Patterico's Pontifications

5/31/2011

We Have a Very Angry Weiner, Here (Update: Johnson Rises to Weiner’s Defense)

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 6:07 pm



[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Update (II): If you thought that no one would be lame enough to defend these interviews… you’re wrong.

If you thought that Congressman Weiner couldn’t look worse than he did in this post, well you were wrong. There is of course, this video, too, from MRCtv (and the man formally known a College Politico):

Watch  to the whole thing, especially the part where he calls one of the reporters a jackass.  Really, I haven’t seen a performance this awful since when Connie Chung interviewed Gary Condit.*

Update: Right Wing News calls it “the Hindenburg of press conferences.” Heh.

Meanwhile as a follow up to something I wondered out loud this morning, we might finally explain how he accidentally would tweet such a thing to the whole world.

Now as Lee pointed out in the comments to that post one way to send a direct message is to type the following in a normal tweet:

d @Stranahan Howdy.

And that would send a direct message to Lee Stranahan and only Lee, saying “Howdy.”  (And note: this only works if Lee is following you.)  But without the d, it just becomes a normal tweet, mentioning Lee, which flags it for his attention, but doesn’t prevent anyone else from seeing it

Thus one theory is that somehow Weiner lost the “d” converting it to a regular tweet.  But my point, previously ill expressed, is that you needed a bit of specialized knowledge to know to do the “d” trick and my guess is that most people do what I do, which is use various features that set up the direct message for you.  They vary in the program, but on the surface it looks like it is almost impossible to accidentally send a direct message.  In other words, this isn’t like hitting “reply all” in an email. You have to access a different part of the program—at least in my experience.   Weiner’s experience might be different. But the key thing is that the program is then doing that formatting for you–that is writing out “d @Stranahan” and then the message for you.

But there is still a way this could happen within a program menu clearly designed to send only a direct message. You see, it seems that if you are sending a direct message that is longer than 140 characters, by a smart phone, the system will break the message into two parts.  And then what happens is that the signal that it is supposed to be a direct message, the “d”  is only in the first part. So suppose I sent a message to Lee that went like this:

d @Stranahan I can’t believe that his staff let him down like that in #Weinergate.  U would think that someone would take him aside and say gee, you really shouldn’t be following a porn star.

Well, then my blackberry would break that up into two messages, one a private message that would say:

d @Stranahan I can’t believe that his staff let him down like that in #Weinergate.  U would think that someone would take him aside and say

And then it would break off the rest of it, and transmit to the entire world:

@Stranahan gee, you really shouldn’t be following a porn star

(Which needless to say could create all kinds of problems for Lee in his personal life.)

This is backed up by advice given here and here (thanks to Sarah W and Hunt).  So, there you go.  It’s all speculation, but it’s a theory that fits the facts: the Weiner wrote a long direct message, and half of it was split and automatically sent to the whole world without his consent.  And what is attractive about it is that, well… let’s face it, that is almost like a booby-trap in the direct messaging system.  So you could easily imagine a person very reasonably being ignorant of that and being caught unawares.

But like I said, that is only speculation. We need an investigation if we are ever going to get at the truth. Now, mind you, Congressman Weiner if you actually sent the message yourself don’t go filing a false police report. And besides it looks like you are going to get an investigation whether you like it or not, or report it as a crime, or not.

——————————-

* As a lawyer, I have to say that Chung’s interview was an almost textbook example of a cross examination, especially employing the technique of forcing your subject to repeat a rehearsed answer.  By comparison, I think eliciting Weiner’s repetitious answer was more spontaneous, but equally effective.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

76 Responses to “We Have a Very Angry Weiner, Here (Update: Johnson Rises to Weiner’s Defense)”

  1. What makes this even more . . . “enjoyable” is the fact that this guy isn’t just ‘wrong’ politically — he’s an A-1 a**hole to boot!

