Rep. Anthony Weiner resigned in humiliation Thursday, announcing the decision as a heckler cried out, "Yeah! Bye-bye, pervert!"
The scandal began with Weiner overexposing himself, and culminated in a speech that again left him wide open. Rather than send a letter of resignation, he attempted a dignified, public goodbye, nationally televised from a Brooklyn senior center.
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But his attempt at dignity was undercut by hecklers who yelled him almost throughout the speech. One of them even asked him about his penis size. (TMZ identified that heckler as Benjy Bronk of the Howard Stern show.)
It was a tawdry end to a tawdry scandal. Said Fox News commentator Rich Lowry, no fan of Weiner: "The heckling was really extraordinary. Given the abuse and the humiliation that's been heaped on this guy, you could at least give him five uninterrupted minutes to sing his swan song."
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Weiner, whose sexual exchanges with women online have dominated news reports and late-night routines for weeks, finally gave up after trying to ride out the scandal.
Weiner tweeted a picture of his crotch to a woman nearly three weeks ago, and immediately lied to reporters and constituents that his account had been hacked. But he queued skepticism by refusing to say whether his was the groin in question, and by calling lawyers but not law enforcement.
Last Monday, after a slew of dishonest interviews, he owned up to tweeting the crotch shot and said he had had online exchanges with six women in all.
Other embarrassing details quickly emerged, including that he coached a porn star on how to lie about their exchanges and took shots of himself in a congressional gym. Police also investigated his Facebook exchanges with a 17-year-old girl, though they appear to have been non-sexual. Weiner has said he did not exchange lewd message with minors.
Weiner's fellow Democrats grew increasingly unhappy, until President Obama said this week that he would resign if he were in Weiner's place.
Weiner finally decided to resign after talking with his wife, State Department official Huma Abedin, who returned home Tuesday from traveling abroad with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.