0 have lied to the press about a relationship to protect him. the truth is, i loved him. now he tells me to deny it. well, i'm sick of all of the deceit and i'm sick of all of the lies. last night, i sat and watched bill on 60 minutes. i felt disgusted and i saw a side of bill that i had never seen before. he is absolutely lying. i'm disappointed but realistically, i never thought he would come out and admit it. >> she's a legend and is described in some detail in the supermarket tabloid what she calls a 12-year affair with you. >> that allegation is false. >> the man on "60 minutes" was not the man i fell in love with. of the gay rights movement that was born in this city, in new york city, was that people should not be judged, should not be rejected, should not be disqualified based on how they experience sexual pleasure. and one of the conventions of the new york media up until now has been that the quality of a politician's marriage or the lack of a marriage as in the case of the never-married mayor of new york, ed coch, has nothing to do with how they will perform in office. but what is it? what is it about anthony weiner that has driven the "new york times" and the "daily news" and many clinton-defending democrats and liberals to suddenly become so judgmental about a married politician's sexual indiscretions? joining me now, pita bineert and joy reed. joy, is it sexting? is it the photographs? is it the technology, is it old fogies at the "new york times" who think, you know, affairs behind closed doors where there's no pictures that emerge, that's one thing? but this crazy stuff the kids are doing. >> these kids. well, i think to be fair to the new york media just for a moment. >> that's not what we're here for, joy. >> to be fair, he could have had the decency to dump his wife in a national press conference like giuliani did, or get new york police officers to walk her dog, because that's the way you do a sex scandal, with the kind of dignity and comportment we expect in a new york mayor. >> giuliani, his wife discovered that the marriage was over when he announced it in a press conference. >> correct. >> and this is the dignity, peter, of gracy mansion. this is the dignity of new york city hall that must be preserved. i heard rudy giuliani cited today as one of the great oral class mayors of new york, along with bloomberg, whose shoes anthony weiner can't fill. >> i think it's partly the technological change. we have crossed a frontier now. if lyndon johnson could have done this, john f. kennedy could have done this, believe me, he said in the biography, the parts of the body that were private were never private when they were lyndon johnson's. it's a generational change. the other thing may be that there are not republicans in the story. if you had conservative republicans like baying for anthony weiner's head, with the possibility they could depose him as with bill clinton, a partisan instinct might kick in, but they're not part of the scene here, so i think that's why the media in some ways is playing that role. >> i don't care about the republican side of this kind of world, there isn't really a republican side. >> that's the point. >> what fascinates me is hearing liberals who defended bill clinton all the way, which by the way was a perfectly legitimate pose to strike, that yeah, lying about sex or the sex lives of these people should be outside of the realm in which we judge how they do their work. >> right. >> they have lost their grip on that concept because of sexting, and i think they just don't like anthony weiner as a person, which is easy. he is an easy guy not to like. there's something going on here. >> and it would be more legitimate if we had a critique of anthony weiner's tenure in congress and said he was ineffective and wouldn't be a great leader, but the three great democratic presidents, franklin delano roosevelt, clinton, and kennedy, you had his nurse that he was clearly apparently having an affair with. and we still celebrate him as a great leader because we compartmentalize the decision making in terms of the public good and the decision making in one's marriage. ronald reagan -- nancy reagan wasn't his first wife. she was his second wife. do we think there's something less good about reagan because he was married twice because the first marriage fell apart? people cheat. i think that anthony weiner's weird peck adilloes with the twitter thing is weird, and if your name is anthony weiner, you probably want to be more circumspect with what you're doing with your phone, but i think this is not the discussion we have to have. who is the best mayor for new york city based on their record. >> another question is why is -- anthony weiner in the record as we know it so far, hasn't touched anyone. >> right. >> other than obviously himself. he hasn't touched anyone. why doesn't that somehow help him? it doesn't seem to help him. i get the feeling that the "new york times" editorial writers think that is sicker than the way bill clinton touched -- >> remember, by 1996, we didn't only know about jennifer flowers, we knee about paula jones, and the paula jones case was clearly worse because that was sexual harassment. and people got behind him because they understood then what we don't understand now. there is no relationship between thou people act in their private lives and their public lives. george w. bush, privately cautious, publicly reckless. people are far too complicated to say, because he acted this way, he will act x way as mayor. human beings are too complicated for that. >> we do not yet have our local nbc video of the candidates' appearance, a forum, which i believe christine quinn did not show up for, but anthony weiner was asked, this is according to ida siegal's tweet of the thing. the candidates are asked, facebook or twitter, all answer, and the crowd erupts in laughter when moderator asks, weiner, facebook or twitter? that's a new york crowd. they get a joke. they understand. >> he should have just answered yeah. >> the irony is the people are supposedly so puritanical and moralistic. it's the media that is. people actually repeatedly elect these guys. >> i was watching new york one, the local new york cable channel, news all day, out in the street with a microphone. hard for them to find someone who say they care about this. there was one guy, they asked him, great response. would you -- would you vote against anthony weiner because of it. he said, of course not. then he was asked, you're going to vote for him? oh, no, i'm not going to vote for him. but you couldn't get anyone on the new york street to animatedly come out against anthony weiner on the basis of this. >> because people want the democratic right to make their own decision and not have it be taken away from them from the "new york times," the "new york times" which did not call, as i recall, herman cain to get out of the race, when he would not appoint a muslim to the cabinet. >> i think sexting the pictures have driven the "new york times" a little crazy, and the daily news a little crazy and they have not noticed how they have broken with their own precedence in covering these kind of things in the past. joy reed and peter, thank you very much for joining me on this very tricky to talk about subject on this family show, but we're finding a way. coming up, nsa leaker ed snowden is already planning his future life in russia. he just doesn't have permission to live there quite yet. and he's almost left the russian airport today, so the story says. and vladimir putin is a lot more welcoming to ed snowden than he is to some other visitors planning to come for the olympics. anyone who is gay or is suspected of maybe being gay, any tourists can be thrown into prison for that now in russia. actor and playwright harvey fair steen is angry about it to say the least. he wrote a brilliant park about it. he'll join me for an exclusive interview coming up.