SO, WHAT'D I MISS? Went to Southpaw this evening for the Moth "Story Slam" event, which kept me from the Weiner sext show. So I'm not up on the commentary, which I'm sure is lush.

I see also that Andrew Breitbart bum-rushed the show with a movie supervillain performance, complete with threats and self-pity. It does not seem Breitbart was looking for the affection of the American people, who for the most part don't know who he is, but for fear and respect. Among normal people, this will probably go over pretty much as it did in the Austin Powers films, but I expect the political class will take it as intended.

Weiner says he's sticking around. It'll be interesting to see how that goes. The claims of underage girl involvement or other actual crimes haven't played out, but we have been left to wonder if they will, which is of course the whole idea.

I would say we've entered an interesting phase of American politics, but we've been it that for a while. This just ups the ante. Over time I expect we'll find ourselves reentering the era of the Breitbart of his time, James Callender -- some of whose allegations, you may remember, have been vindicated by history. It remains to be seen if we'll wind up with the sort of governance we had back in those days. Knowing how the backwards trend in our history has worked out so far, I'm inclined to think not.