The Shocking Family History of Anthony Weiner

It's not unusual to find that a family has changed its name since coming to America. Some do it to leave the past behind. Some have their names changed by immigration officials. Some change their names to avoid the latest fad in ethnic hatred.

I suspect my family was the second, but it could also be that we're more German than we think. But speaking of secret Germans: Anthony Weiner.

Once upon a time his family went by a common German name: Weimar, which is German for "German equivalent of smith". Then came the world wars, in which Germany took on the entire world, more-or-less single-handed*, but lost, due to not being America. In the process Germans became a little tiny bit unpopular in America, or perhaps a little tiny bit more so, considering Prohibition was partially driven by a desire to crush the Irish and German populations in America. Under these circumstances, the name Weimar was not a good one to have. Less so when Germany became known as the impressively incompetent (and mention economically oppressed) Weimar Republic, which gave us the face of hyperinflation (more media-savvy than Zimbabwe). So his family did the only sensible thing: changed its named to Weinar.

All might have been okay, but it appears that a prankster at the Department of Giving Ethnics Less Ethnic Names (DoGELEN (pronounced D-o-gellen, not dog-ellen)) decided to go one step further and change the name to Weiner. Since they still didn't speak English, they were unable to see the different between e and a, and did not question the change. It helped that at the time, while not many or for very long, there were still some German-Americans being interned during WWII.

He got the name Anthony after his equally-not-English-speaking parents (equal to his grandparents) mistakenly thought that Italians were not discriminated against.

D all this, he managed to rise to a fairly important political office, did some quality shouting, and then threw it all away by tweeting his penis, which sounds like a euphemism for something much worse. It just goes to show, Benjamin Franklin was right when he said,

“Why should Pennsylvania … become a Colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us, instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion?”

*Austria hardly counts and whatever gains Japan gave for the Axis powers were lost by pulling the US into the war directly. Hence the now-corrupted phrase: "don't mess with Hawaii."

In related news, Texas Representative Ron Paul is refusing examination by doctors to confirm if he is actually 105 year old Ayn Rand.