Not Even The Times Can Avoid a Dick Pun

We’ll all need a sweet smoke after this climax.

Eh, good riddance to that fucking moron.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: A heckler at the press conference yelled “bye-bye, pervert.” That’s what you get for having it in Brooklyn.

Over at TPM, Josh still doesn’t get it:

What stands out to me about all this aren’t Weiner’s juvenile and mortifying ‘offenses,’ but the bizarre and almost inexplicable and unprecedented calls for his resignation.

Two points:

1. If Weiner had immediately fessed up instead of making a very big show of lying the first week, he might have more defenders. As it is, he undermined a lot of people inclined to support him.

2. I don’t think folks at TPM and elsewhere understand the scale of this. It’s not just hypocritical Republicans calling for Weiner’s resignation — he’s been the go-to punchline for late-night comedians, and as we saw with the baseball-team promotion and elsewhere, Weiner has become a pop-culture joke.

Okay, three points:

3. Weiner’s expendable. Bubba wasn’t. It’s terribly unfair, but that’s politics.

@nojo: A guy who is Tweeting dick pics to women he doesn’t know doesn’t have much of a call on fairness, IMHO.

I’m almost scared to ask if there’s a straight version of Grindr or Manhunt.

@Mistress Cynica: It was the same guy from the Howard Stern show who asked a size question at Weiner’s last presser. Which brings me back to the “fucking moron” thesis. The first thing you do is make sure that guy doesn’t get within 500 ft of you ever again.

@nojo: Regarding point three: I read somewhere he’d never sponsored a successful piece of legislation. Don’t know if that’s true, but if so … yeah, too little worth to put up with his shit.

i think he’s a huge loss.

@¡Andrew!: It’s called Manhattan.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: From what I’ve read, Weiner was a more photogenic Alan Grayson. No practical value, but Gave Good Soundbite.

And he wasn’t above ugly pandering. During the Not-Ground Zero Not-Mosque debacle, Weiner took the side of the bigots. His original campaign some twenty years ago wasn’t pretty, either.

Simply put, Weiner wanted to be NYC mayor, but Bloomberg’s Mayor-for-Life move cramped his ambition.

@Benedick HRH KFC: I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but in one of my favorite movie lines ever, this guy is getting hasselled by these dudes yelling “they aughtta put all you queers on an island!” and he responds “they did, it’s called Manhattan.”

I still say it was a set-up. Who will Breitbart go after next?

The press conference was disgraceful. He handled himself well.

@Benedick HRH KFC: No set-up. Weiner tweeted his dick. Case closed.

Of course, the dude who discovered the Dick Tweet before Weiner zapped it had been closely monitoring his Twitter feed for months. And even if Weiner had sent the tweet as a private message as intended, the photo would have still turned up in the public yfrog feed, waiting to be discovered.

Weiner failed a basic test of digital discretion, especially for somebody who relished being a wingnut lightning rod. And Breitbart got lucky — this smear happened to be true. Broken clock, and all that.

@nojo: You’ve never been propositioned in an airport toilet, have you? Yes, you whipped out your wanger but only because you was asked by the hot hunky guy in the next stall. I thought that Republicant with the wide stance was entrapped and I think Weiner was too. One of the chippies he emailed cashed in and led him on.

I’m not saying he behaved well only that he will be missed. Like Spitzer, Dean and Grayson.

@Benedick HRH KFC: Wrong direction. As far as we know, Weiner dick-tweeted the college student unsolicited. It wasn’t a police sting, and the student wasn’t angling for notoriety.

And as far as we know, the Vegas Hottie wasn’t playing him for cash prizes either, even if Gloria Allred has now stepped in.

And then there was another damsel whose friend snitched on her.

I know what you’re suggesting, and I don’t see it happening here.

@Benedick HRH KFC: I really thought Howard Dean could have beaten w the shoe dodger by a big enough margin to overcome w cheating in 2004. His performance as head off the DNC later proved that. I still don’t understand why the democrats caved on him. Remember Gary Hart? He had a chance believe it or not, to beat reagan in 1984 and certainly would have beat hw in 1988 had he not got caught fucking around. The initial fucking around didn’t even doom him, it was daring the press to catch him fucking around….again, which they always will and did even without the internet, twittering, tweeting and all that other bullshit. Imagine that, Hart in 84 and 88 cheating so bad all the while that slick willies indiscretions wouldn’t even matter. That of course means no w the shoe dodger as president leading to no need for Howard Dean. uh oh, look what happens when you go changing the past.

@¡Andrew!:

The Free Market Prevails!!!!

