Get a grip. 
I don’t really care about Anthony Weiner one way or the other, but I read the Big Government hit piece yesterday and it pissed me off. (I won’t link that sewer. You’ll have to use your Google-fu.) Then I read this and it pissed me off further.
What is with Breitbart and co.’s seemingly pathological need to target women? First that “It’s not like I was going to rape her or anything” incident in which Breitbart’s crony and protege, James O’Keefe planned to lure CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau onto a boat “filled with sexually explicit props and then record the session.” (And yes, I know that Breitbart took to his fainting couch and called O’Keefe gross and offensive for that unsuccessful scheme, and no, I don’t believe he was uninvolved).
And now the “outing” of a young woman in Seattle for political sport? This is beyond the pale:
As details slowly unfold in the Memorial Day saga of Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D-NY) social media accounts, which he says were hacked to allow the distribution of a lewd photo via Twitter, the surplus of speculation has been exceeded only by a shortage of firsthand information. Rep. Weiner’s office has trickled out some information, but now, for the first time, the alleged intended recipient of the picture, Gennette Nicole Cordova, is speaking out exclusively, in a lengthy statement to The NY Daily News.
Since the story broke, a pile of circumstantial evidence and rampant speculation,throughout the blogosphere, have all but decimated the presumption of innocence due the Congressman, while details that could be exculpatory have been largely ignored or dismissed.
Some conservative blogs, which I will not link to, have taken to dissecting the tweets of underage girls who followed Rep. Weiner, without redacting their user information (as we did), and without mentioning that these girls were being harassed by the Twitter user who first, and last, noticed Weiner’s tweet in real time. These girls deserve to be left alone, not drawn into a controversy in which they are not even direct parties.
These sorts of Internet goons should be relegated to the digital landfill where porn spam and fake Viagra ads reside. They are sick twisted fucks; sitting behind their monitors, targeting, and harassing women for their own sick pleasure, yet feigning outrage when they themselves feel under attack. Breitbart is a classic case of this sort of behavior. These people have deluded themselves into believing that their behavior is either for some greater good, or justified because “it’s just the internet! GOSH!” Thus they think it appropriate to harass, name-call, leak private information, and otherwise bully their targets. Yet without fail, these goons complain when they are called out for what they are: cowards.
“It’s just the Internet” is not an excuse anymore. It’s not just ghosts in the machine; it’s real people sitting in front of the machine, wondering what the hell is wrong with the other people sitting in front of their machines.
It’s real people like Gennette Nicole Cordova who are being attacked in real life by unknown (m)asses on the Internet.
Yutsano
Breitbart and O’Keefe are closet case homosexuals. I firmly believe this. But because they have aligned with the conservative tribe they choose to target women in order to keep themselves firmly entrenched in their closets so they can continue to exploit conservative bank accounts. I have yet to see any other evidence that this is the case.
Suffern ACE
I guess she’s now the “alleged mistress” in some quarters. I think it’s perfectly fair to posit that Breitburt was a co-conspirator with the fuckwit pimp liar. Despite his denial, he is an alleged fuckwit. Funny, the more he denies being a fuckwit, the more the charges pile up.
decoder
I don’t know anything about the law, but I hope someone can sue Brietbart for slander – I guess it can’t be Weiner because he’s a politician? Amazing that this sewer operation continues. . .
Spaghetti Lee
@Yutsano:
Nothing personal, but can I just say I reeeeeally dislike this tendency to describe all conservative creeps as “I bet they’re secretly gay and their secret gayness causes all sorts of cognitive dissonance and that’s why they’re such creeps?” I think it does the advancement of gay rights, and most specifically and most importantly making being gay a normal thing and helping closeted people to come out, a big disservice to implicitly tie it to this sorts of behavior.
Gay or straight, they’re both irredeemable assholes.
Hann1bal
@Yutsano: I’d really rather go with “they’re huge assholes”, without dragging orientation into this.
p
I had to share this somewhere.. repugnant RW blog
“Finally, it must be said that whoever posted the photo on Rep. Weiner’s account found a skinny white guy that looks remarkably like Rep. Weiner might look in his skivvies.”
If you’ve seen the picture you know this characterization of it is nuts.
