"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
Something I hadn’t previously noticed is how Rachel Maddow employed the word “creep” against Anthony Weiner:
(Hat-tip: PoliticalPAW.) Meanwhile, the latest spin on WeinerGate provokes Ace of Spades to lay down an incredibly brutal interrogation on the Prime Suspect — an instant blogospheric classic.
And, yeah, I’ve got a new WeinerGate column up at The American Spectator that includes props for Ace and Andrew Breitbart, which I hope you’ll go read.
No, he didn’t ask the cops to start an investigation of the insidious hackers who stole his crotch-photo and Tweeted it to a 21-year-old. But when a reporter for WCBS-TV in New York started asking questions . . .
Weiner’s Office Calls The Police
After CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer
Asks For An Interview
As you can imagine, Ace of Spades has loads of fun with this news. Meanwhile, CNN’s Jack Cafferty is asking another question: Can Weiner survive this scandal?
Dan Collins at Piece of Work in Progress has an excellent round-up of today’s WeinerGate news and commentary. And by “excellent,” of course, I mean: He linked me.
UPDATE: Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg see — what else? — a vast conspiracy!
Scott Whitlock has the transcript at NewsBusters.
UPDATE II: Linked by If You Seek Peace — thanks!
UPDATE III: Linked by Nice Deb — thanks! — and this story is now the top thread on Memeorandum.
Thanks to Tim Daniel at Left Coast Rebel for locating this video of Luke Russert’s devastating interview with Rep. Anthony Weiner:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Big props to Luke Russert for asking tough questions. Compare and contrast to the utter uselessness of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer whose Weiner interview is transcribed by Ace of Spades.
Now, I have gotten a bit of kidding from my friends about being in all-Weiner, all-the-time mode the past few days:
The Other McCain Is Big on Weiner Coverage
Har-de-har-har. That’s OK. Take a look at Memeorandum:
Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com broke the story in the wee hours Saturday, but now? Oh, everybody else is covering the story like they discovered it themselves. I was one of a relative handful of bloggers — and we were all those horrible, nasty right-wingers — who jumped on this story Saturday and bulldogged it relentlessly, aggregating, analyzing, expanding the story and trying to push it forward, while Luke Russert was enjoying a nice Memorial Day weekend at the beach. I make no apologies, and I’m not going to turn the story loose just because the MSM are now bigfooting all over it. And I remind readers of what I wrote earlier today:
Notice how George Stephanopoulos (scarcely a right-winger) featured the WeinerGate story today on Good Morning America . . .
You see that, as Stephanopoulos says, Weiner is a “high-profile Democrat” whose avowed ambition is to become mayor of New York City — America’s most lucrative media market.
The supply-and-demand incentives for coverage of this story are therefore so strong that, liberal bias or not, the major news networks can’t simply ignore it. In fact, I had the TV in my office tuned to MSNBC for a couple hours today, then turned over to Fox News, and MSNBC actually had more coverage of the story than Fox!
You might say that Weiner is too big for his own good.
This story isn’t going away, because everybody loves a big Weiner story.
UPDATE: It is amusing to see that, on the very day that Weiner refuses to deny the authenticy of the bulging-crotch photo, a left-wing blog claims to have proof that Weiner was “framed.”
Caleb Howe at Red State doesn’t much buy into the alleged proof.
Permit me to suggest the possibility that (a) the photo actually is of Weiner’s package, however (b) the photo Tweet to Gennette Cordova actually was sent by someone other than Weiner, and yet (c) that doesn’t mean Weiner hasn’t sent photos of his package to other women.
The story, then, would be about much more than this one Tweet — something I started suspecting Sunday, although I don’t know that I have ever previously said as much here on the blog. This one Tweet to Cordova may have been the work of a hacker, but if the bulging-crotch photo is actually Weiner, it could have been obtained from someone to whom Weiner actually did send it on purpose.
This theory of the incident would explain Weiner’s visibly desperate desire to avoid a law-enforcement investigation, which would require him to answer such questions as, “Have you ever sent such photos to anyone else?” and also might involve a forensic examination of Weiner’s computer and ISP records.
