Who the Hell is Mark Cusack?...

Put Another Way: Tragedy May Not be in Resignations...

As you may or may not know, New York Congressman Anthony Weiner has resigned.  His resignation is an ominous sign beyond the destruction of an otherwise promising political career and a recent dust-up in Massachusetts (we cannot really call it a scandal).

Rep. Cusack (Facebook)

Despite the best efforts of moral outrage, State Representative Mark Cusack’s lapse in judgment back in April has not risen, even statewide, to the level of the controversy that has destroyed Cong. Anthony Weiner.  The story, however, slogged its way across the Boston media and appeared in AP stories throughout New England.  Even London’s Daily Mail had the story on its website.

Cusack, a Braintree Democrat, was caught with a female aide to one of his Republican colleagues in the House Chamber early in the morning after the lower house of the General Court finished up its budget.  Accounts differ, but it appears that he and the aide had not been in the chamber very long, were clothed and were not supposed to be there.  However, the catch all for objectionable behavior “inappropriate” leads us to suspect what they intended.

Also among unconfirmed details was that Cusack, likely in the heat of panic, identified himself as a fellow freshman colleague.  Like the Weiner roast, the local organization for Righteous Indignation pounced.  Many of these objections poured from quotes in news stories and from the ever-unreliable comments sections of news sites.  First they attacked him for his inappropriate behavior.  Then they began to zero in on his lie, attempting to draw parallels to Weiner’s claims of innocence early in that sordid affair.

House Chamber (Mass.gov)

However, Rep. Cusack is not Weiner.  The former’s was a lapse in judgment no question.  The details of the story implicate alcohol, but nobody has alleged the near-debasement of the House chamber was not consensual.  Cusack, and ostensibly the aide, are unmarried and young.  Does that excuse using the House rostrum as the world’s worst privacy curtain?  No, but we would be naïve—to be kind—to think that nothing like this has ever happened in other supposedly solemn areas of the State House.  Indeed,  considerably worse debauchery has likely occurred within the US Capitol itself. 

As for the lying?  Well, the connection to Weiner’s transgressions simply do not hold water.  Weiner engaged in a ten day media blitz sticking to this hacking story and lying to his colleagues and friends in public until Andrew Breitbart, whom he should have known would ravenously pursue this nonsense, left him with no other choice.  Cusack’s lie, though crummy and certainly a violation of the politically incorrect axiom “Bros before hoes,” was not an extended exercise in deception.  It was simply a panicked, likely intoxicated kid (those most indignant about this situation, are undoubtedly old enough to consider Cusack, 26, a kid) blurting out something his booze and testosterone addled mind thought might make the situation go away.