Oh my. Disgraced former Representative Anthony “I did not send pictures of my crotch to those women” Weiner has wormed his way into the headlines again this week with talk of a comeback, a return to the public spotlight or a “political rebranding”, if you will. In case you forgot or didn’t pay attention in the first place (lucky you), we have Weiner to thank for some of the best/worst puns in recent memory:

The big reveal is a TL;DR profile in this coming weekend’s New York Times magazine in which Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin review the painful details of the fallout and his plans for a new beginning in which he will rise from the ashes like a triumphant phoenix in boxer-briefs. It seems that Weiner entertains fantasies of running for mayor of New York City next year along with everyone else who lives in the greater metropolitan area.

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Last week brought news of disgraced general/CIA chief and potential presidential candidate David Petraeus‘s first post-scandal appearance. Petraeus used a speech before a University of Southern California dinner honoring the military to effectively begin his apology tour. We and everyone else in PR are obsessed with damage control, and we feel like Petraeus got it right. Now we’d like to take a moment to relay seven lessons from recent scandal-wracked personalities who didn’t quite get it right.

1. Make it public — but not too public: Whoever told Arnold Schwarzenegger that appearing on every interview show ever to talk about his affairs and his out-of-wedlock child while simultaneously hawking his new book was very wrong.

2. Be humble. Seriously: Jonah Lehrer didn’t get the message that being a public intellectual does not allow you to avoid taking the blame for your own failings by over-intellectualizing the whole thing and pontificating about the why and the how. “I need rules because I don’t trust myself to not be arrogant”? Come on, man.

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Dave Arnold, former communications director to former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, has joined MWW Group as a VP. He’ll be working with clients across the firm’s practice areas on media relations strategy with a particular emphasis on the corporate comms and public affairs areas. He’ll be based in the New York office.

As we mentioned in yesterday’s Roll Call column, MWW has been doing quite a bit of hiring lately. MWW CEO Michael Kempner says it’s a result of the changes at the firm since it regained its independence from IPG in January.

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While both Democrats and Republicans are called for Rep. Anthony Weiner to vacate his Congressional seat, the White House is saying little about Weinergate.

USA Today reports that a House ethics committee has already begun deliberating the issue with Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) saying he’d like to dump Weiner from his committee assignments.

However, White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One, “The president is focused on his job,” without commenting at all on whether Weiner should stay or go, simply calling the pictures “a distraction” and “inappropriate.”  Although Time.com reports that the President did tell Today’s Ann Curry, “I would resign.” In a tweet from The Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza (who has written a post here), he says that the single line “seems to me to seal the deal.”

Separately, we reported last week that Spirit Air was leveraging the scandal for its marketing purposes. These days, the airline isn’t the only brand using Anthony Weiner’s Twitter escapades for their own advantage.

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Photo: Ramin Talaie for The New York Times

His colleagues may want to put him on an ice floe and push him off the coast at Coney Island, but Rep. Anthony Weiner is hanging in there. Which is exactly what his constituents would prefer.

A NY1-Marist College poll found that 56 percent of his constituents in Brooklyn and Queens want him to remain in office. “This is his personal life. And I feel that the public should actually lay off,” one voter told NY1. Moreover, only 11 percent think he did anything illegal.

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Photo: AP / Richard Drew

During his circus-like press conference yesterday, Rep. Anthony Weiner stated plainly that he wouldn’t resign. Today everyone is asking whether he should. Actually, what they’re asking is whether Weiner will get over this. Past political sex scandals show that it’s not the scandal, per se, that determines the political outcome. Each crisis situation is unique.

In Rep. Weiner’s case, he’s made a Congressional career out of positioning himself for a run for New York City mayor. “His role in Congress has largely been filling a niche – the liberal loudmouth, willing to shout down Republicans or embrace things like single-payer health care. That’s not a role that Democrats are going to want him to fill now,” Politico writes.

While some have called for his resignation, many of his constituents are more forgiving. And there are cases, Politico points out, where politicians have recovered from what could be considered much worse.

But there are other things that have come to light about what Weiner said and how he said it that could prove to be clearer strikes against him.

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Spirit Air exposed its latest tie-in to current events with “fares too HARD to resist” today, just a day after Congressman Anthony Weiner‘s (D-NY) painful and strange 27-minute presser, where he admitted he did indeed Tweet his bits to a constituent.

Spirit, the airline most known in the industry for publicity stunts, sent their 9-buck-and-up Weiner Sale offer to newsletter subscribers with the subject line:  “Want To See Our Weiner?”

The budget carrier also ran a Charlie Sheen  “Living the Dream” sale, and an Arnold Schwarzenegger “Sexy Maid Acquired” sale recently, so this particular PR peep show isn’t surprising.

In keeping with the way this screwball scandal has played out over the past week, Rep. Anthony Weiner held perhaps the strangest press conference ever.

The gist of the presser was Rep. Weiner admitting that he did, in fact, send the now-infamous crotch pic, but had intended for it to be a direct message. Once he realized the error, he says he took down the photo and came up with the hacking story. After admitting to the lie, he issued a teary apology to everyone, especially his wife, Huma Abedin, who is an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Moreover, as it turns out, Weiner said he’d engaged in online exchanges with a number of women, though he said he’s never met any of them and much of it was before he was married.

But before all of that could happen, conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart took the stage, leaving many people to wonder across Twitter whether he’d hijacked the press conference.

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Photo: AP

New York Rep. Anthony Weiner is once again asserting that Weinergate was a prank and it’s time for him “to get back to work doing the job that I’m paid to do.”

However, Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor might not be so quick to let that happen. “Again, perhaps he’s trying, but I know there’s a lot of explaining going on but without a lot of clarity,” Rep. Cantor (VA) is quoted saying on Fox and Friends.

This situation has consumed too much of our time this week and we need closure. But as soon as that picture went public with Rep. Weiner’s name attached to it, the poor Congressman was doomed to suffer through a crisis situation.

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Photo: Newscom

Just yesterday we said that Rep. Anthony Weiner was doing a pretty good job of responding to the flap over a lewd crotch photo sent via Twitter. In one day, he’s managed to negatively impact his own efforts with a bad press conference and an unwillingness to say whether he’s the man in the photo.

Weiner circled around some basic questions when faced with reporters yesterday (Why didn’t he contact authorities if he thought he was hacked? for instance) and said during an interview with NBC today that he “can’t say with certitude” whether the picture is him. Luke Russert also reports that Weiner called an NBC reporter a “jackass.”

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