@jwmcsame: The problem with the Dean campaign was that all the hacks lined up behind Kerry and we didn’t stand a chance. Hacks and conservative/national security Dems went for Kerry (42 pct) and Clark (20 pct). Also, at least here in New Mexico, Dean had no traction outside of urban liberal enclaves in parts of Albuquerque, Santa Fe (of course) and up in Taos, but we had a good ground game, some resources, and a command of the emerging social media. (MoveOn took their idea of webz planned meetups, which we stole for stinqueups.). At 16 pct, we did better than Prison Boy (11), Denny the K (5) and Leibermann (2).

I recall being at a bar with some other fellow travelers (was super involved back then, on the National Native American Advisory Team, a state campaign wheel and got to introduce him here at a pre-caucus event) to watch the Iowa results come in. After the Scream, we tried to spin it positively to ourselves, but we knew that our work was just going to get harder then.

@Benedick HRH KFC: I wonder if Nancy Pelosi sent pictures of the kitty to anyone…

I sometimes think the biggest problem the Democrats have is Democrats.

@Tommmcatt Be Fat, And That Be That: I don’t want to think about that.

Elizabeth R: How much fact? I’m digging this series.

@Dodgerblue: You think I want to? But I just did.

And now I just did again, dammit.

@Tommmcatt Be Fat, And That Be That: You just lost The Game.

@JNOV knows Sport: So did you.

Anyway, when did the game extend to involve Nancy Pelosi’s vagina?

@JNOV knows Sport: None.

@Benedick HRH KFC: There is no target. All Democrats are monitored all the time by one front outfit or another. Weiner’s Twitter account was monitored by automated software used by a contractor who is likely on a retainer to retrieve, scan and report out on ALL Democrats in Congress’ Twitter accounts. There is likely a small army of private investigators’ running database checks regularly for things like Registry of Deeds’ filings, discharges, arrests reports, Democratic Congressmens’ cellphone billing statements (to scan numbers called against known numbers of escort agencies, etc.) It’s a 24.7 machine, well funded and tireless.

@FlyingChainSaw: There’s also TweetCongress, which keeps a running database, and was used to independently confirm that the tweet was indeed sent from Weiner’s account.

But the dude who discovered the original tweet did it manually. He was just an obsessed anti-Weiner wingnut.

@nojo: Ah, yeah, with a direct channel to this Brietbart guy.

@FlyingChainSaw: If by “direct channel” you mean “late-night email to a public address”, then yes. Breitbart himself didn’t even post the first couple of stories at Big Government.

Breitbart didn’t seek this story. It was dumped in his lap.

Where did he post them?

@FlyingChainSaw: Breitbart’s Big sites are a major operation, with many bloggers. The dude who was obsessively monitoring Weiner’s account emailed the goods to Big Government, where a subblogger originally posted them — in a surprisingly circumspect manner, stating that while they appeared on Weiner’s Twitter feed, it wasn’t certain that Weiner was responsible.

Back to Benedick’s point: No sting. No setup. No conspiracy. Breitbart was handed this one gift-wrapped.

@Tommmcatt Be Fat, And That Be That: Heh.

@Benedick HRH KFC: Bummer. I’d watch it for the wardrobe alone. I keep hoping to spot you in it.

@JNOV knows Sport: You mean the one with Glenda Jackson?

@nojo: Not one directly funded by the RNC, but do you really think the freelancer was looking for pleasant things to communicate about Tumescent Tony? Or would have had the opportunity had not the psychoconservative noise plexus been ready and waiting to take the story and globalize it?

@FlyingChainSaw: To the first point, yes, he was obsessively monitoring Weiner’s twitter account for dirt, and he was part of an informal crew that harrassed the women whom Weiner followed.

And to the second point, yes, there are plenty of dirtblogs eager to publish the dirt he found. They don’t call it the Noise Machine for nothing.

But this wasn’t, say, O’Keefe setting up a victim through badgering and misleading editing. It wasn’t even the equivalent of somebody breaking into Paris Hilton’s Sidekick. Nobody baited Weiner. He handed them the goods on a platter.

@nojo: Exactly. Anyone who goes on the attack against the GOP/Teabag machine should expect to have their every breath monitored by the fascist minions. Weiner was a moron for engaging in risky–and, to make matters worse, skeevy–behavior. But the dumbest thing of all was lying when he got caught. Had he fessed up immediately, I think his colleagues would be more willing to stand by him, and there was at least a chance that he could have held onto his office. Everyone has done stupid things. It was the stupidity followed by the lying and betrayal of trust that made everyone turn on him.

@Mistress Cynica: Plus his name is Weiner. He deserved everything he got.

@Benedick HRH KFC: YES!