Wiener's Choice

or, What Anthony Wiener failed to learn from Lucille Ball

When I was a kid I watched a lot of sitcoms on TV. I Love Lucy, Gilligan's Island, Father Knows Best, The Flying Nun, and so forth. A common theme in this sort of sitcom, showing up over and over again, was the scenario in which the protagonist makes a mistake of some kind then spends the rest of the program attempting to cover it up. Generally the cover-up gets more and more complicated until finally the initial mistake is uncovered, everything is resolved, and life is back to normal. The moral of these stories was about as subtle as an enema: if you make a mistake, fess up, apologize, and correct the problem. If you are Lucille Ball working in a candy factory, and the conveyor belt is moving too quickly, stuffing the candies in your mouth won't work.

In 1998 I was very confused when Bill Clinton lied so audaciously to cover up the Monica Lewinsky affair. But President Clinton is considerably older than I am, and was an inveterate politician (used to perpetual lying,) so I chalked it up to that. Of course, in the end, he got exactly what the sitcoms said he would get. He was impeached for lying to Congress, not for having “sex with that woman."

However, Anthony Wiener is almost exactly the same age as I am. I'm sure he watched the same sitcoms that I did. He hasn't been a politician for nearly as long as Clinton was, and, in my experience of him, he had always seemed like a fairly upstanding and honest guy. When the Wiener scandal began I believed he was entirely innocent; he couldn't possibly be that stupid, and he should certainly know that the thing you do in such a circumstance is to fess up if it's true. But, as in any good episode of All In the Family or The Jefferson’s, he lied and obfuscated and covered up and made a mess of the thing, till finally at the end of the episode the truth came out.

I can't help wondering what the response of the public, the media, and Congress would have been if he had said, at the very beginning, "yes, that is a photo of me. I am having an extramarital affair with a consenting woman, and we have been exchanging photos and messages as a part of that affair. My relationship with her is consensual, it's between the two of us, and it is a private matter for me, my wife, and my paramour."

Following the exposure of the cover-up, instead of backing him up, the Democratic leadership called for Wiener to step down. I wonder what they would have done if he had owned up to it from the start? How would the media have handled it? Would they have praised him for his honesty? Would they have said "oh, well, okay then," and moved on to the next story? What would his constituents have said in that circumstance? "Step down, we don't want an adulterer as our representative!" Or, "er, um, ahhh, gee, well, okay, but keep it to yourself."

There is a third approach that Wiener could've taken when presented with the photos. He could have just said “no comment.” He could have refused to say anything about it at all - ever. Of course, in that case, everyone would have assumed that he was in fact guilty. But who cares? He wouldn't have lied, and with nothing for the media to feed upon it might have just gone away. If the full story had come out in the end, he wouldn't have had to face the accusations of lying, and could even have just continued saying "no comment."

Unfortunately, I don't have access to a set of parallel universes in which alternate versions of Representative Wiener chose these different approaches to the scandal. So, none of us can know how these other tactics would have played out. However, I have no doubt that some future congressperson will do something equally stupid. I will be curious to see if they follow the “do the right thing” morality that was spoon-fed to me in the sitcoms of my youth, or if they will follow Bill Clinton, Anthony Wiener, and the rest of them down the rat-hole of botched cover-ups.

Kero had surgery today

For some time Kero has had a lump on her neck. It had been presenting as a sebaceous cyst, so our vet was just watching it. The theory was that at some point it would either recede, or get very big and need to be removed, or perhaps it would just stay as it was forever.

Last week I was out of town. While I was gone the skin over the lump got pierced and tore open. It's not clear if that was the result of rubbing by her collar, or fighting or playing with other dogs, or something else. In any case, the skin got torn and then infected. I brought her in to the vet yesterday to look at the injury. I had imagined that it was going to require a few stitches and some antibiotics. However, with the skin open the vet was able to see that it wasn't a cyst, but rather a tumor. It was impossible to tell how far the tumor extended into her neck, and cancer was a real possibility.

