What a man’s got to do

by Chude Jideonwo

I am fascinated, as regular readers might have noticed, by scandals; especially those of the wealthy, the famous and the powerful. Anthony D. Weiner, the American legislator from New York, might not be seen as wealthy there (or for that matter here, considering how much his contemporaries in Nigeria ‘loan’ from the state purse) but comparatively, he can be seen to represent all three.

The question arises over and over again, and one of his colleagues in the Democratic Party over there has asked it aloud: How does a man so smart do something so stupid?

I think that question lies right at the top, along with all the other existential questions – Who is man? Why are we here? Where do we go from here? Are women from Venus?

Mr Weiner, a bright star for his party, and who is less than a year married (it will be a year today) to a powerful, attractive, pregnant wife (Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton’s closest aide) has spent the past few months just after his marriage sending pictures of his ‘wiener’ complete with hard-on, his underwear, his bare chest and any erotic material he could find to, literally, any woman that catches his fancy on Facebook and Twitter.

The bubble (and bubble is the world, considering that this was certain to have been exposed sooner than later) burst when, in the kind of mistake you only see in fiction, he sent a message as a open Twitter update that should have been sent as a Direct Message (if you don’t know Twitter, sadly I can’t help) – ignorant as he was that you cannot send private message pictures on Twitter.

All hell broke loose. But while it broke loose, Mr Weiner took a classic Clinton-esque posture (touché, since Bill Clinton actually officiated his wedding), insisting he could not “say for certain that the picture was not his”, while simultaneously insisting that he did not and could not have sent the pictures, and that someone had hacked into his Facebook, Twitter and Yfrong accounts at the same time.

Of course, it was such a thin web of lies (though there were some like me who desperately wanted to believe him) that it crumbled barely a week after. And then the women (and those ones, are a matter for another day) began to crawl out of every crevice, revealing a man who seems to have a pathological need to have sexual exchanges with every woman who as much as said hi.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not judge.

Truth is, what these men have done is what many men – and, sometimes, women – have and will continue to do for years and years to come. We send silly incriminating emails about bosses and co-workers that could easily be hacked into, make adulterous propositions to undergraduate girls through BBM and text message that could easily be saved and used to blackmail them, and many people still take nude pictures of themselves or allow people do same, despite the fact that with technology, nothing really belongs to anyone anymore once you share it.

Men have been foolish over matters of sex and urges and women for years on end, and while the examples and the circumstances (even the gender of the partners) might vary, the basic reality remains the same – an erection does not pause to think.

Still, still… even if you find yourself one of the sadly vast majority that are unable to keep themselves in check, there should be an automatic understanding – even from a man with a raging boner – that when you occupy an office that is above the common station, you should become immune to sending pictures of your penis to women you have never met.

I mean, how can you even be so dumb?

It’s the same way we have to ask: what makes the Number Four man in a country so out of touch with reality and the fact of consequence, that he dips his hand into the public till, pulls out a whopping N10 billion, and shares it with his comrades – no fear, no reserve, no pause?

Really. How hungry could you have been – whether for money or for sex?

Like my people would say: if we dey cry, abeg make we dey see road. I have no wiser words than those.

This article first appeared on www.234next.com on June 10, 2011

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