    Icy Texan (a8e531)

  2. This is just painful. The rehearsed ‘if I were giving a speech to 45k people’ bit is basically just silly.

    Just say ‘no’ dammit.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  3. ‘I have more twitter followers than Bachmann, but I won’t be distracted from the issues by answering a question!!!’

    The man called jackass was damned professional about it. I saw him literally bite his lip at that point.

    Weiner thinks he’s too good to answer basic questions, and thinks he can Obama-speak his way out of any problem. That’s hardcore elitism. I suspect this is what they mean by ‘power corrupts.’

    Dustin (c16eca)

  4. I accidentally sent a public message intended as a Twitter message once, maybe twice. On an iPhone, “Tweets” show up as text messages. This includes DMs. If you go to the messages application on the iPhone, which you use to send texts, and reply to a DM, it will go out publicly.

    I once sent 3000 people my cell phone number this way. Once someone replied and warned me about it, I deleted it.

    Patterico (b0030f)

  5. I’m trying to remember what movie/tv show had the line “She’d never seen one angry before.”

    SPQR (26be8b)

  6. dick picture boy wants to ask that we follow some rules here?

    ok rule number one anthony is that we don’t send pictures of our tumescent penis to college girls.

    That’s rule number one. I think most of us are on board. Join us.

    Ok rule number two. Rule number two is that after we’re cold flat busted sending pictures of our tumescent penis to college girls we don’t lie about it. You’re not Bill Clinton you’re just a New York douchebag what sends dick pictures.

    Own it.

    There are more rules – several, really – but for your present circumstances Mr. Anthony these ones are the most important so let’s master these ones first.

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  7. How much is Breitbart paying CNN!?!?!?!??!?!?!!?!?!?

    Dustin (c16eca)

  8. Not a bad bit of speculation, regarding the direct message and all. I kind of prefer going with the, “his nose was so far open he wasn’t thinking right and that he was also arrogant enough to think he could get away with it anyway”, line of thinking.

    I’m kind of wondering why he wasn’t more concerned, if he was hacked and all like he’s claiming, or how he was able to so easily “tweet” such a short time later. Oh, and why is his twitter account still marked as verified.

    Whatevz. He’s a weasel anyway. And such a boldfaced liar when he wants to be, on the order of the odious Ms. Wasserman-Schultz, that I have a hard time believing anything he says.

    Bob Reed (5f2db5)

  9. something about how he can’t find a dollar fiddy hot dog hahaha

    happyfeet (3c92a1)

  10. At first this story was mildly entertaining. But the all-Weiner-all-the-time is a bit much. Is there other news?

    Gesundheit (aab7c6)

  11. Is there other news?

    Kloppenburg conceded at the very last second before she’d have to start paying for her little show out of her own pocket.

    Egypt sucks even more
    .

    And the House rejected the debt ceiling hike.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  12. Patterico – that’s only if you are subscribing to @ replies and DMs to be sent to your SMS account. If you use a twitter client on the phone that shouldn’t happen.

    I ended up turning SMS notifications off so I don’t have to deal with that. The Twitter client (Tweetdeck) will notify me of @ replies and DMs without hitting the SMS…

    kimsch (2a7c0d)

  13. The jokes just write themselves:

    Update: Johnson Rises to Weiner’s Defense

    kimsch (2a7c0d)

  14. Does it strike anyone else as funny that the only man to defend “Weiner” is named “Johnson”?

    creeper (f1f686)

  15. LGF takes the wrong side again?

    SHOCKA!!!

    Icy Texan (a8e531)

  16. Coulda’ been worse, creeper. DICK Durbin could have risen to the occasion..

    JP (508ef3)

  17. You don’t need to be Tonya Reiman to reach a verdict on body language alone: GUILTY.

    Patricia (b717c7)

  18. And then it would break off the rest of it, and transmit to the entire world:

    @Stranahan gee, you really shouldn’t be following a porn star

    No, it wouldn’t. The second message wouldn’t be addressed to Stranahan at all, it would just go out as a public tweet. Weiner’s publicly accessible message was addressed to the girl in Seattle. So this explanation doesn’t work. The original one, though, that he put a @ instead of a d, still works.

