One week ago, a revealing photo of a man in underwear appeared on Congressman Anthony Weiner's yfrog account and linked to on his twitter stream. The tweet in question mentioned a college student in Seattle. It's becoming clear that this story was just a straw man, a narrative built up only to be torn down in the end.
There's been so much false speculation about the photo that it's important to revisit the facts we can be fairly sure about. First, is it seems that the photo really did appear in Weiner's yfrog account, which puts to bed the theory that it was all a forgery.
Yesterday an article at cannonfire showed how easy it is to post a photo to someone else's yfrog account, which results in a tweet, so I'm gonna say the tweet really existed.
We can also come to some conclusions about what Weiner has and has not confirmed.
He has flatly denied posting the photo or creating the tweet.
He has stated that he believes he was hacked (Facebook, to be specific).
He can not deny the photo is of him, "with certitude."
From this, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the photo was real, and probably posted to Facebook under a "private" setting since he says his FB was hacked, and can't deny the photo is of him. So yeah, I'm gonna say it's him.
Next, we should recap what we know about Dan Wolfe, aka @patriotusa76
For about a month prior to this, @patriotusa76 was harassing said college student on twitter. One of the things he wrote was that "@RepWeiner loves young girls". Also during this month, in a May 11 tweet, @patriotusa76 announced that a news story was about to break:
"top 5 RightWing blogger has sexscandal pics of "big time" Congressman> @RepWeiner are you next Chris Lee?"
Not only was @patriotusa76 the person to discover the tweet, he's the same person who had been harassing the supposed recipient, and he knew the Congressman was going to post the photo before he actually did.
From all this, we can start drawing conclusions.
First, Dan Wolfe had foreknowledge of this event. That much is indisputable. This would lead one to be highly suspicious of the fact that he was the one to discover the photo, but those suspicions are as yet circumstantial.
Now, it's important to revisit the allegation, which is that Rep. Weiner posted the photo to yfrog and mentioned a young college student in a tweet linking to that photo. Because here is where it gets interesting.
This is how I suspect it all went down.
Some one hacked into Weiner's FB account, the same way it had been done to Sarah Palin. In the private photos area, they found this photo. Since May 11, Dan Wolfe has been bragging about its pending release.
But what impact would a photo of a congressman in his underwear have? None, hardly. (oh, geeze, did I just say 'hardly' ?)
"It's not the picture, it's the actions of a married man chasing college girls. A member of Congress."
So the photo was posted to his twitter stream, with a mention of a college girl on the other side of the country. Immediately the accusations started flying that the Congressman was having an affair with the coed, a follow through on the "RepWeiner likes little girls" meme that Wolfe stared on twitter.
Then, as the facts started surfacing, and it became more and more doubtful that RepWeiner was the one to post the photo, the attention began to morph into whether it was actually Weiner in the photo.
And I began to read logical arguments that said since Weiner couldn't deny it was him in the photo, he must have been the one to post the photo.
When I tried to show how bogus that argument was, I was met with the predictable "I can't believe you people are defending this pervert" and "I know all I need to know, that Weiner is a strange little character."
It is no longer about sending the photo.
It's no longer about sending the photo to another woman who was not his wife.
It's no longer about sending the photo to another woman who was not his wife and was much, much younger.
Suddenly, it's about proving whether it was AW in the photo or not. But I ask you, what purpose would knowing who is in the photo serve? Is it good for anything more than gossip? No, because the allegation was that Rep. Weiner posted the photo to yfrog and mentioned a young college student in a tweet linking to that photo.
If Breitbart had come out and said he had a photo of Congressman Anthony Weiner in his underwear, people would be saying that Breitbart was the oddball pervert. So he built up the strawman that Weiner posted the photo and sent it to a college coed, only for that part of the story to be roundly debunked. In the end, we're left with a photo of a guy in his underwear, and the rightwing conclusion that Weiner is a skirt chasing pervert.
Cross Posted to Newsvine