The Candid and Prophetic Weiner NYT Interview 3 Weeks Before All Hell Broke Loose
On a sunny morning less than three weeks ago, I found myself sitting across from Representative Anthony D. Weiner in a corner booth at Coffee Shop, chatting about Twitter.
I had asked for the interview after my editor had noticed that the congressman’s Twitter feed was more punchy and candid than that of the average elected official, and that he sometimes seemed just 140 characters away from a career-bungling mishap. So we decided to do an article on Mr. Weiner’s use of social media, and he was happy to cooperate.
Mr. Weiner was charming and engaging, and he talked candidly — and, in retrospect, prophetically — about his Twitter persona: “I know the risk. I’ve seen enough stories about the risk, and I’ve kind of kicked the line of the risk a couple of times,” he said.
Of course, the risks I was asking him about were that he might offend someone with his sharp voice — I had no idea that he had been carrying on sexually explicit conversations with women via Facebook and Twitter. But some of his comments were, in hindsight, striking.