Whoever thought that Anthony Weiner would make a cameo before this horrifying presidential campaign came to its devoutly wished-for conclusion? My WGBH News colleagues Peter Kadzis and Adam Reilly, that’s who.
Back in September, on The Scrum, I mocked a New York Times story suggesting that the disgraced former congressman’s latest sexting scandal would hurt Clinton. Weiner’s wife, top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, had left him, and the Times theorized that could “remind voters about the troubles in the Clintons’ own marriage over the decades.”
It struck me as far-fetched. But Peter and Adam didn’t think so, and they let me know it. Now here we are. No, it didn’t play out exactly the way the Times speculated it might. But the FBI is investigating emails on Weiner’s computer that may include improperly handled classified messages between Clinton and Abedin. According to the Washington Post, Abedin has been telling friends she has no idea how that happened.
At a time when no one knows anything beyond the cryptic letter that FBI Director James Comey sent to Congress last week, I decided that the best way to research this piece was to pour a glass of wine, grab some Halloween candy, and watch Weiner, a documentary released a few months ago. I didn’t learn anything about the emails. But I did gain some insight, at least superficially, into the Weiner-Abedin marriage.
The film tells the story of Weiner’s campaign for mayor of New York in 2013. It seemed like a hopeless cause; he had already left Congress and become a national laughingstock over his first sexting scandal. Why did he choose to run? Weiner tells the filmmakers that his wife wanted her life back, and that the “straightest line” for him to do that was to run for mayor. “She wants her husband to be no longer a social pariah,” he says.
Incongruously, Weiner shoots to the top of the polls. And Abedin, a shy Muslim who was born in Michigan and grew up in Saudi Arabia, starts enjoying herself—speaking to supporters at get-togethers, hitting the phones, and generally taking part as a key member of the campaign.
Until the inevitable happens. With just a few weeks to go, Weiner gets caught again, sexting under the alias “Carlos Danger” with a 23-year-old woman named Sydney Leathers. Weiner, who seems constitutionally incapable of giving up either his political ambitions or the spotlight, keeps running, only to come in dead last in the preliminary election. His campaign ends in humiliating fashion he tries to evade Leathers and her media entourage, who had staked out the scene of his election-night party.
Weiner himself is riveting, as his dysfunctional behavior is overshadowed only by his pathological need to share and his tragic self-awareness. Watching his angry self on television, he says ruefully, “I can’t believe I gave the press the finger. I have this virtually unlimited ability to fuck things up.”
Abedin, by contrast, is seen more often than she is heard—a glamorous, quiet presence, her facial expressions conveying some combination of resignation and anger. It is astonishing that she stuck by him after his first sexting incident; it is almost beyond belief that she continued to support him after Sydney Leathers surfaced.
Abedin tries to keep her dignity—or at least what measure of dignity was still available to a woman married to Carlos Danger. At one point we see her in their kitchen, swallowing pills that could be vitamins—or something else. She smiles. “It’s like living a nightmare,” she says. Later, she refuses to appear in an ad with Weiner. He tries to bully her into changing her mind, but she stands her ground, and then watches her husband tape the ad with what looked to me like contempt. And then, finally, she blanches at the prospect of a close encounter with Leathers. “I’m not going to face the indignity of being accosted by this woman,” she says.
The amount of access Abedin provides is astonishing—even more so than is the case with Weiner, who is, after all, an attention junkie. Weiner later told Mark Leibovich of the New York Times that the filmmakers had violated an agreement not to include her without her permission. But I think anyone viewing the documentary would find that unlikely, as Abedin comes across as a full if somewhat reluctant participant.
So what does this tell us about Abedin and how she got dragged into Clinton’s latest email controversy? Not much, I suppose—though anyone who would stick by Weiner through two sexting incidents, and would only leave him after a third in which he exchanged lewd photos while holding his young son, is probably not as careful as her outwardly cautious demeanor would suggest.
As for Weiner himself, well, attention must be paid. That’s how he’s lived his entire life—beyond embarrassment, beyond any bounds of decency. The way he treats his wife in Weiner is not cruel in the manner of someone who’s physically or emotionally abusive, but it’s obvious that he sees her and everyone around him as mere extensions of himself.
Unfortunately for Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton, Weiner II: The Sexter’s Revenge is now playing everywhere, with no hope of shutting it down before Election Day—or even after.
