Love, Hate, and Huma’s Pathetic Weiner

“She said her husband should be elected mayor! You do not get to trash his candidacy and praise hers. Want to support Huma? Then vote for Anthony!”

—Marc Tracy

Yes, really, it comes to this.

The thing is that I really, really don’t care. Really. I promise. The sad saga of the Little Weiner That Couldn’t Quit is all abstraction to me. Can he get elected? We’ll see when this is over.

But Marc Tracy’s article for The New Republic was one of those idiotic headlines I just couldn’t resist. I don’t know, maybe I was expecting satire.

There isn’t a transcript available yet, and I was too transfixed and oblivious of myself to take notes during this proverbial train wreck. But basically, she said that she determined that it was best for her, her marriage, and her child to stay together. It all seemed perfectly valid. And the Twitterati seemed to agree: My feed lit up with variations on a theme I have been seeing since Weiner announced his mayoral candidacy in late May—Huma is great; I love Huma; it should be Huma. As in: Weiner is the worst, and, relatedly, Abedin is the best.

Sorry, but no. Abedin spoke at her husband’s press conference (it was reportedly her idea, in fact), among the most important events of his political career, in the service of getting him elected mayor. This doesn’t mean you can’t agree with what she said. (Besides, to the extent that she was speaking about her decision to remain married to Weiner, it isn’t really our business.) But at least listen to what she said! She said her husband should be elected mayor! You do not get to trash his candidacy and praise hers. Want to support Huma? Then vote for Anthony!

Maybe Abedin should be mayor. Maybe she should be President Hillary Clinton’s chief-of-staff. Maybe she should divorce Weiner and marry someone better, like Eliot Spitzer. Or maybe she should be First Lady of New York City. But to deny that she is in the same boat as her husband as far as his political ambitions are concerned is to believe she is incapable of making informed decisions for herself. I doubt that is how her admirers feel ….

…. Abedin’s story isn’t over yet, either. But in this chapter, she is shilling for her husband to become mayor. If you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with her.

(Sigh.)

Yes, really.

I don’t have a damn thing to say to disagree with Tracy. Like I said, it’s all abstraction, like whether Irv Halter can unseat Rep. Doug “Tar Baby” Lamborn in Colorado’s Fifth Congressional District.

But … I don’t know. Really? This is really what our political discourse is coming to?

Special K the Lede of the Day

File this one under, “Whoops!” or, “Er … How’d That Happen?”

The Kellogg Company is recalling 36,000 boxes of its Special K Red Berries cereal that could contain pieces of glass.

Spoiler alert: In Stephen King’s Cujo, the problem was red dye. In The Simpsons, well … yeah.

You’ve Got To Be Kidding! (#2)

Let us simply go with the Associated Press:

An African-American nurse claims that a Michigan hospital agreed to a man’s request that no black nurses care for his newborn.

Tonya Battle tells the Detroit Free Press she “didn’t even know how to react” when she learned about the request from the father in October at Hurley Medical Center in Flint. The Flint Journal reports Ms. Battle sued last month in Genesee Circuit Court ….

…. Battle’s lawsuit claims a note was posted on an assignment clipboard reading, “No African American nurse to take care of baby.” She says that later was removed, but claims black nurses weren’t assigned to care for the baby for about a month because of their race ….

…. The Free Press said the lawsuit recounted how the neonatal intensive care nurse was at the infant’s bedside when a man came in and she requested to see the hospital-issued identification wrist band given to parents of patients. The man responded that ” … I need to see your supervisor.”

A supervising nurse spoke with the father who told him he didn’t want African-Americans to care for his child; the supervising nurse, reports the Free Press, also told Battle that he appeared to have a swastika tatoo on his arm.

“What flashed in my mind is ‘What’s next?’ A note on the water fountain that says ‘No blacks’? Or a note on the bathroom that says ‘No blacks’?” Battle told the Free Press.

Sometimes, there are no words that suffice, so the relevant critique comes from Rev. Charles E. Williams II, president of the Michigan chapter of the National Action Network: “There is growing concern around the country about how this could be in 2013.”