Originally posted at American Thinker.
Testosterone-driven men don’t usually think of themselves as peacocks, but riding around in sooped-up cars, sporting pumped-up pectorals, donning flashy clothes and looking for opportunities to display cash-stuffed money clips in public are some of the many ways male humans fan out their showy feathers to catch the attention of female peahens.
In nature, peahen gals are attracted to the most ornate male peacock – or the guy toting the most bling. Year after year during breeding season, to draw a mate peacocks return to the same location. The peafowls congregate close together and treat foraging peahens to a buffet featuring a spectacular courtship dance.
After the show, the grey and brown peacock hiding beneath the most glorious feathered fan usually garners extra attention from the ladies. The male peafowl with the greatest number of eyespots on his feathers gets to swagger away accompanied by a harem.
“The collective name for a group of peacocks is a party,” and in politics former President Bill Clinton and Congressman Anthony Weiner turn out to be two of the best examples of a ‘party’ of peacocks. Both men have proven notorious for coming up with creative techniques to capture female attention. Neither Clinton nor Weiner flutter their tail feathers, produce rustling sounds or flaunt quivering fans, but in lieu of spectacular plumage, both have exploited positions of power in an effort to seduce women.
To attract females, “The degree of tail ornamentation that a peacock displays is its primary means of sexual communication.” For the human male, especially in politics, power and prestige can provide all the ‘tail ornamentation’ men like Bill Clinton and Anthony Weiner need.
In the hope that their political status would attract females who normally would give neither one so much as a gander, philandering birds-of-a-feather Bill and Anthony have both utilized the plumage of their positions to compensate for deficits in character, fidelity, and honesty.
Wasn’t it on the wings of power that the country’s most notorious adulterer honked his way from the Arkansas governor’s mansion straight into the White House? All along the route, Bill Clinton managed to issue continual mating calls while enveloped in a showy garment of political peacock feathers.
Throughout his political career Clinton sought every opportunity to gather unto himself a gaggle of women. From naïve Paula Jones, who was confronted in a hotel room by a governor without pants to Kathleen Willey, a woman who Clinton likely felt should feel honored to be ambushed by a president and subjected to a “hug, kiss” and unappreciated groping. Pea “foul” Clinton apparently was under the impression that the trappings of power were an impressive enough show of feathers that Willey would agree to submit right there on the couch in the president’s private study.
What Clinton found out was that peahens sometimes choose to mate, while others walk away, thus prompting the male to start the dance all over again. Undeterred for years, the ever-prancing, smooth-strutting Clinton performed his courting dance in the same locale. The then-president unfurled a feathered plume called the Oval Office, which finally succeeded in attracting an immature peahen named Monica Lewinsky who, once inside the infamous cigar bar, managed to make history by willingly participating in telephone sex, nine furtive trysts, and a salacious scandal of massive proportions.
Thirteen years after William Jefferson provided Monica with a stack of dry cleaning bills, in order to attract his own bevy of females underling Anthony Weiner decided to follow ‘party’ suit and did a ton of peacock strutting himself, and did it while occupying a seat in Congress representing the good people of Brooklyn and Queens New York.
Luckily for Weiner, female “peahens build nests on the ground, lay three to five eggs and raise their peachicks without help from the peacock.” In fact, while Weiner’s pregnant wife Huma busily prepared the nest to receive offspring, morally bankrupt breeder Anthony was stocking his harem with porn stars, nursing students, black jack dealers, 21-year-olds, and even allegedly grooming a 17-year-old peachick for possible future use.
Congress became Anthony Weiner’s attention-getting ticket. Weiner made a few “high-pitched squawking sounds” and fanned a few look-at-me-ladies displays on the House floor with a follow-up exhibit in the basement gym at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC. The New York congressman was so consumed with the mating dance he disrespected a federal building and snapped nearly nude photos of himself using the Congressional gym as a backdrop.
Sans an array of upright barbules, Congressman Weiner posed in front of a mirror doing what a peacock does, stepping side to side, forward and backward in a half-naked mating dance, ‘sexting’ pictures taken on what could turn out to be a government-issued Blackberry.
Bird enthusiasts know from their observations that a proud peacock is able to “hold his fan of display feathers up for a very long time.” In a few of Weiner’s self-portraits the congressman was also seen proudly holding his own ‘display’ for ‘a very long time,’ as well as Tweeting juvenile photos of himself over the Internet in a backwards baseball cap.
Although androgen-drenched men have a tendency to fan various types of feathers to attract female attention, adulterous men of power like Bill Clinton are notorious for finessing influence to benefit themselves sexually. However, the vision of Anthony Weiner primping in front of a congressional gym mirror with a towel cinched around his waist while grabbing himself takes peacock strutting and plume parading, even in Washington DC, to a whole new level.
Truth is, after all the bravado America now knows that even the fanciest of feathers fall short of expectations, because plumage is superficial and only impressive from one angle. In the end, at a very great price, the faux feathers donned by the Clinton/Weiner peacock ‘party’ managed to deliver both men just two things: short-lived pleasure and permanent disgrace.