The entire post is an attempt to mimic even-handedness and objectivity while presenting an entirely one-sided partisan account, basic MO for right-wing propaganda bubble. That particular sentence is just stunning.
piratedan
nice timeline breakdown over @ GOS
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/29/980400/-Breitbarts-#TwitterHoaxHow-It-Went-Down-%28updated-wsmoking-gun%29?via=siderec
looks like the same old, same old… I find it tremendously strange that ANYONE would refuse to give Weiner the benefit of doubt considering WHO is accusing him and considering that he is now calling SCOTUSJ Thomas to account for the actions of his spouse in the political arena. Coinkidink this ain’t.
Allan
Don’t you go claiming that rumpled, disheveled, slovenly mess for our team!
You’re thinking of Rick Warren.
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
Nah, they’re not secretly gay. Sadly, when you’re a straight women, you run into these kinds of assholes all the time: the ones who are simultaneously terrified of women and contemptuous of them as lesser creatures who are barely worth the trouble of fucking. These are the kind of guys who spend a lot of money on prostitutes because actually forming a mutual relationship with a woman is impossible for them.
These are the “bros before hos” types who insist that it’s “gay” for a guy to spend time with his girlfriend rather than spending all of his time with them drinking until they puke and making pathetic attempts to “neg” women into sleeping with them.
Spaghetti Lee
@piratedan:
That’s a good link right there.
@Mnemosyne:
Wasn’t there a Simpsons quote along that line? “Dude, you kissed a girl? That’s so…gay.”
Yutsano
@Spaghetti Lee: @Hann1bal: Being gay doesn’t rule them out from being assholes, at least not in my mind. But going to this…
@Mnemosyne: Breitbart is married but attempts to be at home as little as possible and almost never acknowledges he has a family. O’Keefe AFAIK has never had anything resembling a real relationship with a woman. It could be my perspective vs yours, but I see closet case whereas you see typical fratboy dickwad.
Allan
I see Tbogg has weighed in as well. Heh.
ETA: What? The P word triggers moderation even in the destination URL? FYWP.
Spaghetti Lee
@Yutsano:
Oh sure, it doesn’t disqualify them from being assholes. Take Ken Mehlman or Dan Blatt for instance. But I do see this all over the place, on Tbogg and Sadly and all the other humor blogs. It just seems like “closet case taking out his sexual confusion on others” should be the go-to insult for people who want gay people to gain more acceptance, should it?
Allan
Also too, Breitbart retweets every homophobic insult directed at him as proof that Liberals are the Real Haters. As I counseled people on the Twitter machine last evening:
Breitbart was so grateful for my support that he RTed it within 15 seconds of posting. And I was swarmed by literally five of his devoted fans almost immediately.
Mnemosyne
@Yutsano:
I’m not at all shocked that someone who has as much visible contempt for women as O’Keefe does hasn’t been able to sustain a relationship with one. I know that misogyny is not confined to straight men and that some gay men hate and fear women, but I think it’s much more common among straight men, unfortunately.
I think you’re correctly diagnosing the problem but mistaking the cause.
ETA: Let me put it this way — gay men don’t usually hate themselves for wanting to fuck women even though they hold women in contempt.
Spaghetti Lee
@Spaghetti Lee:
shouldn’t be the go-to insult, that is.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@decoder:
Politician or not, there were plenty of laws broken if they hacked his account- felonies, at that. And I think that he’d still have a defamation of character case if they indeed posed as him on his own account, rather than getting some fake-ass Anthony Weiner tweet handle and explaining it all away as satire.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: I get your point, maybe I’m just seeing things from my perspective and it’s leading me to a particular conclusion that could be incorrect. I just see a pattern of behavior that is all too familiar, like what Allan referenced above.
@Spaghetti Lee: I don’t mean it as an insult FWIW. That would be insulting myself in the process. :) I just see a pattern of him trying to subsume…something. It leads me to a certain conclusion.
Spaghetti Lee
@Allan:
Breitbart was so grateful for my support that he RTed it within 15 seconds of posting.
Jesus, does that guy do anything other than tweet all day long? Has he gathered so many minions that doesn’t have to put on the pimp hat and secret camera himself anymore?
brad
Cordova seems to be capable of handling this, to her credit. Her statement is strong, and, fwiw, she tweeted back to me playfully when I tweeted to the weinergate hashtag that Dana Loesch is my gf and sends me pics of her getting wide-ons, which by tcot logic makes it true. I get the sense the Breitbart flying monkeys are going to end up backing off her quick and trying to focus on Weiner.