UPDATE II: Ann Coulter seems to be belittling Weiner:
Weiner’s Penis Photo Dispute To Be
Settled In Small Claims Court
(Hat-tip: If You Seek Peace) But I am concerned that, by making teeny-weeny jokes about Weiner’s wiener, Miss Coulter may be creating an impression she does not wish to create. She is an unmarried woman and her derogation of Weiner as diminuitive may cause some to infer that she has extensive experience in . . . well, comparison shopping.
There is a reason, after all, that I have made no comment on the size of Weiner’s alleged bulge. If I’m going to spend four days writing about this subject, it would ill behoove me to appear personally interested in the . . . er, underlying facts of the story.
UPDATE III: Speaking of underlying facts, our friend Bob Belvedere provides several photos of Ginger Lee, the porn star who was (allegedly) exchanging DMs on Twitter with Weiner. I’m reasonably sure Ginger Lee wasn’t impressed with the size of Weiner’s wiener. A quite difficult woman to impress that way, is Ms. Lee.
(Trying not to be judgmental here, OK?)
PREVIOUSLY:
UPDATE 3:50 p.m. ET: Here is a video clip from the interview with NBC’s Luke Russert in which Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) refused to say “with certitude” that the photo of a man’s bulging underwear sent from his Twitter account was not actually his own crotch:
Hat-tip to Ace of Spades who asks:
What? Andrew Breitbart had a picture of his junk? How did Andrew Breitbart get that? What other people does Andrew Breitbart have junk-pictures of?
The sarcasm is kind of thick there.
UPDATE 4:27 p.m. ET: The New York Post:
Denying he ever sent a bawdy crotch photo of himself to a co-ed via his Twitter account, embattled Rep. Anthony Weiner said today he “can’t say with certitude” whether or not he is the person in the picture.
Asked in an interview with MSNBC that aired this afternoon whether he could confirm or deny if the crotch shot was his, Weiner said, “I can’t say with certitude.”
Despite the bizarre claim, Weiner added, “I didn’t send that picture out.” . . .
“We don’t know exactly what happened here,” he said in the interview, repeating what he has said over the past four days. “It was a prank.”
With this admission — and if he’s not denying it, isn’t that the same as admitting it? — Weiner has deepened the mystery, and thereby given new life to the story. Reporters can’t just leave this hanging there, unexplained.
Donald Douglas at American Power calls attention to this ABC News video. Notice how George Stephanopoulos (scarcely a right-winger) featured the WeinerGate story today on Good Morning America:
You see that, as Stephanopoulos says, Weiner is a “high-profile Democrat” whose avowed ambition is to become mayor of New York City — America’s most lucrative media market.
The supply-and-demand incentives for coverage of this story are therefore so strong that, liberal bias or not, the major news networks can’t simply ignore it. In fact, I had the TV in my office tuned to MSNBC for a couple hours today, then turned over to Fox News, and MSNBC actually had more coverage of the story than Fox!
You might say that Weiner is too big for his own good.
UPDATE 7:50 p.m. ET: Now a Memeorandum thread, and thanks to Left Coast Rebel who found a better quality video of the Russert/Weiner interview.
PREVIOUSLY (2:10 p.m. ET): The things you learn watching MSNBC. Just saw clips of Anthony Weiner’s interview with Luke Russert of NBC News, and here is a brief item from Huffington Post:
A day after telling reporters that he’s “not going to talk about this anymore,” Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) broke his silence Wednesday about the controversy surrounding a lewd photo sent from his Twitter account.
“This was a circumstance where someone committed a prank on the internet,” he told MSNBC’s Luke Russert. “I didn’t send [that] picture out” the congressman said, though he does not know who did. Is the photo of him? “I can’t say with certitude” he told Russert.
Weiner told Russert that the pattern of who he follows — a pattern that the New York Post noted today — is “completely random.”
Yeah. Right.
