Iiiinteresting. While some of Weiner’s behavior is hard to explain, it’s extremely suspicious that these people were harassing his Twitter audience and promising a scandal long before it happened, especially since the picture is supposed to have been an accident.
That’s the assumption that should be made for the sake of decency. He certainly hasn’t been accused of doing anything wrong himself, so he should be left alone either way.
Well, he’s been accused of:
- Claiming to be the victim of a crime, but failing to ask that this be investigated
- Being a jerk toward a CNN producer (whom he apparently called a “Jackass”)
- Calling the police in response to a reporter seeking an interview
These are not things wise to do for the politician who wishes to be left alone.
Certainly he did something wrong! Haven’t you been watching the TV pundits? He responded badly to bad publicity! A crime! An awful crime! He should lose his seat in Congress!
Nothing wrong with either of those things.
He was right. That reporter was being an asshole. I think he should have been tazed.
He called security in response to a nutjob walking into his office and asking bizarre questions about his cock.
Basically, you’ve got nothing.
She didn’t ask questions about his cock. She asked for an interview.
An interview in which she wanted to ask him bizarre questions about his cock.
That’d be the same cock he’s been discussing with the national news media for the last week, right? Because that almost makes it sound like a reporter was doing her job by going to his office to ask for comment on a news story (and who left when he wouldn’t talk) instead of your deliberately misleading caricature about how Weiner was assaulted in his office by a deranged knifewielding mental patient and he was lucky to escape with his life. Why are you even bothering with this nonsense? He’s been talking to the media about his dick for a week, so a local reporter asked him for comment. He chose that moment to keep quiet, and she left. Then his people called the cops because evidently they took a page from his “how to draw more attention to yourself” media strategy. If he wants this to go away, all he needs to do is shut up about it for a couple of days. Even the American public can’t pay attention to one penis forever. Calling the cops on reporters and getting into fights won’t help.
Same cock, yeah. If she really needs to know about it, she can watch the news like everybody else, not stalk him in his office. It wasn’t like she was puruing an important story or trying to serve the public. It’s just a meaningless tabloid story, and she was a paparazzo.
Brilliant idea! She can fail to do her job because you say she doesn’t need to do it. That would be an excellent way for her to serve her viewers (who happen to include Weiner’s constituents).
She went to his office, asked for an interview, and left when he wouldn’t talk to her. Please learn what stalking really is. Real stalkers aren’t that polite.
She’s on CBS New York, not TMZ. You’re doing the same thing Weiner is doing at this point: keeping the story alive by taking an extreme and unreasonable attitude toward reasonable questions. Maybe Weiner put himself in this position and maybe he didn’t, but since Congressmen don’t tweet pictures of the wangs every day, it’s reasonable to ask what’s up when they do. You can’t go on a national “I’m innocent” tour for a week and then freak out when the local news comes to your office and asks for an interview. Not unless you’re completely stupid, that is. And since Weiner is a politician and he’ll probably be running for mayor in a year or two if he survives this, it’s in his interest not to be completely stupid. He didn’t grant the interview and she left. So why call the cops? The only thing that move guarantees is that the next day, reporters will show up to ask why he called the cops. It doesn’t help him. It’s even worse that he called the cops on a reporter and won’t call the cops on the alleged hacking. That’s pretty much the single element that prevents everyone from concluding he was set up.
I disagree that she was doing her job. She was abusing her press credentials for a purely exploitive pursuit with no real journalistic value.
It’s not what I’ve got - it’s what the press has, much of which Weiner has given them. The idea that a politician can do & say what he has and then expect to be left alone is remarkable nonsense.
So you think she was there for personal pleasure, then? You think she brought a camera crew to Weiner’s office for shit and giggles? I think you mean she wasn’t doing her job well, in your humble opinion, which in no way justifies calling the police (especially after she’d already left). When a Congressman calls the police on a reporter who shows up at his office and then leaves, it looks an awful lot like he’s trying to warn the media they had better do what he wants. That happens to be a great way to get the press on your case. Even if Weiner is the victim in all this, giving the press more ammo is still stupid.
Until you’re her producer, or at least one her viewers, your opinion on the journalistic value of the story doesn’t count for very much. A local Congressman is the subject of a major national story, and she’s a reporter for the local news. She’s going to ask him for comment. That is her job, end of story, no matter what nonsense you want to make up about her reasons or her behavior - plus this new nonsense about “abusing her press credentials,” which in real life probably means her producer told her to ask Weiner to comment.
I think she was grandstanding. I think she was there to make herself the story. I think she was probably ecstatic when security showed up to help her find her way out.
Even if your completely made up, imaginary, everyone-but-Anthony-Weiner-is-eeeevil scenario is correct, none of the facts change: she’s doing her job, calling the cops makes no sense, and Weiner’s people screwed up. There’s some significant evidence he’s been set up here (the only problem is that he won’t act on it), but this kind of crap is only keeping him in the news. If he keeps quiet for a couple of days without doing anything dumb, this can start to go away. You can’t fight with the press and expect to stay out of the news.
Weiner will be addressing the press in a few minutes. I’d actually really enjoy it if he got out there and said “the photos are fake, here’s how they hacked my phone and here is who did it,” but that doesn’t seem too likely. Conservative sites have been posting photos of a shirtless guy (allegedly Weiner) that they say the Congressman sent to other women online. We’ll see.
I don’t think you have to take anyone’s word for it that these are pictures of him.
Of course they certainly look like him, but some skepticism is called for because that’s the nature of photos on the internet. And we know who is asking us to take his word: a guy who’s proved he is willing to lie and manipulate images. That being said, even for Andrew Breitbart, it would be very brazen to go out there and crow about how he has these pictures and a source if he couldn’t back it up. (Not that I wouldn’t enjoy THAT, too.)
I guess we now know why Weiner was so combative and didn’t want to answer any questions: he knew this was going to come out.
He’s about to have a press conference.