I don’t know if Breitbart is gay, he almost seems too consumed by anger to have a sexual identity. But if he is, he clearly prefers black men. O’Keefe… sorry to indulge in a lazy stereotype, but he just doesn’t seem well groomed or fabulous enough. He reminds me of people I was subjected to in boarding school, the guiding principle is a sense of entitlement. Women are just props to enhance his stature, he just doesn’t seem… deep enough to be a closet case to me.
Origuy
As a straight man, I agree with Mnemosyne that there are a lot of heterosexual men who don’t really like women as people. Just listen to the conversations in any men’s room of a strip club, or dance club for that matter. There’ll be some guy calling the girl he was just outside sweettalking, a bitch or a whore.
I can’t believe anyone is giving Breitbart’s claims a second thought. Anyone, that is, who thought they’d be around on May 22.
Spaghetti Lee
Given the incompetence of the whole affair (according to the Kos link, it was instigated by some random teabagger who had been stalking Cordova on twitter or something, and then the Breitbart crew got on board) I’d say it probably wasn’t because Weiner was looking into Clarance Thomas’ finances.
drunken hausfrau
Can’t anyone on our side of the blogosphere (aka, reality) “OUT” the harassing teabagger known as “patriot76” (the guy with the Reagan fetish photo as his avatar)? Why only the innocent women and congressman get their names splashed all over the place?
And, yes, I believe the women involved can sue for defamation — they are NOT public personalities.
Joey Maloney
Unfortunately, due to the bizarre Supreme Court decision around the late Richard Jewell’s defamation suit, that may not be true. If inflammatory defamatory statements about you are disseminated widely enough – congratulations, you’re a public figure now. Catch-22.
Jewell sued the newspapers for accusing him of being the Olympics bomber. The court ruled that the wide publicity those accusations received from the newspapers made Jewell a public figure.
drunken hausfrau
Well, that sucks.
But, the “coed” in question does mention that she has been stalked and harassed for weeks… don’t we have cyberstalking laws?
Also, the kid who hacked Caribou Barbie got sent to jail… so, if the congressman’s account was hacked… ??? just wondering.
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne:
Jules Feiffer had one of his cartoon nebbishes provide the best safe-for-work explanation of this tragically common phenomenon:
Southern Beale
Meanwhile, a former ACORN employee has sued and a federal judge has refused to dismiss the suit. You know, there IS legal recourse here.
debbie
@ Yutsano:
They’re not closeted so much as pissed off they can’t get what they think they deserve.
These kind of “antics” remind me more of Beavis and Butthead more than anyone else.
aimai
@Yutsano:
Why do you think that? Their hostility towards women is straight up machismo, as far as I can see. Women are objects in their world, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to fuck them. Breitbart strikes me as very un-homosexual. O’Keefe’s sexuality is more up for grabs, as it were, but I’d put my money on rat fucking as his preferred formof sex.
aimai
Southern Beale
One of the funniest things about Wienergate is that the smear was that he was sending photos of his junk to an underage high school girl. And in fact, the girl who was mentioned in this whole sordid affair is not underage, she’s 21 and a college student.
So they didn’t even get the smear right. FAIL.
Southern Beale
Fun with photoshop: Breitbart gets a taste of his own medicine.
JM
@Spaghetti Lee: It’s not the gayness, but the closetness. Do you think J. Edgar Hoover would have been such a pernicious little shit if he hadn’t hated himself, because of the homophobic culture that produced him?
Self-hatred makes for good little footsoldiers for the fascist cause.
El Cid
__
What an unfair charge against Breitbart.
It’s as though his achievements in race-baiting against blacks were completely not worthy of consideration.
Countme In
Place a photo of O’Keefe next to twin brother Timothy McVeigh.
Same guy, different fertilizer.
John
Take it as a fucking compliment to Rep Weiner!!
Jesus Christ. It’s the real proof that Weiner has arrived as a bastion of the left. Let’s be happy that one of our heroes is now considered powerful enough to need a right-wing hit.
