KEVIN HALPERN, Courier Co-Editor
Tuesday, June 7, 2011 7:45 am

If I were to take lewd photographs of myself and start handing them out to women I struck up a conversation with on the Woodbury Town Square, I have little doubt I would quickly find myself behind bars at the Cannon County Jail.

Were a local teen to e-mail a naked picture of himself to a girlfriend, and her parents found out, there is every reason to believe he would be facing charges of sexual harassment in Cannon County Juvenile Court.

However, if you’re a New York congressman by the name of Anthony Weiner, it’s perfectly OK to engage in all sorts of perverted behavior and continue to go about your business as if nothing happened.

Rep. Weiner admitted Monday that he sent inappropriate photographs of himself to women he met online, and engaged in sexting and phone sex with them. He said he didn’t know how old the women were, and admitted they could have been underage.

Rep. Weiner came clean about his misbehavior after being caught in a week of lies following initial reports of his electronic shenanigans. He says he is very, very, very sorry for what he did.

He also says he’s not going to resign from his congressional position, the reason being, he says, is he did nothing illegal. Apparently immoral is not an issue.

I think the only thing he is very, very, very sorry about is that he got caught with his pants down.

What was he thinking? Is he a sex addict, a drunken womanizer, or both?

Or is Rep. Weiner just a pathological liar? Watching his news conference yesterday, I could not help but compare him to Casey Anthony, the woman currently on trial in Florida for killing her daughter, who has been caught in lie after lie after lie.

I am long past the stage in life where I am shocked by these revelations about Rep. Weiner. Such actions by politicians seem, sadly, to be almost commonplace these days. However, I am surprised by what in this instance appears to be a blatant double-standard.

Tennessee has two female congressmen, including Diane Black, who represents the Sixth Congressional District, which includes Cannon County. One can only imagine the uproar if it came out that Congresswoman Black was sending pictures of her privates to various men she met online.

She would be called all kinds of vile names. The media and her constituents would be demanding her resignation. She’d probably quit, go home, lock her doors, turn off her phone and TV, and not be seen or heard from for years.

Apparently that’s not the case with the congressman from New York. He’s going to continue to strut his stuff and hopes the brouhaha blows over.

What a Weiner!