    Milhouse (ea66e3)

  19. SPQR, that movie was Body Heat starring Kathleen Turner.

    wtp (0da99b)

  20. wtp, so it was.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  21. I watched the press conf vid. Wow, what an a-hole that Weiner is! What did Huma see in that guy?!

    The cover-up is often worse than the misdeed. The lesson is taught again and again.

    CJ’s thinking really puzzles me. A politician is caught in sexual dalliance (about the commonest thing on earth) and CJ’s first and only thought is “AHA! Breitbart!!” Even CJ is smarter than that.

    gp (1e0d91)

  22. This whole thing started when Weiner’s Johnson rose—to half staff or thereabouts.

    Mike Myers (0e06a9)

  23. wtp, so it was.

    Comment by SPQR

    Tony Danza. And Body Heat is a pretty good movie, available on Netflix streaming, which is the only reason I’ve ever heard of it.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  24. Okay. I finally got to watch that. Weiner is a dlck.

    JD (318f81)

  25. Dustin, no, it wasn’t Tony Danza saying the line. It was Ted Danson. He was playing an ADA and was explaining to William Hurt’s character why a little girl had not been able to ID a suspect (who was in fact William Hurt). Because she’d been distracted by the fully erect member of the naked Hurt.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  26. Weiner is pathetic, but Twitter is inherently evil — a medium of communication deliberately intended to truncate thoughtful conduct, and practically engineered to guarantee indiscretion.

    Beldar (7c0dd5)

  27. And get off my lawn.

    Beldar (7c0dd5)

  28. (Sorry, meant “thoughtful content,” not “conduct.” See, even without a character limit and the urgency of tweeting, it’s still hard to express oneself accurately!)

    Beldar (7c0dd5)

  29. I don’t know, Beldar, I rather like the idea of pols who are running for office having to master getting their messages out in 140 characters or less. You can run for office but you can’t run your mouth – make it short, concise and don’t waste my time with blather.

    Dana (4eca6e)

  30. FWIW, I’ve watched “Body Heat” recently, and while it was still a clever movie, I wasn’t nearly as affected by Kathleen Turner as I remember being when it first came out. In its day, that was quite the date movie.

    Beldar (7c0dd5)

  31. Comment by Dustin — 5/31/2011 @ 6:45 pm,

    Is there other news?

    I am sure hoping our hosts see fit to write about that other news tomorrow because seriously, Weiner’s weiner is not that impressive, and certainly not impressive enough to merit so many posts.

    And get off my lawn, too.

    Dana (4eca6e)

  32. Dana, it’s hard to believe anything could make politicians, as a class, more shallow, but Twitter succeeds.

    Beldar (7c0dd5)

  33. It was hilarious to watch CNN and see Jeffrey Toobin (Baby Daddy, Greenfield) try to impugn Breitbart’s honesty.

    MayBee (081489)

  34. (Dana, we can admire each other’s lawns at a respectful distance across the street, in a restrained and neighborly fashion, as the good Lord intended when he built suburbia. And nod to each other before each taking a sip of our ice-cold American beers.)

    Beldar (7c0dd5)

  35. Let me make a prediction:

    You are not only looking at the next Mayor of New York City, you are also looking at the next cabinet secretary under a future Democrat president, but also an eventual VP nominee from the Democrat Party. Or a least the longest-serving member of the Senate.

    That’s the way it works. He has nothing to worry about except making sure a black Supreme Court Justice is lynched for being honest to the Constitution.

    America loves this guy.

    Ag80 (1bc637)

  36. What does BREITBART have to do with this? Is he the one that hacked Weiner? Did he prank Teh Weiner? How do those clowns get the Weiners bad behavior and turn it into something about BREITBART? Reminds me of Chuckles Johnson and his idiot identical twin Eric.

    JD (318f81)

  37. After watching that interview, I’m also thinking that the Cosmic Gods of Pie-Throwing are rubbing their hands together and chortling in anticipation of their minions’ next opportunity to attend a speech by Rep. Weiner.

