There is just no escape from the Weiner jokes.
Apparently former congressman Anthony Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin, granted the New York Times Magazine a long interview with the intent of preparing the public for a new post-tweet exposure scandal campaign for public office, most likely for New York mayor. However, if Weiner thought he could put the scandal, and the jokes, behind him he would be wrong. Although the extended profile of over 8300 words written by Jonathan Van Meter was mostly sympathetic, it just couldn't resist repeating an absolutely hilarious Weiner joke as told by former DNC chairman, Terry McAuliffe.
The Weiner joke is so funny that your humble correspondent is placing it below the fold so you have time to put down your drinks and spare soaking your screens and keyboards. Oh, and if there are any kids around, please tell them to step away since the joke is risqué. Very risqué:
Okay so are the drinks down and the kids away? Good. Here is what happened when Weiner asked his future wife, Huma, out for their first date at a DNC retreat on Martha's Vineyard:
At a Democratic National Committee retreat on Martha’s Vineyard in August 2001, Weiner asked Abedin if she wanted to go out for a drink. She told him she had to work. Weiner turned to Clinton and said: “I asked Huma out for a drink, and she says she has to work. Can you give her the night off?” With Abedin now behind Weiner, waving her arms and shaking her head “no” to try to get her boss’s attention, Clinton, forever the Midwesterner, said, “Of course all you young people should go out!”
And now the highly inappropriate but hilarious McAuliffe joke:
Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the D.N.C., who was watching the scene unfold, said: “Huma Weiner! Oh, my gosh! That’s so funny.”
You're probably laughing but how did Huma react to the joke?
Abedin was mortified.
Almost as funny as McAuliffe's joke is what happened during the date. Uh, let us just call it "Weiner deflation."
“So, we went out for a drink,” Weiner says, “which is when I found out she doesn’t drink, and she orders tea and excuses herself to go to the ladies’ room, and when she gets up, this cabal of four or five of her friends come over to the table and say: ‘Stay away. She wants no part of you.’ And this part of the story Huma disputes, but it’s true. She never came back. She ditched me.”
And since she didn't follow up with her initial impression of Weiner, poor Huma ended up as a permanent punchline for a Terry McAuliffe joke.
There is a lot more humor in this story but it is mostly unintentional. For example, this bit about Weiner's tastes in the gastronomic department:
One afternoon in March, I met Weiner at Almond, another of his brother’s restaurants. He came bounding in, announced that he was starving and ordered escargot and a cheeseburger.
Ugh! I'm not sure that even Andrew Zimmern would try that bizarre foods combination.
Does Anthony Weiner appear to you as a modern King Arthur with Huma as his Guinevere? Proably not but that is how Weiner sees himelf:
“My last name; the fact that I was this combative congressman; the fact that there were pictures involved; the fact that it was a slow news period; the fact that I was an idiot about it; the fact that, while I was still lying about it, I dug myself in deeper by getting beefy with every reporter. But it was also this notion of how much attention our relationship had gotten, this kind of Camelot feel to it. It turned out to make it harder on both of us, and it made the explosion that much bigger.”
Most of the rest of the interview can best be described as a sort of overlong stream of consciousness psychological self analysis of his own navel in an attempt to explain why Weiner tweeted his package and why he should be given a second chance by being elected to public office again, probably mayor of New York.
And the best part of such a campaign will be the inevitable Weiner jokes. There is no escape, Anthony. You can't repackage Weiner.
