I’ve seen the tape. I know and like both of the players. I’ve read the apology and plans for lunch — a classy touch after Rep. Michael Grimm came to his senses, having threatened harm to NY1’s Michael Scotto the previous evening.
I don’t want to belabor this one incident, because stuff happens, but I do think — as someone who has had his own share of tension with local media about, ahem, different subjects — I may have something to add to the conversation.
File this under “In my very humble opinion”:
I’m sure that had Grimm actually done what he threatened and thrown Scotto off the balcony, in today’s media environment, being the reporter who got tossed onto a tour group of visiting Boy Scouts would probably be career gold. (I can already see the BuzzFeed vertical dedicated solely to memes of reporters being thrown by various public figures.)
And now that I think about it, those Boy Scouts are pretty awesome. I am sure they would have figured out a way to catch Scotto.
Still, as Grimm himself has surely realized by now, this was not a close call. A congressman should not threaten to break, throw, ask to step outside or otherwise get physical with a reporter.
Get beyond that fact, which everyone now acknowledges, and perhaps this can become a larger teachable moment for those of us who have served the public or might aspire to do so.
The press and us pols get mad as hell at one another, sometimes for totally legitimate reasons. As someone who has made just about every mistake imaginable in my dealings with reporters (although I’d never, ever threaten one), I’d like to hazard a few general rules I’ve learned the hard way.
First, if you don’t want to talk about a scandal in which you’re embroiled, whatever that scandal may be, maybe it’s best that you don’t do interviews for a while. For that matter, you may not want to attend community meetings, visit your office or go a sporting event. Fact is, an investigation that’s hanging over your head is the kind of thing people might be curious about. People ask you about embarrassing stuff even when you want to talk about other things. Especially when you want to talk about other things.
Better yet, if you don’t want to talk about your fund-raising scandal, maybe just maybe don’t have one to begin with. I only know what I read in the papers about all this. (OK, maybe I know a bit more.) But it does seem like a lot of people are being investigated and indicted in connection with Mikey Suits’campaign.
I’ll leave it to the authorities who are probing this in New York, Washington, Texas and Israel to work out what happened, but it seems like we may be headed for another of those Nixon/Christie “mistakes were made” moments.
If you ignore the first two rules, try answering the questions posed to you, calmly. I know that “can you tell us about the status of the ethics investigation into you?” sounds like fighting words. But it can actually be an invitation to explain some of the messy doings that have swirled around you since nearly the moment you were elected.
A few pols under investigation have handled such challenges with real poise. I was not one of them. I did a terrible job following these rules. I did embarrassing things and made them so much worse by being dishonest about them.
Bottom line, notwithstanding the fact that there are lousy reporters — and that we all pay too much attention to scandals and not enough to all the people in public life who get up every day to do the best they can to do good work — the basic deal of representative government is this: The people who get elected have to be held accountable by the people who pay their salaries.
Sometimes that means getting a certificate of appreciation from the local Kiwanis Club, and sometimes it means having a reporter ask a question you don’t like. If you are living right, there are many many more of the former than the latter. But being an elected official is a high honor. You roll with the punches.
Weiner is a former congressman representing Brooklyn and Queens. In 2012, he acknowledged informing the FBI in 2010 of an allegation conveyed to him about Grimm’s fund-raising practices.
