"There ain't nobody but me more pious than you are, Hillary, babe!"
"I'm way more pious than you are, Bubs!"
For a New York minute
"Whoa! What was that?"
"Dunno. Went past too fast for me to see!"
it seemed like a return of yesteryear, with old times there not forgotten.
"Look away, look away, look away, Dixieland!"
Bubba was back, and Hillary had him. Then,
"I looked around me, and..."
pffftt! The minute was gone, and so were Bubba on the stump and the missus dreamy-eyed at his side.
"Which way did they go, George? Which way did they go?"
"Don't as me. I'm a Publican!"
Anthony Weiner, the Gotham flasher who quit Congress when his night job, starring in his own show on his own private porn channel ("the stars come out at night in the Twitterhood"), closed out of town. Now he's running for mayor of New York City to test F. Scott Fitzgerald's observation that there are no second acts in American lives.He's actually got the name recognition over that other person or two running, whoever they hell they are. And nobody's blown up the Empire State Building or the subway, so nobody's gonna vote for a Republican.
Fitzgerald thought you get an opening and a closing, with nothing between. The flasher had his opening and closing, and his second act is lost in the clutter of memories and might-have-beens.
"Mem'ries! All alone with my mem'ries!"
"Tony, shut up!"
"Yes, Huma. Do we have any more gherkins?"
Bubba and the missus got their second acts, each one verging on a boffo performance.
The Heroine of Tuzla becomes the Heroine of Benghazi. Bill just waited for Short Attention Span Syndrome to kick in and he's suddenly an elder statesman. Three years is the space from the Paleozoic to last week in politix, so Hillary stands a good chance at the White House.
They could teach Mr. Weiner a thing or two when he needs help most.
"First, don't be an arrogant bastard..."
"Who the hell are you calling an arrogant bastard?"
Who better than Bubba to tell him how to profit from disgrace. Who better than Hillary to tutor Huma Abedin, the Weiner missus, on how to wring out of the shadow of disgrace the last ounce of sympathy, pity and compassion that is the wronged wife's due. If Bubba could do it, why not the weenie?
Because he doesn't have the sheer shamelessness as Bubs? No. That's not it. One's just as bad as the other. But Huma's no Hillary. And the weenie's no William Jefferson Bub.
The Weiners and the Clintons have more in common than marital malarkey. Like Anthony Weiner, the Clintons were once left for dead on the side of the road in New Hampshire, and with sheer determination and a sufficiency of gall Bubba recast himself as "the comeback kid."[BUMP!]
"A speedbump? Here?"
"Nah. That was Jerry Brown."
[BUMP!]
"That hadda be a speedbump!"
"Paul Tsongas."
"Who?"
Mr. Weiner starts with advantages Bubba didn't have; the Clintons borrowed a million dollars from a Republican friend in Little Rock to keep the campaign afloat in the storm. Mr. Weiner has nearly $5 million already banked and perhaps another million is available in public matching money, together with the IOUs collected over 14 years in Congress.
"Oh, yuck."
"You're right, honey. Let's go watch them make sausage instead. It's more appetizing, and they give you free samples where it's done."
He's the big mule in a crowded feed lot, dominated by the speaker of the City Council (aldermen with a speaker?),
Somebody gotta be first at the trough...
but it's a field consisting mostly of "others." A new poll, taken by Quinnipiac University, puts the speaker, Christine Quinn, at 25 percent and Mr. Weiner at 15 percent, a gap not as large as it seems. If somebody doesn't get 40 percent there will be a second round. A run-off is a new election.
And who has the name recognition? You don't have somebody on every third street corner selling "quinns."
Mr. Weiner understands, as Bubba did in his day, that "this is going to be a difficult slog, and I'm going to have to have a lot of difficult conversations with people along the way.""This is my associate, Angelo."
"Wouldja like ta make a donation?"
"Good Gawd! Something that big talks! Here, take all I've got!"
He'll have to endure a lot of cheap jokes, too, just like Bubba. Double-entendres will lie in wait every time he speaks. "I hope at least some of my ideas penetrate," he told commuters at a subway stop Thursday, "and it changes some of the conversations."
He's gotta put up with that, if he wants to be on top.
He, like the Clintons, must expect the unexpected.
At least his first name's not Richard...
Big-haired women seemed to pop out from the potted plants with an entertaining tale to tell everywhere Bubba went, and Mr. Weiner conceded (wisely, no doubt) Thursday that more lewd photographs may lurk in the Twitterhood. "It is what it is," he said, leaving "it" as vague as Bubba left "is."
"'I did not do 'it' with that woman, Miz Whatsername.'"
"People may decide they want to come forward and say, 'here's another email that I got,' or another photo.
"Don't look, Ethel!"
I'm certainly not going to do that. So people may hear things that are true, they may hear things that are not true, but I'm going to keep being focused on issues that are important to New York City."
"Like who's got the bigger Schwanzstücker, Weiner or Quinn?""She ain't got no Schwanzstücker."
"I rest my case."
"Cheeze. I didn't know you was a lawyer, too. You got my vote!"
And so forth and so on. This was right out of Bubba's playbook.
"Yeah. Stick with the issues! Ignore that thing hanging outta my fly!"
Mr. Weiner is not getting much help from any of the usual liberal suspects, who mostly want to lie low and keep quiet. Gov. Andrew
SonnyCuomo calls the prospect of Mr. Weiner winning a "shame on us."
If Mr. Weenie wins Andrew will be his good friend, working together for the Good of the Country.
The crowded field includes a prominent black,
"I wanna be Noo York's first black mayor!"
"What was David Dinkins?"
and the speaker of the City Council is, she wants everybody to know, a lesbian.
"I wanna be Noo York's first lesbian mayor!"
"What was John V. Lindsay?"
These are constituencies a New York pol dare not let anyone else bow deeper to. But the boy needs help, and Bubba, who performed the marriage rites when a suitable rabbi, priest or imam couldn't be found, always thinks only of others. He's famous for that. But not this time.