have nothing to do with anything else, and they don't call for urgent action of any kind, unlike Weiner^2 which is the most urgent political problem facing our nation.

I'm happy to say that I am not even tempted to any of the foibles that seem to be the epidemic downfall of great men these days, but I am pretty sure that most people have some secret bizarreness about them. It's all very titillating but we have real problems. It's time to get our heads out of the sand.