Think about the last time you boasted, online or off, of your prowess. You wanted to be rewarded for it, right?
I have this to say to embattled Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York: Nice dick, Dumbass. Your sending sexually suggestive pictures to Twitter followers who ratted you out showed almost the same laughably poor judgment as I did when I mistook Hannah Hilton for Savanna Samson.
“All Vivid Girls look the same,” I thought in 2007 (and still think now), and you were probably thinking, “These ladies and I have an agreement. They will be honored by the photos I send to them.”
Porn stars, their representatives, and people hoping to become porn stars with my help send me sexually suggestive and explicit pictures every day. I engage in limited online flirtations and make lewd but intellectually stimulating comments to women I find attractive. My wife, whom I met while we were both working in the adult industry, would have every reason to be upset with me if I fucked anyone else without her permission.
That is our agreement.
The Weiner issue has become a lightning rod for sexual libertarians, who rightly point out that ordinary people do stuff like that every day.
Furthermore, they ask, who are we to cast judgment on whatever agreement Congressman Weiner might have with his own wife, whom he married last year in a ceremony officiated by none other than Bill Clinton?
In her call for an ethics investigation into whether Weiner used government resources to send a picture, via yFrog, of his underwear-clad erect penis, to a 21-year-old Twitter follower, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi seeks to determine if Weiner acted “in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.”
Well, of course it doesn’t reflect creditably on the House. Weiner is simply in the wrong job to be doing what he did, and he showed horrible judgment in sending such a private photo to a 21-year-old who [we’re not yet sure how the picture came to light] apparently turned around and made it public.
[UPDATE: The original story included the word “blackmail” in reference to the journalist Andrew Breitbart’s possession of salacious photos sent by Weiner. I am informed that blackmail is a legal term, and not a general term of art, as I had used it to describe the implied coercion here. I have redacted statements contained in the following paragraph]
Informed that the conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart was in possession of damning images, Weiner, who had previously denied sending photos and claimed his Twitter account had been hacked, Monday revealed that he had had six “inappropriate relationships” with women in the past three years.
Then several thumbnailed pictures from a Yahoo account connected to Weiner were brought to light. Finally, Sirius radio hosts Opie & Anthony quickly snapped a photo of the coup de grace: a tweeted image of Weiner’s erect penis that Breitbart had showed them (and other members of the media) to prove he had the incriminating photographs that he said he did.
Breitbart was clearly echoing Weiner when he accused the DJs of breaching his trust.
Naturally, Weiner considered what he was doing to be private, as did Elliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton. I assume that part of the rage each of these men displayed in their initial denials stemmed from a feeling that their privacy had been violated.
But the common sense taboos each of these men flouted in their assignations—don’t use electronic media, don’t use state funds, don’t use the Oval Office—seem so public that it is as if they wanted to be caught. Who would do such a thing if he didn’t want to be congratulated for it?
It’s when they don’t get congratulated that it becomes a privacy issue.
Doubtless more will emerge from Weinergate. There are already reports of his PR coaching of former porn performer Ginger Lee on their Twitter relationship. There remains the question of what their recipients thought of the Congressman’s thoughtful pictures, and if valuable government broadband resources were used to send them.
Everyone agrees it was a dumbass thing to do. But, depending on what side you’re on, a majority of the American people re-elected a dumbass-in-chief within the last couple of decades, and the country didn’t break.
But “Member of Congress” doesn’t mean the same thing to me anymore, and I guess a little bit of my innocence is gone.
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Bad Ass Frank—I’d Prather Not Be Pimpin; Does being a cad affect the ability to lead?; Client 9 and Natalie McLellan—Prostitutes provide great return of investment
See also: Politico—Anthony Weiner coached woman to lie
“Blackmail’s such an ugly word. I prefer extortion. The X makes it
sound cool.” – Bender, Futurama.
Gram my ol’ fruit, I don’t claim to know what I’m talking about, but have you ran this article past the slick legal department in Gram Towers, wildlife sanctuary and luxury heliport.
When you say “Under threat of blackmail by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart,”, does that not put you in potentially expensively-deep trouble as far as defamation goes. What-with blackmail being a specific illegal activity, and a public allegation of such illegal wrongdoing against someone with a personal and professional reputation to uphold; looks kinda dicey to me.
As for that whole section of your blogpost, let’s agree not to fall-out, let’s keep it whimsical pornoblog light, but I think the point is, not puritanical shock at sending photos of hard cocks, but sending photos of hard cocks and wanting it to stay secret, and being willing to lie and deceive and triangulate and falsely accuse to keep that secret … it’s not about privacy it’s about powerful elected officials, getting themselves into a position (and a myspace-angle) where they are open to blackmail and extortion. If he ended-up NY mayor, and those photos, or fuck knows how many other cock shots he has sent) made their way to a CEO tendering a bid, or a union boss, or a garbage-contractor wiseguy, then that kinda is a big fuckin problem I think.
It’s also about guys that we pay to do a job, to work for us, sitting half an inch from TV cameras and lying right to our faces.
