Weiner won’t deny that that’s him in the photo (Update: video added)
Or, Weiner wimps out when directly asked a straightforward question.
Rep. Anthony Weiner refused to answer questions outside his Capitol Hill office about how a photo of an erect penis covered by boxer briefs ended up on his Twitter account over the weekend.
In a brief gaggle with reporters Tuesday, Weiner was asked directly if the photo was of him, but he refused to say.
“I’m not going to talk about this anymore,” the New York Democrat said. “I think if I was giving a speech to 45,000 people, and someone stood up and heckled in the back, I wouldn’t spend three days talking to him. I’m going to get back to the conversation I care about.”
An interesting number, 45,000. That’s the approximate number of followers Weiner has on twitter, and who therefore get his public tweets. But 91 is the more relevant number, since that’s how many tweeters Weiner followed at the time of the lewd tweet. 91 is the number he needs to be asked about, as in “How did a 21-year-old college student on the West Coast become one of the 91 people you followed?” And follow up from there.
But re-read that quote from Mr. Weiner. Did Weiner just accidentally acknowledge that the tweet really came from him? Why else talk about being heckled when giving a speech “to 45,000 people”? He has previously claimed that he didn’t send out the tweet at all. Now he’s shifting to being “heckled” when he is actually speaking (or in this case, tweeting). That’s a very interesting shift — from “hacked” to “prank” to being “heckled.” Or is Weiner likening the hacker to a heckler? One is a crime with national security implications; the other is just an annoyance. Big difference.
Keep not-answering the questions, Tony. Perhaps in the next one you’ll not-say that you not-do this sort of thing all the time.
Update: CNN posts video of Weiner’s gaggle. He does not present himself as an innocent Weiner wronged, at all. The “I’ve gotta get back to work” bit is right out of the Clinton/Lewinsky playbook.
Update: The “he accidentally tweeted the pic from his cell phone” theory gains more steam.
pajamasmedia.com
-------------------------
Here's the awkward interview on CNN:
politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com
---------------------
Was THIS What Happened in #Weinergate?
May 31, 2011 · 11 comments
Many people have how coule @RepWeiner do something so stupid? It may not be stupid…
It may be a tech issue.
This from the comments at Patterico…
You ask how it could be done accidentally, and actually it’s quite simple. Direct messages, especially longer ones, are often split by the cell phone provider… the first part of the message will go to the recipient as a direct message, the second part will be treated as an @recipient and posted to the general twitter feed.
Thus if the good representative had added a bit of copy to explain the photo.. like what a great deal he got at Target when he went shopping, and added the yfrog link at the end his provider could have split off the link and it would have continued on as a general post.
Comment by Hunt — 5/31/2011 @ 11:48 am
And sure enough…
How to Send a Private Message From Your Phone:
In addition to sending direct messages from the web, you can also send direct messages from your phone and most 3rd party applications.
Open a text message window to your Twitter short code, or logging in to your application
Begin your message with a letter "d" and the username of the follower your wish to message, like this: d olivia
Type your message, being careful not to exceed 140 characters. (Example: d Support Hey support! Thanks for your help.)
Send the message
Note: If your message is longer than 140 characters and Twitter receives it intact, we will send your message in two parts for you. But, beware: if your service provider breaks up long messages into two parts before sending the message to Twitter, we will only see the d+username attached to the first message! The second part will post to the public time line as a regular update because it doesn’t have the d+username preceding it.
Whoops! That explains how he screwed up. He used up too many characters sending her a preliminary verbal message ..... and wouldn't it be interesting to know what that was .... if the preliminary verbal text plus the "http://yfrog.com/Weinerpic" ran to >140 characters, the message would be split with the second part where the pic was going public.
leestranahan.com |
