Say It Ain't So, Anthony!

Dear Madame L,

I'm shocked at the scandal over Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner's supposed lewd photo tweeted to a college student. Have you heard about this?

Sincerely,

Your Favorite Reader

Dear Favorite,

Madame L has also been shocked --- shocked, she says --- shocked at the outrageous and hypocritical audacity of Andrew Breitbart and his pals who appear to have created a hoax so they won't feel so bad about the many conservative politicians caught up in sex scandals recently.

Madame L believes the scandal over Rep. Weiner was concocted by conservative pranksters of the same type lauded by Breitbart before, the kind of people who are willing to destroy a decent and honorable public servant's (USDA official Shirley Sherrod) career and take away funds from a group of conscientious and sincere social workers (ACORN) trying to help poor people. (Full disclosure: Madame L has given donations to ACORN in the past, before Breitbart's lies resulted in its declaring bankruptcy.)

It's no surprise to Madame L that the word "breitbart" is now listed in the Urban Dictionary with the following definition: "To deliberately slander individuals or organizations though the use of selectively edited video released to the news media."

Fortunately for all of us, Daily Kos writer Stef has traced the hoax to its very beginning.  She has found that the underpants photo never did appear on Rep. Weiner's Twitter account. Also, the person who claims to have found the photo there had been blogging/tweeting for weeks before that something was going to be found that would embarrass a Democratic politician. And Madame L is not surprised that Breitbart "discovered" the tweet by this person, @patriotusa76, who specifically tweeted that he was hoping Weiner would be "the next Lee," referring to the married conservative Rep. Christopher Lee, who sent a photo of himself, half-naked, on Craigslist, to a single woman.

Breitbart appeared on CNN with his lies and insinuations, without a shred of proof of anything he alleged; CNN actually had to have their legal counsel appear later to say it was "too bad that he got to say that stuff on CNN" and that he "regretted" that CNN let Breitbart make those outrageous claims.

Madame L is also outraged that Breitbart et al. don't care about smearing an innocent college girl who was one of the tens of thousands of Rep. Weiner's "followers" on Twitter by publishing her name and photo and providing links to her Twitter and Facebook accounts...and then claiming that when she deleted those accounts, she did so at Rep. Weiner's bidding.

Madame L agrees with writer Joan Walsh that the only "lesson" to be learned from this entire episode is that Breitbart is not to be trusted. But we already knew that, didn't we!

Thank you for asking, because your question motivated Madame L to look up the history of the so-called scandal; and make this information available to her readers.

Best wishes,

Madame L