I don't know why we ask "why do they do it?"  Why expect extraordinary people to behave in ordinary ways?  You don't get to be President by, to borrow a phrase from the Big Dawg, "working hard and playing by the rules."  That's just not how it works.  You do it by making your own rules in so many areas of your professional and public life, so why wouldn't you also make some of your own rules in your emotional and sexual life, too?

Seems to me that one one hand we reward noncomformists but on the other act all shocked when they don't act just like everybody else.  Why did Weiner carry on with women he met on social networks?  Because he felt like it and I rather doubt he thought there was anything truly wrong with doing it at the time.

There's also the numbers angle. Lots of adoring women turning their gaze toward you. More men (and perhaps women) would act this way if they had this number of adoring fans tempting them.

They are rock stars...and we're never shocked when we learn that Mick Jagger has had 69,000 lovers before, during, and after his marriages.

Beyond what Destor says about their making their own rules--or perhaps bending events to their will against incredible odds, often--there's the numbers game.

They are tempted a lotta, lotta times.

There won't be a single answer that fits for all cases of course.  And male politicians are just that males.  Men who don't have any power or wealth cheat and otherwise do stupid things in the pursuit of the transitory thrill.  But when we look at politicians there are some commonalities - like the numbers game as mentioned by Peter. 

There is also the controlled persona factor.  Politicians, especially ones like Weiner who go on a lot of the news shows, are constantly having to control everything they say and do pretty much 24/7, or at least when they are out in public or sending anything out in public.  There have been a few emails I have sent over the years where a friend and I were joking about something, which if I was politician would have at least caused the damage control crew to work for a few days. I just don't think one can control oneself like that without some kind of dysfunction coming to the surface.  In effect, one is for a huge chunk of time not letting oneself be oneself.

We wonder why we get the clowns in politics that we do.  But who among us would choose to live that way, to be put under the judgment microscope.  Entertainment stars don't have that generally.  For many, being bad (and getting caught) is a boost to their career. Or at least it just goes along as before.  Hugh Grant was lucky he wasn't a Representative.

This is not to take away any responsibility.  They chose the career path.  Folks like Weiner chose an outlet that will cost him dearly politically, as it should.  As I mentioned before, I don't care if he and some other woman chose to engage in virtual flirting.  But the college student, from what I have gleaned, did not.  Consequently, in his search to find the thrill, to fullfill some desire of expression, he engaged in an unsolicited sexual "attack" that has definitely caused the victim here harm (if only in the aftermath of being dragged into the media and blogosphere circus she never asked for). 

Why? Because they're men. Even if through the recruiting, vetting, campaigning process you try to weed out the jerks, you still end up with 20% jerks with a sense of sexual entitlement willing to screw their constituents by screwing around.

All I can think of is: recruit more female candidates.

I do not know what the motivations of someone who is sexually over active.

However it is well known that repressed sexuality leads to more horrendous behavior as this article in Psychology Today points out.

Nothing inspires murderous mayhem in human beings more reliably than sexual repression. Denied food, water, or freedom of movement, people will get desperate and some may lash out at what they perceive as the source of their problems, albeit in a weakened state. But if expression of sexuality is thwarted, the human psyche tends to grow twisted into grotesque, enraged perversions of desire. Unfortunately, the distorted rage resulting from sexual repression rarely takes the form of rebellion against the people and institutions behind the repression. (If it did, perhaps we'd be reading of abused priests rather than priests as abusers.)  Instead, the rage is generally directed at helpless victims who are sacrificed to the sick gods of guilt, shame, and ignorant pride.

Today, the BBC reports  that Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, an Iranian cleric, has declared that, "Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes." I think we can assume he said this with a straight face, Iranian clerics not being known for their impish sense of humor.

Lest we dismiss this as just another example of distant fundamentalist craziness, we might take a look at some examples a bit closer to home.

We can start with Christianity, a religion centered upon a figure whose holiness begins with his having been conceived asexually. Mark Twain noted the bizarre anti-eroticism of Christianity when he considered heaven:

[Man] has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights, the one ecstasy that stands first and foremost in the heart of every individual of his race . . . sexual intercourse! It is as if a lost and perishing person in a roasting desert should be told by a rescuer he might choose and have all longed-for things but one, and he should elect to leave out water!

