This is not where I say "I told you so," even though I really, really did try to tell y'all. I was -- we were all seeing smoke and there was surely a fire there somewhere. Of course, I couldn't say this with "certitude", but Weiner's evasiveness and cryptic non-denials were as close as we ever get to a sure sign of deeper trouble. I'm not writing this to say I was right and y'all were wrong. I'm writing to say that I was profoundly disturbed by what I witnessed on this site in the last week and I hope that the members of the left-wing blogosphere can learn from this mess. I don't expect to get a lot of recs or tips for writing this, but I still think it needs to be said.
Anthony Weiner has learned some strong lessons, but he's hardly the only one who needs to learn from this.
I won't name names, and there's scarcely any point in listing the litany of diaries that claimed to offer proof(!) that Weiner's account was hacked, that because there was a security hole the account must have been hacked, that the photo wasn't taken by him, that the photo was upside-down and therefore posted by someone other than the Congressman. I even saw dozens of comments speculating that the picture didn't even depict a real penis and therefore must be part of a frame-up.
What I saw on this site in the last week resembled nothing so much as the ridiculousness that we have seen from the birthers and climate change-deniers in recent years. That may seem unduly harsh, but from my perspective, it is spot on. People were desperate to find proof that Weiner had not done this because they did not want to believe the message and because, more than anything else, they hated the messenger. I'm not sure that Weiner himself owed Breitbart an apology, though he allowed those on the left to continue to unfairly skewer Breitbart. In that sense, Weiner did owe him an apology, but those on the left who were so desperate to believe the worst -- the most conspiratorial things -- they also should apologize.
Instead of any sense of contrition, what I find on the front page is a screed wondering why reporters are asking Weiner if he'll apologize to Breitbart and a rec list diary that asks 'WTF is Breitbart doing at Weiner's presser?' I'm not going to lionize or make a hero out of Breitbart, or any of the ass-clowns who were stalking Weiner on the web and Twitter, hoping to get the goods on him. Their behavior isn't worthy of any praise or credit, because all they've done is expose Weiner's personal weakness. There's no reason why this should be a public matter. However, they did choose to make it public -- in part because Weiner was lying about it. To the extent he decided to lie, he deserved everything that followed, even if his wife did not.
I certainly do not want to turn this piece into a critique of Rep. Weiner. I know from whence he comes -- I have lived in a similar glass house, almost obsessed with contacting strangers online that I would never meet, just for titillation. Perhaps that's why I was more certain of his "guilt" -- because I could see myself in his situation.
Getting back to the point -- a point I have been trying to make all week long -- large segments of the right-wing, especially the bloggers ("wingnuts") and Tea Partyers, have been guilty of massive self-delusion on a raft of matters, from the President's Hawaiian birth to those who deny the reality of climate change and the role of human activity in creating/accelerating it. Even today, we laughed our collective asses off at the efforts of Palin's supporters to try and change "History" -- or at least the Wikipedia version of it -- to conform to her description of Paul Revere's ride. People on the left -- and notoriously so on this site -- have delighted in laughing at the ridiculousness of all this. When we see these things, we cannot decide whether those on the right are suffering from mass insanity or mass stupidity.
The last week on this site has been a pitch-perfect mimickry of the above examples of collective insanity on the right. Was it just a case of the stupids or were people on the left losing their collective minds in rushing to the defense of someone who wasn't even really defending himself and seemed to be intent on hiding an even deeper problem than the one tweet he was accused of sending? I've been an active participant on this site for years and have a great respect for the intelligence and opinions of many, many people on this site. I'm not inclined to think they're stupid about much of anything.
So, we're left with a case of collective insanity, which I have to say I think is a fair characterization of the matter. I wish Rep. Weiner's apology could could get back the hours folks spent analyzing meta-data and chasing down "leads" into every corner of the twitterverse. I tried to sound my own warnings -- even as I read what folks were finding, all I saw there were signs this was going to get a lot worse. The tweets that were found suggested that Breitbart and his cohorts had a lot worse to bring forward. Mostly, it seemed they were hoping to get Weiner to issue a flat denial that could hang him with. So, it was a dangerous insanity -- because it threatened to consume so much more...to destroy the credibility of more than just Anthony Weiner.
That really brings me to the ultimate point. We on the left must remain rooted in reality and not succumb to the same conspiratorial and ultimately cannibalistic impulses that are devouring the right-wing. The right-wing has lost its credibility, but when we on the left act in equally ridiculous ways, we help only to bring the left down to their level. I effect, we make them credible because they can now point to the DailyKos and credibly argue: "these people are nuts."
Anthony Weiner has learned his lesson. Hopefully, a lot of men -- and there must be millions -- who do similar things will also learn the lesson, even if they won't be stalked on the internet by political opponents looking to expose them. The real sin isn't in being caught, of course -- though it was doubly stupid for someone in Weiner's position to be doing all this. The real sin is that this kind of nonsense can drag down the Democrats, drag down left-wing bloggers, and drag down the progressive agenda. We have to be better than this. Keep our feet on the ground and our minds focused on what really matters.