{"id":4332,"date":"2011-06-07T07:55:51","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T11:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=4332"},"modified":"2011-06-09T11:22:10","modified_gmt":"2011-06-09T15:22:10","slug":"men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/06\/07\/men\/","title":{"rendered":"Men!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I know, I know.\u00a0 Just writing the name Anthony Weiner in this space is sure to unleash the furies.\u00a0 But I can’t help it.\u00a0 I’m fascinated.\u00a0 And really, it’s not the (virtual) sex or the (weirdly creepy) chest photographs.<\/p>\n

What fascinates me is the psychology of successful men who seem compelled to put their carefully-constructed lives at risk, often over peanuts.\u00a0 (Phone sex?\u00a0 Really?)<\/p>\n

(Does it make all this any more topical if I point out that Weiner was a SUNY Plattsburgh grad, class of ’85?)<\/p>\n

Over the years, I’ve collected a kind of mental gallery of these feet-of-clay figures, some of them very public and famous, others just average Joes who I’ve known in my private life.<\/p>\n

Taken together they are interesting, intelligent, complex people.\u00a0 They are talented and driven, and often motivated (at least in part) by the highest of virtues.<\/p>\n

Most are good fathers and reasonably solid husbands, and they are inevitably married to incredibly cool, beautiful women.<\/p>\n

But tucked away in a corner of their world is a black hole, a void.\u00a0 They live on the edge of a precipice, and apparently wouldn’t have it any other way.\u00a0 Naturally, they frequently fall.<\/p>\n

It would have the quality of Greek tragedy — fatal flaws, Achilles’ heels and so on — if the foibles in question weren’t so often pathetic and sad.<\/p>\n

(One almost thinks that successful men should be forced by their staffs to give up their digital cameras…)<\/p>\n

In some cases, I suspect that these men are looking for a way out.\u00a0 Their station in life forces them into such narrow pathways that they feel trapped, constrained.<\/p>\n

Maybe sending that icky photograph feels like decadent freedom, a cry of rebellion.\u00a0 They sound their barbaric yawps from the roofs of the world, or at least from their Twitter feeds. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Or perhaps they enter public life carrying their ticking-timebomb fetishes and neuroses.\u00a0 After a while, they just can’t keep it under wraps any more.<\/p>\n

And then of course there are the cases where married men really just seem to fall head-over-heels in love with someone other than their wife.\u00a0 It happens.\u00a0 And for these poor saps, that sordid business unfolds in the spotlight.<\/p>\n

In the end, I do think some compassion is in order.<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s annoying that in pursuing his pleasures Rep. Weiner let down his 700,000 constituents (not to mention his wife) and dropped the ball on the people’s business.<\/p>\n

But this kind of self-immolating behavior seems to be part of the human condition — or to borrow the French phrase, of the human comedy.<\/p>\n

Which means we might as well end with the words of Honore de Balzac.\u00a0 “Love is a game,” he wrote, ” in which one always cheats. “<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know, I know.\u00a0 Just writing the name Anthony Weiner in this space is sure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[20,5692,107],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4332"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4334,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4332\/revisions\/4334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}