This morning I took her back in for surgery. Since she was going to be under anyway I also arranged to have three warts removed from one of her hind legs and some tarter was to be scraped from her molars. There was also an odd piercing on her other rear leg that I wanted inspected. In addition because of the strange weather we have been having, Kero hasn't done her usual spring shed (aka "blowing her coat.") She had developed quite a crop of dreadlocks on her belly, so I asked them to do a thorough exam of her stomach hair to make sure there weren't any "foxtails" hiding in there. [Foxtails are the seeds of one of several grasses, notably Hordeum murinum, that get caught in animal's fur as part of their mechanism for dispersal. Unfortunately, the fur of many dogs captures the foxtails which can then pierce the skin and enter their body, potentially causing significant damage and even death. They also often get lodged in pets' noses, ears, and throats. Kero has had all of these happen to her. A very nasty business.]

The surgery went well, but it was lengthy and extensive. The tumor turns out to have been relatively small. The surgeon did not need to damage any of Kero's neck muscles in the removal. Also, he felt that it was very unlikely to be cancerous based on its location and appearance. Still, it will be several days before we get the results of the biopsy. The scraping of her molars and removal of the warts were no problem. However, upon examining her belly, they found numerous foxtails in her fur. They decided to shave her belly which revealed 6 locations where foxtails had embedded under her skin. They removed all 6 and inspected her remaining fur and orifices for foxtails. They got all the ones they could find, but there is no guarantee that they found them all. The mark on her other hind leg is a problem. It appears to be a foxtail entry site but they weren't able to find the foxtail. Its clear that Kero had been chewing on the wound, so we can only hope that she got it out herself.

Kero is now home and resting with a belly full of pain killers, antibiotics, and dinner. She will be wearing the "cone of shame" for at least a week, which means she can't go through her dog-door and I will have to walk her whenever she wants to go out.  I have no problem doing that - I am her dad after all. The only problem is that for her entire life she has had access to a dog-door, so has never learned to "ask" to go out. On the rare occasions that we have been someplace that she didn't have free access to the outside, I have found her sitting quietly near a door looking pitiful when she wants to go out. No barking. No coming to get me. No fidgeting. Just a sad and patient waiting. She is a good girl.

--Postscript  - 6/17/11 --

I just heard from the vet. The tumor was NOT cancer. It is a “tricoblastoma,” which, according to Wikipedia “...are a cutaneous condition characterized by benign neoplasms of follicular germinative cells.”

I don’t know what that means, but I like the word “benign” in there.

The Sarah Palin School of Public Speakin' Alumni Association Annual Meeting

God Bless US! That is the Americans, and everyone that loves the Americas and the US. We are so proud to have another year of these great kids graduated, out there, tellin’ folks things the way that people want to hear them tellin’.

This year we’re havin’ the annual meeting again in place of the meeting we couldn’t have last year. Please come join US and the other folks that are comin’ and meet all the kids that have just. ‘Cause you know the kids are our future, and it is so important! We couldn’t be more proud to be Alumni of The Sarah Palin School of Public Speakin' and of being American in this country.

We know that you are all out there and talkin’ to folks and listenin’ to folks and talkin’ some more, which is so important to be doin’ and God bless America. We’re havin’ the annual meeting here in the heartland of America so we can listen to you and talk to the folks you’ve been listenin’ to and talk about how we’re all working together to fix this country and the terrible problems its been havin’ bein’ the greatest nation on the planet!

So please join us next Thursday at 9pm here at the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria in New York so that we can talk with you and the great folks and you can meet all these special, special kids who are so important and proud and joining us as God bless America. We really want you all to come to the annual meeting here in the heartland of America where we’re so proud to be Americans. If there’s a gotcha and you cant make it the next annual meeting is next month in Orlando where we’re havin’ it and more of these great kids are graduatin’ and talkin’ and comin’ together at.

God bless The United States of America!
Phillip ("Jimmy") Ramsbuckler
Secretary, The Sarah Palin School of Public Speakin'

PS: Sarah says she'll be sending us a special tweet at the meeting!

Tree Bark

My honorary parents, Howie and Sue, had a cottage greeting card business using Howie's excellent photographs for the images on the cards. They focused on pictures taken on Martha's Vineyard, but during a trip to Australia they fell in love with textures of bark on the trees. They produced a run of cards featuring photos of Australian tree bark and sent me a set as a birthday gift one year. I've always loved trees, but I have been especially sensitive to tree bark ever since.

Here, then, are some photos of tree bark that I shot at Trail of the Cedars in Glacier National Park. Click on an image to enlarge (but you knew that.)