Bullsmith
The ongoing perversion of “free speech” is astounding to watch. Lie and slander innocent folks, no problem, just so long as you don’t show a picture of the NYSE. Cause that would be stealing.
Alex S.
@Southern Beale:
That makes it more likely to me that the ‘allegations’ are true, not fabricated. But on the other hand, it also means that this is not the scandal they would like it to be.
About Breitbart’s and O’Keefe’s witchhunt against women, that’s something we can see in the whole conservative movement, not just with those two.
Southern Beale
@Bullsmith:
Or say something truthful about a conservative. Then they’re oppressssssed!
Southern Beale
@Alex S.:
Oh bullshit. It just makes it more likely that some people trolling Twitter accounts looking to smear people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.
Judas Escargot
Once again, wish I was a bored millionaire. $5000 cash reward to the first person who delivers “compromising material” against either Breitbart or O’Keefe.
We should take up a collection :P
Pancake
LOL
You go girl!
Joel
@Southern Beale: It’s too bad there aren’t any criminal charges involved. I’d love to see those scumbags do time.
Fred
Speaking of feining outrage when under attack and all. Do you feel that allowing yourself to get sucked into the Briebart cesspool of manufactured nontroversy vortex is helping or hurting people like Weiner and these poor girls you seem so concerned about?
Pongo
Breitbart et al are not the problem here. Juvenile, bullying assholes have always existed and always will. The problem is a media environment that insists, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, that his is an alternative form of ‘journalism’ that deserves equal consideration. Breitbart has been legitimized by the MSM and by liberal media outlets that cover every piece of slime that oozes from his pages. Bill Maher has him as a guest on his show from time to time. Why? What possible contribution to any sort of meaningful discourse can come from a man who is a demonstrated liar, bigot and misogynist? As soon as we all stop pretending Breitbart and his organization have something valid to say, he’ll be relegated to the obscurity he so richly deserves.
gbear
@Joel: O’Keefe is still on probation. I hope he’s got his fingerprints on this.
artem1s
as I recall the Congressman played point man in the last go round on repealing the Bush tax cuts for the rich. he has probably been ready to step up the fight again in the vote to raise the debt ceiling. If the GOP is going to hold Medicaid hostage it would be ludicrous to think that the Dems wouldn’t use tax raises as a negotiating tool. could be this is a preemptive strike to negate his creds. so we probably should care about Anthony Weiner.
sorry for the lack of link on his speech on the house floor RE: Bush tax cuts. just couldn’t find a working link and got to get to a BBQ.
Judas Escargot
@debbie:
Beavis & Butthead were stupid– huh huh heh heh heh huh… he said ‘weiner’ –but they were never this mean-spirited.
Bruuuuce
@Mnemosyne:
I guess you haven’t been reading 9 Chickweed Lane for the past month or so. (The ongoing storyline is about one of the lead characters, a male ballet dancer, who winds up in bed with a colleague because her dancing overwhelms him, and then treats her badly because he’s not willing to face having gone to bed with a woman in the face of his steadfastly gay self-identity.) (This is NOT as boring as I make it sound. 9CL is one of the best comics out there; go read it!)
Xecky Gilchrist
@Hann1bal: I’d really rather go with “they’re huge assholes”, without dragging orientation into this.
Likewise. I think the closet-case speculation is motivated mostly by wanting to piss Dimbart et al. off even more, which can be amusing but isn’t necessary. I’m not sure those loonies can get angrier, but with the example of Peak Wingnut in mind I won’t claim it for sure.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
Damn skippy, man.
My sixth grader knows this already – hell, my second grader knows this already. One wonders why it’s so hard for actual adults to grasp the truth?
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@Bruuuuce: I… love 9 Chickweed Lane.
Well, I like it. He takes too long to tell his stories sometimes, and I could do without one more lovingly rendered version of his main character in a slinky dress (I wonder who she represents to the artist sometims…!), but yeah. 9 Chickweed Lane. Whoot!
Larime the Gimp
@Fred: Oh seriously, go fuck yourself. Now you’re concern-trolling people who speak out in defense of victims of bullying? Your game is getting weak.
shortstop
@Countme In: I love what you did there.
Sixers
Is this Weiner gate worse than when some people were holding politicians personally responsible minutes after the Gifford shooting when it turned out he was just plain nuts? Glass houses, yo.