UPDATE: First things first: Let’s just state the obvious, OK? If Weiner will not deny “with certitude” that the now-infamous photo is of his own package, we can safely conclude that it is his package.
But watching the whole interview — and we’ll have the video soon enough — I think I’ve finally developed a theory of the case. If my theory is correct, then there is an obvious reason why Weiner would not want law enforcement agencies to investigate this incident.
Ask yourself this: If that was a photo of Weiner’s package, and yet he was not the one responsible for that Tweet to Gennette Cordova, how did someone else get that photo of Weiner’s package?
Time for members of Congress to demand that law-enforcement agencies investigate this incident.
UPDATE I: You will see that, in the comments below, “Charles Johnson” (who may or may not actually be the Charles Johnson) explains a theory of how Weiner’s YFrog account could have been used by someone else to send that photo.
That theory was first related to me via an e-mail tip over the weekend. I didn’t report it previously, because it wasn’t necessarily relevant. Now that Weiner has point-blank refused to deny the authenticity of the photo, however, it becomes quite relevant.
Also now arguably quite relevant? The fact that Anthony Weiner was exchanging private Twitter direct messages (DMs) with porn star Ginger Lee. I’m not prepared quite yet to explain my whole theory of this scandal — still want to aggregate more news here — but if Weiner was in private communications with women such as Ms. Lee, we might fairly suppose that he also communicated in similar manner with other women.
And here’s the key: What if some of Weiner’s lovely female Twitter “fans” were not actually fans? What if, in fact, they were quite the opposite? Could this explain how a photo of Weiner’s package ended up in the hands of the congressman’s enemies?
It’s a “honey trap,” in other words. Permit me to suggest that there must be at least one more shoe to drop — someone must have a cache of DMs or e-mails in which Weiner communicated privately with a female he presumed to be a fan. The exposure of Weiner may, therefore, only be beginning.
As Ed Driscoll says, “Plenty of Room Left on Fredo’s Boat.”
UPDATE III: Politico and CBS News are now both reporting Weiner’s “can’t say with certitude” interview (hat-tip: Donald Douglas at American Power). There is a crappy video version of the Russert interview at Real Clear Politics, but not yet an embeddable version.
Linked by Nice Deb — thanks!
PREVIOUSLY:
Weiner calls lewd photo
on Twitter a ‘distraction’
— Washington Post
Lawmaker in Twitter Case Assails Reporters
— New York Times
Yesterday’s televised meltdown was, I think, complete vindication for those of us in the online community who spent Memorial Day weekend trying to convince people that #WeinerGate was an honest-to-goodness genuine news story.
It’s not only real, it’s spectacular.
(Bryan Preston: “So, yeah, this story has gone mainstream.”)
A question I asked on Twitter last night: Does anyone still believe that Anthony Weiner was the innocent victim of hackers? Anyone?
Ace of Spades last night delivered a seminar to the “reality-based community” about the behavioral clues that made him so intensely suspicious of Weiner’s reaction to this alleged act of online identity theft:
I love how we’re all wingnutz because we’ve been out of the house enough to know how human beings behave. Like if they’re seriously victimized in a malicious crime, they tend to get rather angry. They don’t toss off casual jokes about it and try to change the subject right away. . . .
You should read the whole thing, because what else is the difference between conservatives and liberals, except our different understandings of human nature? Conservatism fundamentally involves a belief in the tragic permanence — the fixed and flawed quality — of the human condition. It is irremediable. There is nothing new under the sun, and people will tend to react certain ways under certain conditions.
Whereas, every day is a new day for liberals, who are always so surprised when an allegedly selfless humanitarian seeker of social justice turns out to be as flawed and corrupt as those mere mortals whom he professes himself capable of redeeming through his heaven-on-earth schemes.
What matters to the liberal is that he has good intentions. The conservative smiles at this, and asks the liberal if he knows where that road paved with good intentions proverbially leads.
