Anthony Weiner, former congressman and failed New York City mayoral candidate, doesn’t appear to be a fan of Vox, the progressive activist blog started by former Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein. Weiner took to his Twitter account to call a post Vox ran by “A Member of Congress” as a load of “dreck.”
A producer at CNN tweeted a link to the anonymous post entitled “Confessions of a Congressman: 9 Secrets From The Inside,” which reads like a whiny “they just don’t understand us” post. For example, in the second paragraph the author complains, “But they [the American people] often don’t know exactly what is wrong. And sometimes, the things they think will fix Congress — like making us come home every weekend — actually break it further.”
@AshleyCodianni @voxdotcom God what dreck.
— Anthony Weiner (@anthonyweiner) February 5, 2015
@AshleyCodianni @voxdotcom need more?
— Anthony Weiner (@anthonyweiner) February 5, 2015
@AshleyCodianni I'll gladly discuss this with the @voxdotcom intern that really wrote this or @ezraklein if he wants to justify.
— Anthony Weiner (@anthonyweiner) February 5, 2015
@kassianistavro @voxdotcom or a real editor permitting it.
— Anthony Weiner (@anthonyweiner) February 5, 2015
What did Weiner object to? The possibilities are endless.
The “insights” from this alleged congressman read like a high school term paper:
Congress has never been more than a sausage factory. The point here isn’t to make us something we’re not. The point is to get us to make sausage again.
Congress is no longer a destination but a journey. Committee assignments are mainly valuable as part of the interview process for a far more lucrative job as a K Street lobbyist.
You’re paying us to do a job, and we’re spending that time you’re paying us asking rich people and corporations to give us money so we can run ads convincing you to keep paying us to do this job. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that money is speech and corporations are people, the mega-rich have been handed free loudspeakers. Their voices, even out-of-state voices, are drowning out the desperate whispers of ordinary Americans.
It’s enough to make one wonder if things are so awful, why not resign or run in the first place? Or, better yet, why not put your name on it and call out what you think needs to be called out so it can be changed?
Weiner has a guess. Tweeting that he’d be happy to discuss his full thoughts on the subject with either Klein or the “intern that really wrote this.”
Vox is a relatively new website but it has been plagued by errors and embarrassing inaccuracies, so Weiner’s suspicion may be well justified.