Anthony Weiner – He Owes It All to Marv Albert

The Washington Post reported on their politics blog this week that disgraced former Congressman (and tweeter) Anthony Weiner has a new gig — as a weekly news columnist for the Web site Business Insider. Certainly not one to be shy, his column will be titled “Weiner!”.

I was surprised to read in the same Washington Post blog that he also now writes regular columns for the New York Daily News. Unaware of this, I clearly need to get out more.

Of course, Weiner’s rehabilitation would never have been possible without Marv Albert, the patron saint of those who manage to come back from the figurative dead.

For those too young (or too old) to remember, sportscaster Albert was arrested in 1997, accused by a girlfriend of slamming her onto a hotel bed, holding her down and biting her back so severely that the assault left bite marks. Allegations of Albert’s taste in clothes only made the story that more lurid. During the trial, a second woman came forward with similar allegations.

Marv denied the charges, and said that his accuser was seeking revenge because he was ending their relationship. Nevertheless, when DNA testing showed that the bite marks were indeed made by Marv, he plea-bargained to misdemeanor assault and battery charges, and was given a 12-month suspended sentence.

With this public humiliation, you would have thought that Marv would have sought out a remote location in which to live, perhaps engaging in some admirable social work and trying to spend the rest of his days quietly turning his life around.

But you would have thought wrong. Marv was back on the NBC airwaves within two years, and you can hear him today announcing NCAA tournament games in this season of “madness”.

Several months after Albert’s case hit the media, Bill Clinton managed to continue in office despite having sex with a White House intern young enough to be his daughter – in a room adjacent to the Oval Office, no less.

Ten years later we had New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who was forced to resign his office when he was implicated in a prostitution scandal. For some reason, he thought he could make it back as well, running in a futile attempt to become New York City Comptroller.

Clinton, Spitzer, and Weiner. They owe it all to Marv. If he can make it back, anybody can.