You re killing us interrupted Marcia Kramer the dean of local television news reporters.
I know Quinn said gleefully.
The reporters and most of New York really wanted to talk only about Anthony Weiner.
The previous evening with his wife Huma Abedin beside him and speaking in support Weiner acknowledged in a remarkable and remarkably awkward news conference that he had continued to send explicit messages and lewd photos of his anatomy to young women on the Internet after being forced to resign from his House seat for the same kind of behavior. Among the revelations was that Weiner used the name Carlos Danger as his moniker during his communication.
The explicit messaging occurred as Weiner was well into his political comeback tour in preparation for jumping into the race for New York mayor. He soon became a front runner.
But now his rivals who had been reluctant to so much as utter Weiner s name wanted to talk of little else. They called on him to leave the campaign and questioned his judgment and integrity.
At a debate in the Bronx one Latino mayoral candidate said Weiner s use of the amorous pen name Carlos Danger reflected poorly on Hispanics. Another rival called him a distraction from middle class issues prompting Weiner to respond that his accuser was playing to the cameras. Everyone including Weiner cracked up when he was asked if he prefers Facebook or Twitter. The cameras clicked.
Weiner who over his career has delighted in media coverage was getting run over by it. The media scrum around him dwarfed those that orbit presidential candidates.
New Yorkers on the train and in pizza places folded over tabloid headlines such as Meet Carlos Danger. An excoriating editorial in the New York Times demanded that Weiner take his marital troubles and personal compulsions out of the public eye away from cameras off the Web and out of the race for mayor of New York City.
Political operatives compared the embattled couple to B League Clintons. Weiner tried to find a message to stay on and Abedin s defenders insisted that she spoke to set the record straight not just to stand by her man. Even Eliot L. Spitzer the disgraced former New York governor who followed Weiner s path back into politics as a candidate for comptroller had to answer questions about whether he had continued to frequent prostitutes. ( Absolutely not he said at a campaign stop. And we re done answering those questions. )
On Wednesday evening Weiner also continued to face unsavory queries. The gregarious candidate who entered the race and quickly crowded his challengers out of the debate looked blankly at a reporter who was shouting Do you use any other aliases other than Carlos Danger
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