(Letters from the Earth)

There's little question that the centuries-long campaign of child rape enabled by  institutional cover-up is a direct result of the Church's inhumane teachings concerning human sexuality. If priests—gay, straight, and bi-sexual—were allowed to form erotic connections with consenting adults, who can doubt that countless children would have been spared outrageous torture at the hands of these sick, distorted men?

Gay, conservative, Catholic author Andrew Sullivan has written that "the suppression of these core emotions and the denial of their resolution in love always always leads to personal distortion and cumpulsion and loss of perspective."

Of course, it's not just a question of repressing homosexuality, but of all sexuality. And religions aren't the only institutions to champion such abuse of spirit and body; medical doctors have participated in some of these shameful crimes against humanity.

In 1850, the New Orleans Medical & Surgical Journal declared masturbation public enemy number one, warning: "Neither plague, nor war, nor smallpox, nor a crowd of similar evils, have resulted more disastrously for humanity than the habit of masturbation: it is the destroying element of civilized society."

"Scientific" declarations like these inspired Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (brother of the Corn Flakes Kellogg) in his campaign to eradicate masturbation from the United States.

Though widely considered to be one of the leading sex educators of his day, Kellogg proudly claimed never to have had intercourse with his wife in over four decades of marriage.

As a medical doctor, Kellogg claimed the moral authority to instruct parents on the proper sexual education of their children. If you're unfamiliar with the writings of Kellogg and others like him, their gloating disdain for basic human eroticism is chilling and unmistakable. In his best-selling Plain Facts for Old and Young (written on his sexless honey- moon in 1888), Kellogg offered parents guidance for dealing with their sons' natural erotic self-exploration in a section entitled "Treatment for Self-Abuse and its Effects:"

A remedy which is almost always success- ful in small boys is circumcision. . . . The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anaesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment. . . . [emphasis added]

If circumcising a struggling, terrified boy without anesthesia wasn't quite what a parent had in mind, Kellogg recommended "the application of one or more silver sutures in such a way as to prevent erection. The prepuce, or foreskin, is drawn forward over the glans, and the nee- dle to which the wire is attached is passed through from one side to the other. After drawing the wire through, the ends are twisted together and cut off close. It is now impossible for an erection to occur. . . ."

Parents were assured that sewing their son's penis into its foreskin "acts as a most powerful means of overcoming the disposition to resort to the practice [of masturbation]."

Circumcision remains prevalent in the United States, though varying greatly by region, ranging from about 40 percent of newborns circumcised in western states to about twice that in the Northeast. This widespread procedure, rarely a medical necessity, has its roots in the anti-masturbation campaigns of Kellogg and his like-minded contemporaries. As sexologist John Money explains, "Neonatal circumcision crept into Ameri- can delivery rooms in the 1870s and 1880s, not for religious reasons and not for reasons of health or hygiene, as is commonly supposed, but because of the claim that, later in life, it would prevent irritation that would cause the boy to become a masturbator."

Lest you think Kellogg was interested only in the sadistic torture of boys, in the same book he soberly advises the application of carbolic acid to the clitorises of little girls to teach them not to touch themselves. Kellogg, the Catholic church, and Iranian clerics all demonstrate that sexual repression is a "malady that considers itself the remedy," to paraphrase Karl Kraus's dismissal of psychoanalysis.

 

It's all that love in their big ol' bleeding hearts that has to find its way out through some orifice.

I'm not sure why it's such a big mystery.  Weiner is just one of a few billion really horny guys on the planet Earth craving the fun and excitement of sexual gratification - something he is programmed to seek by his biological nature - and seeking it through whatever outlets are available.

People act on cravings all the time that have the potential to be bad for them in the long run or short run.   Why do people drink alcohol or eat sugary, fatty foods even though these things aren't good for them and can damage their long-term life plans?   Well, apparently dirinking alcohol and eating unhealthy but indulgently tasty foods is fun.

Weiner didn't do anything that doesn't happen a few million times a day via the internet.

The real mystery and marvel is how we have managed to create a successful, organized and reasonably disciplined society in which people don't act on their cravings and impulses all the time, but manage to adhere to self-imposed rules most of the time.

Hello, ladies!

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