    Beldar (7c0dd5)

  38. Ag80 (#35), I think you’re on to something.

    I’m just wondering, is the Dems’ 2006 ticket “Weiner-Spitzer,” or “Spitzer-Weiner”?

    Beldar (7c0dd5)

  39. (Bah, “2016” — a typo, not a mis-tweet, and with no .jpg of my boxers.)

    Beldar (7c0dd5)

  40. Wiener was wanting a Humma.

    JD (318f81)

  41. I’m also thinking that the Cosmic Gods of Pie-Throwing are rubbing their hands together and chortling in anticipation of their minions’ next opportunity to attend a speech by Rep. Weiner.

    LOL

    What I wouldn’t pay for an SNL sketch on this, where some loser gives Weiner’s little speech, is pied, and then completely refuses to answer the reporters that ask if he realizes his face is covered in delicious whipped topping.

    And then they could drag that sketch out for ten minutes, because it’s SNL and that’s how they roll.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  42. Dustin, no, it wasn’t Tony Danza saying the line. It was Ted Danson.

    HAHA

    I totally stand corrected. As hard as this may be to believe, but I actually don’t know the names of these obviously well known people.

    I do recall the scene, and know it was the actor from Cheers. I am too stupid to reliably name even famous actors.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  43. ==America loves this guy==

    Are you talking about that girl with braces on Ugly Betty? Has Weiner been tweeting her, too?

    elissa (f1910a)

  44. I am sure hoping our hosts see fit to write about that other news tomorrow because seriously, Weiner’s weiner is not that impressive, and certainly not impressive enough to merit so many posts.

    And get off my lawn, too.

    Comment by Dana

    Did you hear about the new Corduroy Pillows

    Dustin (c16eca)

  45. The SNL sketch I envision features the church lady exposing Weiner/Twitter. “Could it be—-SATAN?”

    elissa (f1910a)

  46. I WILL NOT BE DISTRACTED FROM TRYING TO LYNCH JUSTICE CLARENCE UNCLE THOMAS AGAIN !!!!!!!!

    JD (318f81)

  47. Elissa – in this case, Satanito.

    JD (318f81)

  48. Say hello to my little little little little little little little little friend.

    JD (318f81)

  49. ==hosts see fit to write about that other news tomorrow==

    Well Dana, I agree and I can’t wait till tomorrow. Didjall see that Kloppy finally conceded?

    elissa (f1910a)

  50. Beldar:

    Weiner-Spitzer would be funnier, but look at history. Plagerizer in the second most silly job in the world. What’s the word for cuckold in female form? I don’t know, but she’s Secretary of State.

    Recently dead womanizer who allowed some poor girl die in a submerged car? Lion of the Senate.

    Old asshole who hammers a few nails while hobnobbing with terrorists? Best former president ever.

    Idiot inheritance boy? The saint of the science-challenged.

    I could go on, but the only credential you really need in our country is summed up in a letter: D.

    Ag80 (1bc637)

  51. So it is Weiner’s johnson.

    Dude!!! Really? Dude?
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    Dude? You are a Congressman dude.

    Sponge Bob Square Pants (fccc6f)

  52. Jd

    you are going to love the next post. chuckles is going even more off the deep end.

    But i’ll save that for tomorrow.

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  53. One thing you’ve got to say for Neiner-Neiner-Weiner, at least he didn’t stand there, wag his finger in the camera, and proclaim:
    I did not have tweet with that woman, Ms Cordova!

    AD-RtR/OS! (e9bd84)

  54. Plagerizer in the second most silly job in the world.

    Compared to Weiner’s incredibly lame player action of sexting up twitter fans, some plagiarizers are smooth as butter. So how silly is that?

    Dustin (c16eca)

  55. I’m just wondering, is the Dems’ 2006 ticket “Weiner-Spitzer,” or “Spitzer-Weiner”?

    Beldar, if the Ds ran either ticket, NY’s 29 electors would have to split their votes as necessary, since none of them could vote for both of their party’s candidates.

