Mrs. Weiner Is With Child

Surely you've noticed that, while the Weinergate scandal has captured so much attention, we at the Egg have had little to say. Why, we haven't so much as alluded to the now-customary schoolboy puns. (Oops.) The reason is that although the story has no lack of sex and politics, we kept hoping for some religion.

Well, here's a sort of side-angle. See, one of the things that members of the clergy are called to do is talk to couples who intend to be married, about both the spiritual and the practical considerations of the blessed estate. The nature of this conversation isn't uniform. Father A. carries on a fairly informal series of chats about sex, money and Jesus. His beautiful spouse, on the other hand, leads people through a computer-assisted boot camp called Prepare + Enrich. The Roman Catholic "Pre-Cana" courses are so rigorous that some otherwise faithful Papist couples have been known to seek out a Lutheran wedding simply to avoid it (which request is customarily denied, with a curt "After your parish pastor signs off on it.").

Well, the officiant at Weiner's wedding was Bill Clinton. We're guessing there wasn't a lot of premarital counseling.

We learned this from the same ABC News article which told us that Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin, are expecting their first child. Abedin is an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Both women are in Africa right now, which is probably just as well. Abedin doesn't need the cameras in her face, and Weiner doesn't deserve even the most passive show of support. Let him swing.

In case it isn't obvious, Weiner has serious problems, both personally and and professionally. As any number of wise people (okay, Larry King, yesterday on NPR) have already said, he could have averted the worst of it with one fast, frank and contrite press conference. Instead, he bluffed and lied until his credibility was in tatters. Weiner is useless in his current position, and we doubt that he has much future in electoral politics. What concerns us now is the future of his family.

The Chicago Sun-Times quotes an unnamed friends as saying that Abedin will not desert her husband, and we hope that's true. But we also hope that he will get some heavy-duty psychotherapy, and find a low-profile job in the private sector. Dude needs to get his priorities straight. Since Abedin is Muslim and Weiner is (at least culturally) Jewish, it is not likely that they will start going to church together. But if they need some belated premarital conversation, we're available. Seriously.