Weinergate and the unfortunate erection of Andrew Breitbart

So Anthony Weiner has a hobby.



Is this the first political sex scandal of the internet era? Perhaps it is the first virtual political sex scandal, where no sex was had and only pics were exchanged (a/s/l?) and even the participants are unsure of who each other is. (The most uncomfortable moment in what was already a ridiculously uncomfortable press conference was when Weiner admitted that he could not know for sure that the women he interacted with were of age.)

What a bizarre sideshow. The media asked their usual penetrating questions. Was he wearing boxers or briefs? (To be fair, this was crowd chit-chat prior to Weiner's remarks.) Are you a sex addict? (Someone please punch that guy.) Will you apologize to Andrew Breitbart? (Also punch this guy.) Were you fully erect? (Especially this guy.)

Weiner brought this on himself, but it's never fun to watch a man cry on live television, unless than man is Andrew Breitbart. We all have strange pleasures and needs, even popular witty Congressmen with beautiful wives, that we don't want to admit in public, and the internet allows us to indulge many of them. In the grey of the morning in front of that flickering screen, we've all likely done something we regret. As Amanda Marcotte points out, many of the people attacking Weiner, including that female reporter haranguing Weiner about the ages of his Twitter flirts, almost certainly have regrets of their own. Most are less public figures and most are more cautious about it, but only Echelon knows how many dark secrets of theirs are preserved in servers around the world.

This is still a disappointment. It's disappointing becuse we thought Weiner was better than this, morally, and less bereft of intelligence and common sense. It's a disappointment because such a vocal advocate for the progressive cause has been silenced. And make no mistake, that's what is going on here. Weiner brought this on himself, but that doesn't make this any less of a political attack, one which may have been specifically timed to distract from Justice Clarence Thomas' ethical issues, which Weiner has taken the lead in highlighting.

Andrew Sullivan writes "this is the result of raw culture war with no scruples or principles, designed purely to destroy." And that's what this is. The message here is that if you stick your neck out for progressive causes, they are going to chop your head off. You'll have stalkers on Twitter hounding you and your followers, waiting for a slip up they can use against you. You'll have ludicrous professional charlatans like Breitbart manipulate the story and then claim to be the victim. You'll have Fox News attack you all day and the "liberal" media will cheer them on, while largely ignoring the John Ensigns and the David Vitters of the other party.

The worst part about Weinergate is that this may legitimize Andrew Breitbart. I'm now convinced that Breitbart, not the cockroach, may be the only thing that survives the Armageddon. What should have happened is that the press conference should have ended with Weiner (or better yet, his wife) punching Breitbart in the mouth, but instead he grabbed the spotlight and the assembled reporters sprang to his defense, demanding an apology on his behalf. Somehow Breitbart has survived being exposed again and again as a manipulative liar and professional libel artist, and now he has the audacity - no, because he is completely made of slippery, amoral audacity - to claim victimhood and vindication because he was sort of correct about a story he manipulated into being. Now viciously attempting to ruin the life of an innocent Department of Agriculture employee, sponsoring the junior pseudo-pimp so he could pseudo-seduce a CNN reporter, and everything else he's ever done may be all wiped away and Breitbart may become a professional, respected journalist and pundit because someone sent him a picture of a Congressman's dick.

Goodbye to another accidental hero

I heard the news today, oh boy.

I guess there isn't any point in writing about anything else tonight.

From the outside it looks like liberals deify media figures they admire. There may be some of that going on, but what I actually think is going on is that these figures become symbolic of all the aspirations and frustrations that liberals have.

If you are a conservative, you can flip the dial and there's something for everyone. Want a faux-blue collar "independent"? Bill O'Reilly! Want a tearful conspiracy theorist? Glenn Beck! Want a mouth-breathing lunatic? Michael Savage! Want a namecalling pseudo-intellectual? Mark Levin! I'm not sure what Sean Hannity is, but you've got him too. But liberals don't make it into the mainstream through the normal channels. They become milquetoast moderate centrists parroting Village cliches or they become strident, fire-breathing conservatives.

Liberals aren't invited to these parties, so they have to break into the mainstream in other ways. Al Franken was, of course, a comedian. Paul Krugman was hired by the New York Times to write about economic matters and never would have been hired if they'd known he'd be so "shrill". Rachel Maddow was an academic who stumbled into broadcasting by winning a local radio station contest. And Keith Olbermann was a sportscaster who was hired to do one of those lame snarky (and not particularly partisan or strident) pseudo-news shows that were so popular in the early 2000s. Since they don't come up through the normal channels and aren't bred by established interests, these accidental heroes recieve an outsized share of liberal attention and admiration. Even if you don't particularly like one of them (personally, I barely ever watched Olbermann), they were still important, if only because they were so few in number.

Lazy thinkers and partisans claim that MSNBC is the "liberal" alternative to Fox because some of these accidental heroes appear there, another example of the stupid false equivalencies that poison our political discourse. A few prominent media personalities does not make a channel liberal, especially one that promotes a three-hour daily morning show hosted by a former Republican Congressman. A few prominent media personalities are not the equivalent of an entire network of conservatives unified around an agenda issued via a daily memo to its employees by a corporation that donates millions to the GOP. A few prominent media personalities who criticize both left and right are not the equivalent of the coordinated attack on liberals by an entire network.

The evidence that MSNBC is far from liberal is abundant, starting with the firing of Phil Donahue in 2003. He hosted the channel's highest rated show, but he was a liberal and a critic of the war, so he had to go. This isn't a conspiracy theory, there's a memo that proves it, stating that they worried that Donahue would provide "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity".

Then there's Ashleigh Banfield, groomed by MSNBC as some kind of glasses-wearing Action Barbie and hurried into every picturesque sand dune in the war zone they could find. That is, until she made a speech criticizing Fox News and she was taken to the woodshed. She disappeared from the air and even took away her desk in the office.

And now Keith Olbermann, who suddenly disappears from MSNBC right after the FCC approves the NBC/Comcast merger.

I'm baffled by those people who assert, in the face of all evidence, that the media in general and MSNBC is liberal. It's a great talking point and will continue to be repeated by those who parrot talking points and believed by those who believe talking points. And if you aren't exposed to a wide range of media, perhaps you actually believe that Alan Colmes is truly representative of the far left. But if you are a progressive, then it's a sad day. Not because of Keith Olbermann in particular, but because there's one less strident voice in the mainstream media representing something left of Alan Colmes.

Things are getting better in some respects. There's the internet and the blogosphere, more access to information so we can more easily get the real facts and debunk right-wing lies. But in other respects it's just as hard as it's ever been. You have to seek out those sources, and if you are one of those people who don't or can't, you're left in the clutches of Fox News, under-informed and victim to the agenda of Fox and corporate America. The fewer accidental heroes like Keith Olbermanns we have in the media, the more likely this is to happen.

I don't really have any great conclusion I've reached here. As the Clash would say, it's just another story. The same old story it's always been.