You would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh over this one. So Our Amanda comes out in The Guardian telling us all that Anthony Weiner just didn\’t send pics of his (covered but excited) genitals to various women, oh no, this is just the righties manufacturing a scandal about good little lefties.
Extreme scepticism that Weiner is anything but the victim of a political hit job is more than warranted in this case, and not just because of the lack of evidence or the fact that this is being heavily promoted by Andrew Breitbart, who has a long history of disseminating falsified evidence to support his claims (see the Shirley Sherrod affair etc). Nor should you be sceptical only because of the timing of this story – remarkable, if true, that this should happen right after another New York congressman resigns from office after sending an inappropriate picture to a woman online, only to see the Republicans lose his seat to a Democrat in the special election to replace him. Nor should you be sceptical only because the photo in question so crassly lends itself to puerile \”weiner\” jokes at the congressman\’s expense.
No, we should be sceptical of this story chiefly because it fits a larger pattern of rightwing culture warriors ganging up and sexually harassing random young women after floating facetious insinuations about improper relationships between these women and Democratic politicians.
Blame Monica Lewinsky. Or, more specifically, blame rightwing nostalgia for the year of Monica Lewinsky, when conservatives were able to openly indulge their hatred of a popular Democratic politician, their prurience and their love of smacking down young women who devote their energies to pursuits other than being good Christian housewives. The days of Monica Lewinsky were a heady time indeed for the right; ever since then, they\’ve been trying to recapture the magic. In the process, they\’ve built up a long list of deplorable vilifications of innocent young women and their friends and family, usually for no other reason than said young women look how conservatives imagine the next Monica Lewinsky will.
Now let us fast forward a week, an entire 7 days:
His admission came hours after new topless photographs that he emailed Meagan Broussard, a 26-year-old single mother from Texas, were published by Big Government, a conservative website.
They cast fatal doubt over Mr Weiner\’s unlikely claim that a picture of a man\’s crotch, which was sent to another young woman in Seattle from his Twitter account last week, was sent by hackers.
Mr Weiner\’s explanation raised eyebrows when he could not say \”with certitude\” that the crotch was not his, but continued to insist that he had not sent the picture.
He admitted last night that he meant to send it privately but inadvertently made it publicly viewable. \”I panicked, I took it down and said that I had been hacked,\” he said.
He also confirmed a claim by the website that he had also sent an \”X-rated\” photo of his body to Miss Broussard. \”This was me doing a dumb thing, doing it repeatedly and then lying about it,\” he said.
Earlier in the day, a third woman – who remains unnamed – gave radaronline, another website, a selection of sexually explicit Facebook messages she claimed were sent to her by Mr Weiner.
Well done Ms. Marcotte!
Add this to her defence of John Edwards and her insistence that the Duke lacrosse players were obviously, clearly, guilty of rape and…..well, let\’s just say that Amanda is good evidence for the contention that the problem with feminism is some of the self-declared feminists.
What truly ads to the amusement is that four years back, Huma Abedin, Congressman Weiner\’s now wife, was rumoured to be Hillary\’s lesbian lover, the great sex scandal that would kill her presidential run. That probably was a piece of political manouvering, not something based in any form of reality. Although who was doing the leaking, well, in 2007, during the Democratic primaries, who would have benefitted most from Hillary leaving the race?
Strangely, probably not any of the Republicans……