From the get go, the whole Weinergate story sounded fishy. A feisty congressman who's rather proficient with Twitter and other social networks and has amassed a sizable following would have to be either profoundly stupid or incredibly drunk to send a dirty pic to a girl on his own account. He claims his account was hacked, and whose to say it wasn't? His last name is Weiner, the picture was of a weiner; sounds like a juvenile prank, not unlike the one played on me when one of my accounts was hacked several years ago. Then you take into account the fact that the evidence was forged, the scandal was eluded to weeks before it took place, and it was widely propagated by the notorious Andrew Breitbart; who is famous for creating fake scandals aimed at liberal targets; and the whole thing just falls apart.
Despite all of this, conservatives are now calling for Weiner to resign. They say this is the smoking gun, and that this is the moment Weiner and is supporters will crumble in shame. Hold on a moment, am I missing something here? Let's pretend for a moment that these unlikely allegations are all true. So what? Weiner still wouldn't have broken any laws or congressional ethics. At most, he'd have committed an act of infidelity that would negatively impact his marriage. Forget about calling for his resignation, these allegations would be unlikely to seriously affect his next election.
The conservatives are the ones who make a big deal about "family values". While liberals' opinions on infidelity vary on severity, most liberals aren't going to stop supporting a strong progressive congressman and one of their strongest voices in the house because he had a mistress. The majority of high profile sex scandals involving politicians that resulted in them losing their job often involved a crime having been committed or a congressional ethic being violated. A sex scandal does not have to be the end of someone's political career. Look at Clinton, even after Monicagate, he was still so popular that polling suggests if he could have run for a third term, he would have won. Then there is Gavin Newsom. A few years ago, while he was the mayor of San Francisco, he cheated on his wife; and now he's the Lt. Governor. Weinergate isn't even a sex scandal, it's one picture sent to a woman of a guy's junk that is still covered by his underwear. Even Brett Favre sent steamier pictures than that.
So, when all the hype about this cockamamie Weinergate scandal dies down; and everyone realizes it was all a hoax; in the end, it will be remembered as one of the most pointless manufactured political scandals of all time. If you're going to go through the trouble of manufacturing a scandal, you should at least make it something that would actually get the person in trouble. Even for a joke like Breitbart, this fake scandal was pretty amateurish. Smoking gun? Please! This is the most laughable attempt to smear a politician I have ever seen in my lifetime.
3:28 PM PT: We've now come full circle
When this whole fake scandal broke, and I called bullshit; someone told me that the reason Weiner was lying about being hacked was because he's a politician and politicians lie. Now today someone told me that it's a big deal that will ruin his career because he lied about it. So we've gone from it being true because politicians lie to Weiner being done because he's a lying politician. Excuse me while I go take some LSD so the world makes sense again.