Joey Maloney
@Southern Beale: It’s the Love Ewe!!!
I actually have one of those. Guaranteed to break the ice at parties.
I have issues with Baltimore
Anyone remember Sherrod v Breitbart? It’s still going on, and Sherrod’s lawyers have been eviscerating Breitbart:
https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov
case #1:11−cv−00477−RJL
I’ve been following it on Pacer, which I highly recommend folks sign up for. This Friday some junk is due from Breitbart’s side. I’m really hoping Sherrod wins big big big on this, not just because it’s Just, but also so the message is sent to everyone that they can be held accountable for the shit that comes out of their mouth. She needs to get *millions* from this guy.
Allan
@Sixers: Your analogy is confusing to me, so bear with me while I try to flesh it out and see if it holds water.
Jared Loughner shooting a Congresswoman in the head and murdering multiple victims, including a 9 year old child, is like Andrew Breitbart running with a badly sourced and suspect story about Anthony Weiner sexting a young black woman how, exactly?
Is Breitbart Loughner? And Weiner is Gabby Giffords? And the young black woman caught in the “crossfire” is little Christina Green?
So far, this analogy isn’t turning out so well for the right-wing team, is it?
OK, so continuing on, when people see the Breitbart smear story and say that Breitbart can’t be trusted because he’s known to be a smear-merchant and a selective editor of the truth, it’s just like people saying that Loughner may have been inspired by the hateful rhetoric of right-wingers against liberals and/or Sarah Palin’s map putting a gun-sight on Gabby Gifford’s district?
Gee, this analogy still isn’t playing out to well for your team, Sixers. Want to come up with a better one?
Sixers
@Allan:
It was a reference to ABL laying blame at the feet of multiple people over the Gifford shooting minutes after it happened with no facts at hand. Turns out Loughner is crazy as hell and its probably nobodies fault but I still haven’t seen a retraction from ABL. I kind of think accusing someone of being an accessory to murder is a big deal. Its ok you didn’t understand my post. I’m sorry you wasted so much time on a rebuttal that was meaningless.
ABL
@Fred: DAMMIT. it wasn’t supposed to be you first.
you just cost me fake money, pal.
@Sixers: so in this little analogy, sarah palin is the young woman in seattle and i’m andrew breitbart? is that it? fuckin’ analogies. how do they work?!
ABL
@El Cid: hahahahaha. well-played.
ABL
@I have issues with Baltimore: awesome. thanks for the link. now i have to find my PACER acct info…
Allan
@Sixers:
It took me seconds to compose, but thanks for your concern
troll.Mnemosyne
@Sixers:
Good thing crazy people are never influenced by politics. Nope, they act completely in a vacuum and are in no way influenced by what’s going on around them.
debbie
@ Sixers:
He wasn’t living in a vacuum. He very likely heard some of the rabid demonizing that is the Right’s M.O. and took his own actions.
Donald Douglas
More: ‘#Weinergate! — Rep. Anthony Weiner Retains Legal Counsel!’.
Yutsano
@Donald Douglas: If you have a point, say it. Otherwise linking to lying right-wing blogs does nothing for your credibility.
Allan
@Donald Douglas: We don’t get enough neo-Nazi scumbags pimping their shit-stained blogs around here. Thanks for dropping by and pinching one off.
fasteddie9318
Whoa, Donalde Douglas dropped by to pimp a story at his
WhiteAmerican Power website! What did we do to deserve this honor?Yutsano
@fasteddie9318: Durn kids left the back gate open again. Now I’ll be up all night shooing critters off the porch.
Lee
One of these days these internet trolls is going to mess with the wrong kid and be at end of beating by a pissed off father.
Marc
Poor widdle wingnuts. Even Fox News isn’t talking about this on their webpage.
Green Eagle
Weiner, apparently, was not hacked.
It now appears that the picture in question was neither sent from Weiner’s address, nor was it ever received by the woman in question.
This was a forgery pure and simple. Of course, it will be treated by the press as a “prank,” hardly justifying banning Breitbart from Fox, CNN et. al.
Bender
I hope you all look back on this thread and realize what credulous fools you are. No traction! No one’s talking about it! Obvious forgery! Two days later and it’s on every network and Weiner is committing political-suicide-by-inept-press-conference.
Heh.