OK, sermon over. If I’d wanted to be a moral philosopher, I’d have gone to grad school. Instead, I’ve spent the past 25 years in the news business and you know what? Experience matters. Continue reading #WeinerGate: Where the Story Goes Next →
Why is Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) ready to “move on” now?
Some statements are either true or false. Expressing things in simple declarative sentences helps clarify meaning, so that we can either agree or disagree as to the truth or falsehood of such statements. Here are three examples:
SENTENCE 1
On Nov. 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.
SENTENCE 2
On Sept. 11, 2001, nineteen Islamic radicals perpetrated the worst act of terrorism in U.S. history.
SENTENCE 3
On May 27, 2011, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) used his Twitter account to send a photo of his bulging crotch to a 21-year-old college coed from Seattle he had never met.
There are people who doubt Sentence 1 and/or Sentence 2, but most who have studied those incidents have concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin in Dallas, and that Mohammed Atta & Co. were responsible for 9/11. We now turn our attention to Sentence 3.
Do we know that Sentence 3 is true? No.
Do we know that Sentence 3 is false? Again, no.
What we have are (a) the uncontested fact that, on Friday, Weiner’s Twitter account was used to send a YFrog link of the aforesaid bulging crotch photo, and (b) the statements of Weiner and his spokesman that the congressman was the victim of “hackers,” an accusation of criminality subsequently softened to “prank.”
We do not need to choose between these alternatives in order to conclude that it is a worth the effort required to determine the truth or falsehood of Sentence 3. Continue reading The Power of Simple Sentences →
If you want a perfect example of how the Left pushes for more liberal press coverage, this is it: Eric Alterman accuses new-minted New York Times columnist Frank Bruni of being too soft on Bush.
It is not good enough for Alterman that Bruni is, and always has been, a reliably liberal member of the press corps. No, in Alterman’s universe, the job of reporters is to act as partisan attack dogs against Republicans. And so if Frank Bruni doesn’t fulfill that Alterman-approved role, he will be treated as the enemy.
There is something vaguely totalitarian in this attitude, and I think it is not an accident that the target of Alterman’s bullying is The First Gay Columnist in the Whole Dadgum History of the New York Times™.
But mainly for calling Laura Ingraham a “slut”:
STATEMENT FROM MSNBC REGARDING ED SCHULTZ:
MSNBC management met with Ed Schultz this afternoon and accepted his offer to take one week of unpaid leave for the remarks he made yesterday on his radio program. Ed will address these remarks on his show tonight, and immediately following begin his leave. Remarks of this nature are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.
(Via Memeorandum.) Apparently, Ed’s remark today exceeded even the dubious standards at MSNBC that permitted Schultz to say this:
“Republicans are attacking the Commander-in-Chief during a time of war! . . . There should be no debate: we ought to be kicking [Moammar Qaddafi’s] ass . . . Whose side are you on? Are you with the terrorists, Sarah [Palin], or are you with the President of the United States? . . . And I have to ask the question tonight: Where is the patriotism from all of these war-hawks? Where’s the patriotism of the Republican Party?”
And also this:
“The Republicans lie! They want to see you dead! They’d rather make money off your dead corpse! They kind of like it when that woman has cancer and they don’t have anything for her.”
To repeat what I said before: “Ed Schultz reminds me of every mean drunk I ever knew.”
He is an unattractive personality who is unlikely to endure on TV even in the fetid swamp of deranged partisan hatred that is MSNBC.
More from The Lonely Conservative, NewsBusters, Weasel Zippers, My Pet Jawa, Ace of Spades HQ and Hot Air.
UPDATE: Here is the on-air apology Ed made tonight:
“I want to apologize to Laura Ingraham. I want to apologize to my family, my wife. I have embarrassed my family. I have embarrassed this company. And I have been in this business since 1978, and I have made a lot of mistakes. This is the lowest of low for me. . . .”
The lowest of the low so far, you mean. When your contract runs out and MSNBC dumps you like a sack of stale garbage, then you might get to the lowest of the low: Standing by an expressway off-ramp, holding up a sign: “WILL HATE FOR FOOD.”