THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 2011
Justin’s new love
Stars seem to align as Timberlake frolics with Olsen
And the Weiner Is...
Rep Weiner 'can't say' if he's the one in the raunchy TwitPic sent from his account, so The Daily went out to his district office in Queens to ask his constituents if they can do any better.
What a stiff!
Media-savvy Weiner’s crotch-shot meltdown
BY ELISABETH EAVES
Until this week, Congressman Anthony Weiner was lauded for his social-media savvy. With more than 50,000 Twitter followers and a conversational tweet stream laced with hockey asides, the young-for-a-politician Democrat — he’s 46 — appeared to have social media nailed, using it as a megaphone to amplify his successes and his charm.
Now Weiner is another object lesson in how politicians are different from normal people — even when using the very media they tap to stay in touch with common folk.
Over the weekend it emerged that Weiner’s Twitter account had sent a photo of a man’s bulging crotch to a 21-year-old woman. Weiner says the megaphone was in this case wielded by malevolent hackers, which may be true. But yesterday he told reporters that he “can’t say with certitude” that the offending image, in which the subject sports gray boxer briefs, was not a picture of him. Which means that, at the very least, Weiner has below-the-waist photos of himself lying around his hard drive and a social media relationship with a woman half his age.
Normal people — even those of us who couldn’t care less about your typical sex scandal — can see that they torpedo political careers and assume that any congressman with an instinct for self-preservation would try to avoid them.
And normal people have by now learned, sometimes the hard way, that online social networks are risky places to bare all, because you never know who’s going to do what with your easily misunderstood Halloween photo. Twenty years into the Internet and a decade into social media, even the average high schooler knows that taking — never mind posting — half-naked pictures of yourself is risky business.
On some level the congressman knows all this, too. And so his alleged actions can be explained only by a state of mind in which hubris trumps common sense. If Weiner did, in fact, do the deed, consider the chain of reasoning that would have had to precede hitting send:
First, our supposedly savvy tweeter neglected to make private his short list of followees, which includes not only @rollcall (the handle of the inside-the-Beltway newspaper) but also @ladyfoxfyre, @kittenXpoker and @melodygambino (profile description: “bada bing, bada bino. Giving Jay-Z his What-What").
Next, he struck up private correspondences with some of his new digital friends. (A Tennessee porn actress named Ginger Lee said yesterday that she had exchanged missives with Rep. Weiner using Twitter’s direct messaging service.)
Then, while lying around in a state of arousal one recess, he concluded it would be a good idea to snap a picture of himself. And somehow came to believe that one of his young Twitter chums would welcome it on her digital wall.
Sounds insane. But then, no more insane than needlessly admitting in a press conference that an anonymous risqué photograph might be of your crotch. Any cucumber in cotton could have posed for that pic. The owner of the assets is not going to be identified based on visuals alone, which means that Weiner must fear it will be found on a digital device. Maybe more than one.
And it’s certainly no more insane than believing that no one in the chain of people involved in procuring a pricey prostitute will leak a word (see Eliot Spitzer) or that your wife won’t notice that the maid’s kid looks a lot like you (see Arnold Schwarzenegger).
There has always been a subset of politicians who live in that surreal mental zone where, contrary to all evidence, they believe they are immune from getting caught with their pants down.
The difference today is that social media allows them to shoot themselves in the foot with a bazooka rather than a handgun. Indeed, it encourages them to do so. The ease with which we send instant messages or toss off whatever pops into our heads to digital listeners lulls us all into a state of complacency.
Weiner showed signs of cracking under pressure yesterday, quipping, “I’m sorry if I was a little stiff” to startled reporters and later tweeting, “howz about i get back in the game over here.”
Political craterings, too, have always gone on. But in the heyday of the well-behaved, well-scripted old media, phalanxes of staff could prevent oblivious politicians from doing themselves too much damage. Now, Weiner has let the same channel that won him so many fans capsize his career more quickly and thoroughly than his political opponents ever could.
Elisabeth Eaves is the opinions page editor at The Daily.
Army Fashion: In the Design of Duty
The Army's design team marries form with function to keep soldiers safe. —Produced by Vivek Kemp and edited by Jon Tortora
A DAY OF HONOR
For servicemen and women here in America, Memorial Day isn't just about cookouts and kick-starting summer; it's about honoring those who have given their lives in battle and those who are fighting today. — Video by Elizabeth Saab, Vivek Kemp, Paula Cohen, Jackson Loo and Devon Puglia
Credit: The Daily (www.thedaily.com)
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