Following NY Rep. Michael Grimm's apology yesterday for threatening to break a reporter in half and throw him off a balcony [4], none other than former NY Rep. Anthony Weiner had some advice for the cantakerous congressman. Wring in the New York Daily News [5], Weiner began: "First, if you don’t want to talk about a scandal in which you’re embroiled, whatever that scandal may be, maybe it’s best that you don’t do interviews for a while..." but the snark and irony surges from there.
Weiner's New York Daily News Op-Ed advice [5] begins...
First, if you don’t want to talk about a scandal in which you’re embroiled, whatever that scandal may be, maybe it’s best that you don’t do interviews for a while.
For that matter, you may not want to attend community meetings, visit your office or go a sporting event. Fact is, an investigation that’s hanging over your head is the kind of thing people might be curious about. People ask you about embarrassing stuff even when you want to talk about other things. Especially when you want to talk about other things.
But gets a little snarky...
Better yet, if you don’t want to talk about your fund-raising scandal, maybe just maybe don’t have one to begin with. I only know what I read in the papers about all this. (OK, maybe I know a bit more.) But it does seem like a lot of people are being investigated and indicted in connection with Mikey Suits’campaign.
I’ll leave it to the authorities who are probing this in New York, Washington, Texas and Israel to work out what happened, but it seems like we may be headed for another of those Nixon/Christie “mistakes were made” moments.
And then, in the irony of the decade (given Weiner's outrageous outbursts to his voters and reporters alike)...
If you ignore the first two rules, try answering the questions posed to you, calmly.
[6]
I know that “can you tell us about the status of the ethics investigation into you?” sounds like fighting words. But it can actually be an invitation to explain some of the messy doings that have swirled around you since nearly the moment you were elected.
Weiner concludes...
Bottom line, notwithstanding the fact that there are lousy reporters — and that we all pay too much attention to scandals and not enough to all the people in public life who get up every day to do the best they can to do good work — the basic deal of representative government is this: The people who get elected have to be held accountable by the people who pay their salaries.
Sometimes that means getting a certificate of appreciation from the local Kiwanis Club, and sometimes it means having a reporter ask a question you don’t like. If you are living right, there are many many more of the former than the latter. But being an elected official is a high honor. You roll with the punches.
...
I did a terrible job following these rules. I did embarrassing things and made them so much worse by being dishonest about them.
So, people that live in glass houses shouldn't screw there?