Anthony Weiner is going to rehab. It was, perhaps, inevitable in a culture that pathologizes bad behavior and promises redemption in twelve steps. Whether you have an affair, get drunk and crash your car, utter anti-Semitic slurs or send photos of yourself in your underwear to strangers on the internet, you can get out of jail free by checking into rehab.
If addiction has replaced sin as the root of all evil, rehab is its church. The difference of course is that to gain absolution in rehab you need only admit that you have an illness; in church you must repent. An illness can be treated but immorality isn't so easily cured.
This is not to say that what Anthony Weiner did was immoral, which is a fairly meaningless word anyway. Ill-advised, self-destructive and distasteful? Yes. But not so far beyond the realm of ordinary human behavior that it warrants the title “Weinergate” (admittedly the best “gate” yet.) The bigger story here is the way in which rehab is being used to white-out the scandal, rather than the fairly tame details of the scandal itself.
Rehab is a viable option for people who cannot control their own destructive behaviour. It can teach coping mechanisms and help address the deep-seated issues that lead to this behaviour in the first place. But it’s hard not to be skeptical when you consider how many famous faces check in for treatment on the back of some major negative exposure.
Does a stint in rehab mean that Tiger Woods won’t screw around on his future partner? Or that John Galiano doesn’t still harbor anti-Semitic views? Or that Anthony Weiner won’t get thrills from the thought of snapping pictures of his own nether regions for the delight/disgust of unsuspecting Twitter users? Unlikely. The most we can expect is that they have been shamed into making better judgement calls in future. And they didn’t need rehab for that.
