I Have a Banker Named Weiner

We had quite an interesting day yesterday. For a very long time now, everyone in my family has been putting all of our money into a certain bank. We just got word one of the officials at that bank resigned. A bank executive named “Weiner” who had lately become embroiled in a “sexting” scandal.

The salacious details to this are rather unimportant. Perhaps, if you’ve been following the news, you might’ve come across some happenings in a similarly large institution, and you could use that to sort of fill in the holes. All that is really worthy of mention amounts to this: It took a long time for this little drama to wind up, because it emerged that banker Weiner can’t or won’t manage a portfolio, his personal credit card debt, his sex drive, his household or for that matter anything else. The picture that emerges is one of a shallow, pugnacious little jackass, and it doesn’t reflect too terribly well on the bank, to wit: The degree of jackass-ery under discussion exceeds any little story you have to tell about your casually-jackass boss or neighbor. This bank allows for, and encourages, jackass-ery on a hitherto unknown scale.

That’s not a slam. It’s a reasonable conclusion to draw based on the events.

Last night we had a serious family-table conversation about what to do with our money. It came down to: Should we put more money into that bank, or less? Well, how long of a conversation do you think that was? How uncertain do you think we were about the final verdict?

Now I come to the point: As a practical matter, as far as the domestic issues are concerned, all this democrat-Republican arguing comes down to a question of whether to invest lesser or greater volumes of our income in the government. (As a philosophical matter it’s about God and the dignity of man; but as a practical matter it’s about the loot and where to put it.) I’d say “wealth” intead of income, but we really don’t have any wealth in this country anymore, and the policies are really about income anyway. When democrats clamor for higher taxes and Republicans balk at this, we’re arguing about — if we should turn over lots of money to the government are we digging our way out of the hole, or are we making it deeper.

To pretend it’s happening with a bank, changes the dynamics. At least with the democrats, it does. It shouldn’t, and I think they know it shouldn’t, but that’s the way it works.

Anyway. I really don’t like political scandals. My beef with them is not that they distract from the nation’s business, for I think the nation’s number one item of business is that we have trillions of dollars of our money being thrown around by fools and tools who have been selected according to a dazzling, stupefying, Weiner level of ignorance about what money is. Nor is my problem that the scandals lower the level of dignity and respect accorded to our Congress, since it seems whenever I have doubts that this dignity/respect should be as low as it is, it seems my doubts are consistently proven wrong — it continues to turn out we were giving them way too much of this respect. Along with our money.

My issue with scandals is that scandals lead to jokes. It’s unavoidable. And jokes tend to make it harder to remember an important thing: These jerks and jackwagons are taking our money and they’re giving it away to other jerks and jackwagons. Meanwhile, people who create products and services people can actually use, are asked to do more with less.

Sure the jerks-and-jackwagons get hit with “scandals” here & there, and every now & then the scandal takes one of ‘em down. But let’s be honest: The scandals only drive someone out of office about half the time, and how bad the scandal is, or what it implies, doesn’t determine the outcome. Show me a hundred democrats who get into trouble with scandals, and I can show you ninety-nine jackasses who fared better at it than Congressman Weiner. Probably more than ninety-nine. The scandals are used as procedural maneuvers to remove people who’d stand in the way of this “give money away to other jackholes” process.

In fact, flip around the above. Show me a hundred Republicans who get into trouble with scandals and I can show you ninety-nine resignations from office. Probably more than that.

A democrat who has to resign because of a scandal, is rarer than a democrat unicorn. A democrat unicorn who has cyan and magenta stripes, whose fur is made of velveteen, with six legs, who not only thinks our taxes should be raised but also pays extra to the treasury. A democrat unicorn who not only insists “the rich” should help the less fortunate, but does it himself. And actually noticed the day Katie Couric resigned because he was really watching her. And Keith Olbermann too. And puts the little six-legged unicorns in the public schools he insists our own kids should be forced to attend.

Anyway, that’s the situation. A scandal actually took down a democrat. That’s your sign that the scandal got out of the “control” that is typically supposed to be part of all scandals; the wagons circled ’round, and it didn’t work.

And when scandals get out of control, you should be watching — for this reason and pretty much none other — because that means, for a short time, your government is transparent. Unintentionally so. It’s a good time to pay attention.

I’d bounce that one off your liberal friends, it’s a good ‘un if I do say so myself. Maybe save it for that McGovern-voting granduncle at the Thanksgiving table: What if it happened to a bank executive? Or a “hedge fund manager”? Or an oil company executive? Would this tell us something about where we should be putting our money? Why or why not? Well, with a member of Congress does it work any differently, does it reflect on the institution any more or any less? Why or why not?

Cross-posted at House of Eratosthenes, Brutally Honest and Right Wing News.
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