Jonathan Van Meter, a contributing editor at Vogue and New York magazine, wrote this week's cover article about the post-scandal life of Anthony Weiner, the former New York congressman, who is considering entering the mayoral race of New York City.
How did you come to do this story?
Long before the scandal, Anna Wintour and I talked about my writing a profile of Anthony Weiner for Vogue. Over the next four years I did a lot of pieces on folks in the Obama administration, including Hillary Clinton, whom I accompanied on her first big trip to Africa as secretary of state. I was on the plane with Huma Abedin, who was there in an official capacity, of course, but we talked about Anthony, who was then her new boyfriend. Flash forward three years later to last summer when I did a profile of Chelsea Clinton. I bumped into Huma when I was following Chelsea in Little Rock, Ark., and Huma was five months into motherhood. She had that new-mother glow and I asked her "How are you?" without thinking. And then I realized, here was someone who just went through this personal hell, and she answered me as if I had really meant "How are you?" We talked for 45 minutes, and it seemed she was O.K., and she was telling me that Anthony was fine. Huma agreed to give an interview on Chelsea, which she'd never done before, and so she had a certain comfort level with me. That led to my poking around the edges. So that's probably part of the reason she and Anthony agreed to talk to me.
How was this different from more straightforward political reporting? Do you usually get the strong sense of being your subject's shrink?
I tend to spend a lot of time with people to do long-form profiles, and it's almost like a competitive sport now: journalists trying to outdo one another in terms of who can spend the most time. In this instance, I transcribed 15 or 16 hours of tapes. What was unusual about this was, normally you hang out with people and follow them around, but Anthony Weiner's life is very circumscribed. There were no events to go to, nothing to really follow him to. We sat around and talked. That was novel. I really felt like I was his analyst. Our sessions lasted for a particular amount of time, we would bring up things with a certain repetition, start to recognize patterns. As someone who has had a standing appointment with my therapist for many years, the rhythms were familiar. Interviews normally don't involve such thoughtfulness and searching.
Here's a simple question: Why did he engage in sexually explicit communication with other women?
My sense is that Anthony did not want to seem to be blaming his parents for his problems, but his relatives were more willing to say things about the fact he grew up in a chilly household. When you grow up without feeling like there was a lot of love in your childhood, eventually something weird happens when you get older. He was an overachiever who got elected to office at 27. Maybe when you get a lot of what you want when you are that young, it can block out some understanding and self-knowledge.
Does his wife, Huma, see it that way?
That was one of the only questions to which she said, "I would rather Anthony responded to that." She said he was the only one who could answer the question of why. Huma wasn't being evasive in any way. She just really didn't know how to answer.
Then why did she stay with Anthony?
Huma has an extraordinary reputation in D.C. Especially in the circles of people who do what she does: the person who is always with the very important top politicians, like Obama or Hillary. Her reputation is to be the best there's ever been at that job. A couple of people who work with her and know her really well said to me there's almost something spooky about how finely tuned her filter is, so that she can figure out the few things that really matter and tell Hillary about them. I think that ability to detach and block out all the noise is what saved her marriage.
So people around her weren't surprised that her marriage survived?
Not at all.
When you went to public places with Anthony and Huma. would people stare at her too, or mostly at him?
Yes, you see people whispering. Every time I was with Anthony, someone did that weird thing of pretending to be talking on their phone while really taking a picture of him. Once we were walking out of a restaurant together and he said, "Did you see that girl doing that thing with the phone?" He said he's used to being part of the carnival sideshow of Manhattan now, but he hates it when people are sneaky. He used to glare at people when they did that, but Huma hated it, he says. But the other day he caught her glaring at someone. He said he was happy she'd joined the team.
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