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The Pity Of Huma Abedin

The Onion headline gets it right: Man With Widely Circulated Penis Pictures Not The Most Humiliated Person At Podium Ain’t that the truth. And it’s why I struggle to feel sorry for her. She chose to go out there with that creepy husband of hers, and stand with him to support his mayoral bid, despite […]

The Onion headline gets it right:

Man With Widely Circulated Penis Pictures Not The Most Humiliated Person At Podium

Ain’t that the truth. And it’s why I struggle to feel sorry for her. She chose to go out there with that creepy husband of hers, and stand with him to support his mayoral bid, despite his repeated humiliation of her. As Matthew Franck writes, she didn’t have to do that; she could have refused to share the platform with him, torpedoing his political career. Franck:

That he remains a candidate today can be chalked up to his wife’s support–even if it is only non-opposition, or ineffective private opposition. A firm, and if necessary, public “No, Anthony!” on Ms. Abedin’s part would put an end to this farce, would be good for Mr. Weiner’s soul, and might even in the long run help their marriage. It would certainly be good for New York City and the rest of the country to be permanently rid of Carlos Danger, Public Servant.

It’s not our place to judge what goes on between that pair in private, but that performance yesterday was a public act, for a public purpose: getting Anthony Weiner elected New York mayor. Abedin has for years been widely reported to be a very smart, accomplished, capable woman. She was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top aide for years. From an April 2013 NYT Magazine profile of the couple, post-scandal but pre-mayoral announcement:

Clinton is a mother figure to Huma, and there is little doubt that the two of them had a heart-to-heart on one of those many long flights during the trip. Weiner himself pointed out the similarities between their experiences of betrayal. “If you read Hillary’s biography of the time,” he says, “she speaks pretty frankly about believing that there were people out to get her husband — ‘I believe him, I’m going to stand in there, I’m going to tell friends that it’s bull’ — and the way she felt when she found out the truth.”

When I ask Abedin if Clinton guided her through those first terrible days, she says: “We’ve had a lot of personal conversations, none of which I feel comfortable talking about. But what I will say about her, and for that matter her entire family, the unconditional love and support they have given me has been a real gift. And I think she would be O.K. with me saying this, because I know she has said this before: at the end of the day, at the very least, every woman should have the ability and the confidence and the choice to make whatever decisions she wants to make that are right for her and not be judged by it.”

It’s now clear that what Huma Abedin learned from Hillary Clinton is the importance of allowing yourself to be a doormat for a sleazy husband who will betray you in private and disgrace you in public, for the sake of your own desire for power and position. What a pity.

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