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.
WeinerGate: Weiners and Assholes on the IntertronsPost + Comments (73)