Is Tweeting Cheating?

As some of you may know, I possess a faint desire to one day throw my hat into the political ring and run for public office. I mean, I'm not sure how adept I'd be at  like writing policy or enforcing legislation, but Lord knows I can deliver a rousing speech.

Till this point, I've considered it likely that the most significant obstacle to achieving my goal of public service would be my ability to overcome the sensationalist headlines that would no doubt be published when my bitter rivals begin  to one-by-one emerge from the woodwork, providing the media with their trumped-up, unilateral tales of my long and sordid history of public intoxication & general unruliness.

Just in case I do run, let me throw this disclaimer out there now... *All such future claims are totally unfounded. Even those associated with video evidence and/or court documents.*

So yes, a part of me did want to run. That was until recently, when New York Congressman, Anthony Weiner, was all but forced into resignation from office for a scandal that included nothing more than him tweeting photos of his private parts. That was it. Tweeting... No physical encounters. No exchange of favors, gifts or currency. No underage photo-recipients... Just a few, pedestrian, smart-phone executed, megapixels of his privates.

Granted, I have never tweeted, emailed, texted, videotaped, or even taken a private photo of my manhood. I'm a prude that way... In fact, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that until I heard Kanye's opening lyrics to "Runaway", on the heels of Brett Farve's text messaging mini-scandal; I was naively unaware as to just how prevalent such practices apparently are... So although I personally have no desire to share my person with the world in such a manner, I can't help but feel a little bit restricted...I mean if our civil rights & liberties are being infringed upon to the point where we cant even tweet a misbehaved, hyper-sexed, middle-aged, housewife in Timbuktu, without fear of repercussion, then what can we do?

It's the principle. Ya know.

But in all seriousness, I ask myself; is tweeting cheating?

Yesterday, a beastly early-evening nap left me wide awake at the most God forsaken of hours, with little more to pass the time than piddling around the house, and aimless channel surfing. I was on the very brink of cancelling my Comcast Cable subscription for its consistent lack of decent programming, when I stumbled upon the best show currently buried in late night cable..."Cheaters"

First off, let me say that I absolutely love Cheaters for two reasons. First, because, not unlike "Cops", it practices equal opportunity exploitation. The only color the producers of this show give a damn about is the "green" provided to them by late night "As seen on TV, Not Sold in Stores" advertising dollars...

Secondly, this show makes me grateful to live in DC. So while it's true that we do our fair share of dirt in the Northeast; at least we don't do it in that miseducated, low-rent, drunk-off-rail-liquor from T.G.I.Friday's, Middle-America kind of way... But I digress.

Where was I? Oh yes. Cheaters.. Okay, so a distressed stripper was having her low-life fiance trailed by the Cheaters investigators/camera crew.

They followed him for 3 days, meticulously collecting video footage of him cheating on his fiance with another woman... On one occasion, he was even so trifling as to carelessly leave his 7-week-old infant at home unattended, while he drove around the corner to savagely fornicate with his haggard sidepiece, on the well-worn, cloth-interior, of the backseat of his circa early 1990s Nissan Sentra; (of course purchased for him by his unwitting fiance), who had gone to work; presumably forced to bypass the minimum, state-mandated time period, allotted to women for maternity leave; to resume her position on the pole, so as to successfully scrape together a few dollars to ensure that she could fortify her newborn with exorbitantly-priced, baby formula. All the while, her no-good fiance was gallivanting around with what I could only imagine to have been the town's most undesirable single woman.

So when his now informed fiance, with the Cheaters cameras  in tow, finally accosted him in the frozen meat section of the local grocery store, making-out with the same substandard sidepiece, one might think he would acknowledge that he had been caught red-handed. Nope. Not him.

Despite being apprehended in plain view, with what appeared to be an entire tube of smudged orange lipstick smeared across his face, he vehemently denied any wrongdoing... So they rolled the videotape of the previous 3 days. There he was, on film:  in and out of his side piece's home. Holding hands, playing tonsil hockey, purchasing steak-ums at the grocery store... Obviously the jig was up, right? Wrong.

Even with such damning evidence, he still managed to maintain his "innocence"... Still, I wasn't surprised. The only thing that truly surprised me was how taken aback his fiance was. I mean considering  she met her baby daddy/fiance at the strip club, while he delicately tucked one dollar bills into the strap of her thong, as she descended from top to bottom, upside down, on a well-greased pole... Like, how surprised could she have been surprised that the relationship ended in such salacious fashion.

I figure all relationships that start like this one, can only end one of two ways: "Cheaters" or "Maury".

Still, my point is, that's cheating. There's no grey area there.  Nothing's up for debate.Just shameless, morally deficient, stone-cold infidelity.  That Karl-Kani-wearing, hair-full-of-lint-having negro had an overwhelming penchant for obese white women, and he didn't care if he had to leave little Barack at home alone to fend for his infant self, he was going to score with every sloppy pink-toe he could get his grimy little haven't-done-an-honest-day-of-work-in-his-entire-life hands on.

But Weiner on the other hand, was tweeting women he'd never met; some of whom lived half-way across the globe. So are we still to consider his behavior as "cheating"?

I don't know. And with that, I decided to conduct a poll. I mean, not like an extensive poll. I asked like 3 or 4 people on G-chat before tiring of the small talk that either preceded my inquiry, or subsequently ensued. So at that point I lazily threw the question out into the Facebook universe, and let the miracle of Mark Zuckerburg do the heavy-lifting for me... I figure if Neilsen can somehow purport to know with certitude, the television viewing preferences of 300 million Americans, by monitoring the television choices of 25,000 households, taking that data, and extrapolating outward, then my inquiry of 15 people would be quite sufficient.

Of those 15, 14 being women, 12 concluded that Weiner had indeed cheated... Although for different reasons. Some felt that the act of a married man tweeting photos in and of itself constituted an act of cheating. Others said that his actions gave him a platform to cheat. A gateway to infidelity if you will.... The two women who said he was not cheating actually have a reputation for being a bit loose. In fact, one of them will outright tell you she's a floozy if you were to ask.

Anyway, even after I completed collecting the data for my poll, I remained unsure...

I considered perhaps this whole thing to be a matter of semantics. And with that I turned my attention to the dictionary, where I uncovered 12 separate definitions of the word "cheating".

Regarding relationships, cheating is defined as being "sexually unfaithful". A person wouldn't have to be in receipt of some fancy law degree to argue Weiner was not "sexually unfaithful."... However, ironically, in regards to "baseball", cheating is defined as "positioning oneself closer to a certain area than is normal or expected"... I actually consider this definition to be a more accurate description of Weiner's transgression. 


And I'm actually comfortable with the word "transgression." 


Did Weiner cheat? Maybe. Depends on who you ask.
Did Weiner practice infidelity? Kinda. 
Did Weiner commit adultery? Nope. 
Did Weiner commit a transgression? Yes! he most certainly did. 


And really, who among us is without Transgression? Let he without sin cast the first stone!


"Know ye not. That the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Be not deceived: Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of God" - Corinthians 6: 9 - 11