Breitbart instead claims he kept the photo back as insurance … to make it crystal clear to Weiner and his operatives to leave the women alone, no attacks. He has, and we all have, seen how the party-machine went to work on a whole host of big-haired women that variously held press conferences in the past, with their accusations against all manner of sociopathic cunts that couldn’t keep their cock dry.
A brutally misogynist machine that was ruthlessly effective for decades right up till Monica kept the fuckin dress, that non-dry cleaned frock fucked ’em.
… I think therefore insurance sounds sensible, eminently sensible, and much, much, better than blackmail.
So like I say, maybe you’ve got access to better legal advice, or from experience know where the actual journalistic line is,
I’m just saying blackmail is generally considered a serious allegation to be throwing around … it’s for exactly that reason you’d never catch me jeopardising your blog by trying to claim that Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick, or that Mary Jo Kopechne wasn’t an accident, no chance, no fuckin way.
It is always a pleasure to see you here, Professor Feynman. You are no Simple Simon.
I have heard the Breitbart “insurance” angle, and I believe it is also true, but the coercive “if you do/do not do this I will not do/do this” element is redolent of blackmaily coercion. That said, your point is well taken, and I will amend the story to include both your comment and some lighter language around Breitbart’s assumed motivations.
I’m listening to back (issues?) of a great podcast by Mike Duncan calledd “The History of Rome” and we are just at the point in J. Caesar’s life where it is rumored that he is the “wife” of a foreign leader with whom Rome did business, and the allegations follow him throughout his career. Do our private lives affect our professional careers and thus have the chance to further positively or negatively affect countless innocent people? Yup. Who knows what Monica Lewinsky could have achieved had Vernon Jordan got her that job?
My conflict with the Weiner is that I fully support his ability within his own series of arrangements with the women in his private life to send those pictures and texts, but I can’t imagine the poor judgment he showed in one area being fully containable there. And I also believe that, in a game of Breitbart v. Weiner, wherein the latter committed the instigating act of foolishness and arrogance, that it is the convenient thing to do to believe that the eminent journo did not have an agenda of his own. Just as Weiner’s denials sounded false to me, so do Breitbart’s claims of being a friend to the people.
For the most part I’m pretty much a disinterested observer on this one … Just another dopey, creepy, pol that tripped over his dick on the way to tell all the rest of us how to behave.
But some of the disturbingly transparent attempts to re-frame and dismiss this as a privacy issue have been of genuine concern. These guys are unaccountable enough as it is. The equivocation by some apologists, the misdirection, the sheer volume of sand being thrown around and into our eyes has been unsettling.
Private life counts … character, honesty and integrity do still matter, in fact I’m pretty sure they are all that matters.
There is no private person and public person, they are the same person. You can tell, you never see them both in the room together.
But what really stood out for me in this farce was the Breitbart thing.
He campaigns on his perception of a damaging and dishonest hypocrisy and repressive double-standard in media and culture, and after seeing some of the shenanigans indulged in by that media over the last week or so, it genuinely becomes harder to disagree with his basic assertion. He might have a point.
He may have acted an ass, or been carelessly sloppy, or had ulterior motive, but from the outset, how quickly and how aggressively the guns were turned on him, the whistle-blower, and not the liar politician, was quite remarkable in its partisanship.
I don’t ever quite recall any rentboys outing a comically ‘phobic Republican getting anything like this sort of treatment.
The current notion that he chose to leak the photo, at this time, in this manner, to make himself a liar, to burn his insurance, and to be in the video as it occurred, willfully providing further ammunition to an already clearly hostile media seems unlikely to me.
Either way, the photo was gonna leak, it had to. It was everywhere.
Here’s a great Cartier-Bresson decisive moment of an ABC news producer flashing Weiner’s cock to Anne Coulter, a coupla days before Breitbart was a guest on Opie & Anthony.
http://www.mobypicture.com/user/anthonycumia/view/9730838
Noted big-juicy-politician-cock-expert Barbara Walters now insists she too saw the image days prior. Some of the media criticism of Breitbart’s sloppy phone-control therefore rings a little hollow. It seems the industry was selfishly enjoying the artwork for itself, but none thought it their duty to share evidence of political dishonesty and falsehood with us, the punters.
So, disintermediation, that’s what I’m thinking about right now. Breitbart represents an excitingly disruptive iconoclastic force, and a clear threat to a lazy and disingenuous media establishment that has failed, that is far too comfortable being in bed with a self-serving and corrupt political establishment, that clearly refuses to work for us, instead choosing to run interference for liars.
We get the politicians we deserve, and we get the news media we deserve, but how much of the former is due to the latter is an active concern. Who turned politics into pro-wrestling?
I’d therefore support Andrew Breitbart, the ACORN videos, the cock photos, and an up-front declared agenda, over any number of glossy revolving newsrooms looking to keep me spellbound, impotent and ignorant.
I’ll always take guys that look to break honest stories, over a news-media that looks to shoot-down guys that break stories, just because in this case he chose to go after the ‘wrong team’.
Oops, that ended up much longer than it looked in the little textbox as I typed it.
Sorry for that.