Yes, that title is an oblique way of getting at the theme, and yes, it is intended to appeal to readers who can make the connection. Maybe everyone else will read it just to find out what the title means.
Mary Martin was the actress who played Peter Pan in the 1954 Broadway production. She is the actress with whom I will always associate that role. If you're younger, you might be thinking instead of Sandy Duncan (1979) or Cathy Rigby (1990 and later productions).
Anthony Weiner suffers from the Peter Pan Syndrome.
The original Latin phrase is puer aeternus, which means eternal boy. In 1983 Dan Kiley wrote a book titled The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up. In the story of Peter Pan, of course, the title character wanted never to grow up, and that is the theme of one of the play's more memorable songs. This syndrome is not formally recognized as a psychiatric diagnosis, but we've all known men who continue throughout their lives - or at least into middle age - to act like children or adolescents.
That seems to be the story of Anthony Weiner. How else can we explain the behavior of a 47-year-old man who has chosen a life in the public eye but who cannot refrain from engaging in such adolescent behavior as texting racy photos of himself to much younger women? The psychology of the character, as set forth by Carl Jung (and later described in a helpful lexicon by Sharp), is such that he covets independence and freedom, chafes at boundaries and limits, and tends to find any restriction intolerable.
The fall from grace of Representative Weiner raises so many questions, and the psychological ones are probably not the most important. It is intriguing to wonder why a grown man would engage in such adolescent behavior for so long, apparently without regard for the consequences of being discovered and having his behavior made the subject of public ridicule. One might think his courtship and marriage would have redirected his fantasy life.
The question that I have the most trouble answering, however, is the one that naturally comes to mind when one considers the immediate application to this scandal of the moniker "Weinergate." Since the scandal that brought down the Nixon administration after the burglary of Democratic party offices in the Watergate Hotel, the suffix "gate" has been added to so many misadventures that, upon discovery, quickly evolved into maelstroms that destroyed public careers. The suffix seems particularly apt in this case because it mirrors the central lesson of Watergate: it's not the crime; it's the cover-up.
If Nixon had admitted from the start that the bungled break-in was the work of some low-level operatives in his campaign, apologized to his political opponents and to the nation, taken some measure of responsibility, and vowed to see that the fools who planned and executed the operation would be punished, that story might well have played out quite differently. Instead he masterminded an elaborate cover-up, and the central theme of the subsequent investigation, both in the media and in Congress, was, "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"
Had Weiner gone public with the truth from the start, and admitted - with an appropriate sense of shame - that he had been engaged in erotic online communications with a number of much younger women, he would not have incurred the wrath of the news media, which are full of reporters who love to ferret out the truth and destroy those who try to hide it. And he certainly would have been forgiven by his constituents, the majority of whom didn't want him to resign even after the scandal unfolded in the worst possible way. Even House Republicans would likely have left him alone, except for making endless jokes at his expense.
We hold elected officials to standards of conduct that seem to be ever higher, even in their private lives (because nothing, it seems, stays private any more). But we are willing to forgive a wide range of behavior that violates sociocultural norms and broadly held moral values, so long as public figures 'fess up and appear genuinely contrite.
Those of us who are parents - oh, and a belated Happy Father's Day to those who celebrated yesterday - teach our children the importance of truthfulness and emphasize that when they have done something wrong, honesty is the best policy and will keep the consequences from getting far worse.
Anthony Weiner is widely regarded as an effective and outspoken advocate for Democratic ideals, and his departure from Congress is surely a loss for the New York delegation in the House. And it's all because he never learned the central lesson of Watergate. Foolish arrogance knows no party boundaries.
Perhaps now Mr. Weiner will focus on his personal life, repair the damage done to his marriage, forget about Peter Pan, and - at last - grow up.
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