The Year of Living Carlos Dangerously
“I’m just an empty, soulless vessel.” Marshall Sella follows Anthony Weiner during his doomed campaign for New York City mayor, and finds out what happened after election night:
"At the end of every regret, there was always Huma. Oh, he showed contrition to the voters, but that was weak beer. He apologized to Huma and expressed his pain for her so frequently that there were times when I wondered whether he’d partly been trying to talk to her through the press. His honesty was challenged by all quarters, but his love for her seemed absolute. It was the core of him, the one thing he said—despite the lies—about which I never felt a trace of doubt.
“I asked, had to ask, if they’d be staying together. ‘One thing I’m grateful for is that now I’m under no obligation to answer anything like this,’ he said. ’But we’ve had a very rough time. It causes me a great deal of pain in the way she gets reported and the way she gets discussed. Her treatment in the press has been rough. It pains me because I deserve it. She doesn’t.”
The Audacity of Bro
The Leader of the Free World has a half brother named Malik who would like to get out of his brother’s shadow:
“On his way to a grandiose theory of what has happened to the Obamas, Malik simply refuses to be a bit player, and sometimes seems to circumvent his brother entirely. He earnestly claims that while Washington is the capital of America, Siaya is now ‘the capital of the world,’ the source of it all—of the family God chose to bring equality to the human race. Whatever comes next, Barack H. Obama II isn’t necessarily the center of that plan.
“‘This is not even about him anymore,’ Malik says, as usual avoiding his brother’s name. ‘It’s an act of God! Each of us will make a difference in somebody’s life.'”