    In any case, nobody likes Spitzer. He’s toast. Weiner, OTOH, will remain popular, and this minor incident will be forgotten. Unless he continues making it worse for himself.

    Milhouse (ea66e3)

  56. If SNL spoofs him, he’s toast.
    A pol can withstand most criticism, but when they start laughing AT you, you’re done.
    He has attained his Dead Girl/Live Boy moment.

    AD-RtR/OS! (e9bd84)

  57. You guys think I’m kidding. In a month or two, Weiner will be the latest misogynist championing the rights of women, flanked by his wife and Bubba.

    America will eat it up. What being that dirty bastard Breitbart and all.

    Ag80 (1bc637)

  58. What??? The Atlanta Thrashers are moving to Winnipeg?

    Chris (c2a6cc)

  59. They were tired of finding their standings in the toilet (AJC aka Urinal & Constipation).

    AD-RtR/OS! (e9bd84)

  60. AD:

    This whole episode is a comedy minefield. Don’t expect any thing from NBC.

    Red Eye could be good, though.

    Ag80 (1bc637)

  61. Your gonna love my weiners-Anthony Weiner from Slapchop.

    DohBiden (15aa57)

  62. “If SNL spoofs him, he’s toast.” If Jon Stewart spoofs him, he’s burnt toast with an atom tan.

    gp (1e0d91)

  63. AARP-medicare and social security can’t be cut.

    Well then let the economy collapse than it will be no more.

    So sorry for the off-topic.

    DohBiden (15aa57)

  64. Doh, you are right, but wieners are funny. Except, when the real world intrudes.

    Ag80 (1bc637)

  65. Apparently gp is NOT “smarter than that”. But then some of us already knew . . .

    Icy Texan (a8e531)

  66. Hi i’am Anthony Wiener with Wienerchop

    DohBiden (15aa57)

  67. Has anyone mentioned the possible child porn angle?
    I mean judging from the size, I assumed it was a child’s penis.

    Have Blue (854a6e)

  68. O’Reilly says he wants an answer from Mueller of FBI on an investigation tomorrow. Why or why not. Are they or are they not.

    Patricia (b717c7)

  69. Wow, before this I was willing to give weiner the benefit of the doubt (even though he’s a vicious little attack dog) but after hearing him I now think he did send the pic and that he does have a thing for the younger stuff. Geez, I love to be a fly on the wall at his house as he just digs himself deeper and deeper. No wonder he wants to avoid an official investigation of his “hack” as there wasn’t one.

    scr_north (c4396e)

  70. /Off topic

    Commander Kelly (Rep Giffords’ husband) has landed the Space Shuttle endeavor safely a few minutes ago.

    I was a little worried, since there were reports of some minor damage on the edge of one of the wings. They also completed the US’s role in construction of the ISS, which is a nice accomplishment because the US’s role is the main role.

    Weiner

    Dustin (c16eca)

  71. Whenever I see or hear weiner, I have this powerful urge to smash his nose flat. It’s that phone little smile, condescending attitude and the voice.

    Arch (0baa7b)

  72. In a town of smug arrogant condescending prickish weiners, Weiner may be the biggest.

    JD (306f5d)

  73. Wouldn’t he and Fran Drescher make a cute couple (couple of what – I have no idea).

    I mean after the divorce.

    They have so much in common.

    papertiger (e55ba0)

  74. A portrait of the Modern Democratic/Progressive Party:
    Anthony Weiner & Debbie Wasserman-Schultz!

    (where’s Whistler when you need him?)

    AD-RtR/OS! (b8ab92)

  75. My Weiner did not have photgraphic relations with that woman Gennette Cordova. But she does have fine corinthian leather!

    eaglewingz08 (74f660)

  76. Fox News showed the photo without any blurring or fuzzing. Doesn’t say much for Weiner’s Wiener.

    kimsch (2a7c0d)


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