From One Disgraced Pol To Another

Anthony Weiner has some "been there, done that" advice for New York Representative Michael Grimm, who may not actually be disgraced but was forced to grovel and apologize one day after his tone-deaf and defiant "I expect respect" initial statement. Who's Michael Grimm? He's the Congressman who threatened to throw a reporter over a balcony at the United States Capitol after the State of the Union speech Tuesday night. Details (and video) here.

And of course, it's the "and video" that's really gotten him in trouble. If the cameras hadn't been rolling, there might have been some "he said, he said" coverage of the incident but it would have been a local New York story. It's the 10 gazillion replays of the "yes, you did threaten a reporter" video that have put Grimm in the company of Anthony Weiner and all the other politicians who've said or done something stupid on camera.

Thursday afternoon update:  An intriguing wrinkle in the story. It turns out that Michael Scotto, the reporter Grimm threatened, is a nephew of Anthony Scotto, who's a former boss in the Gambino crime family, or to put it another way, a mafioso. This isn't The Sopranos, so Grimm probably won't find himself wearing cement shoes at the bottom of the Hudson River, but this little tidbit of new information is keeping the story alive through another news cycle and that's not good for Representative Grimm.