I was going to add this on to the earlier Breitbart post as an update, but it really deserves its own slot. You know why Breitbart isn't a real journalist and never will be? Do you need further proof that he's a loathsome, unscrupulous turd and nothing more, regardless of how vehemently he may demand professional and personal respect?
Well, how about this: The "X-rated" picture of Anthony Weiner that Breitbart has been boasting about, the one he called his "insurance policy?" It's now apparently leaked online. How did it get out, you ask? Because this morning Breitbart was doing a guest spot on the Opie and Anthony show -- the latest stop on his victory lap -- and he proudly flashed the picture to the show's crew; he apparently carries it around on his iPhone like a trophy, the post-modern digital-age scandal equivalent of his quarry's head on the wall above his fireplace. Needless to say, someone on the show either surreptitiously or right out in the open snapped his own picture of the picture and put it up on Twitter. Voila, what is allegedly Anthony Weiner's erect, naked cock is now available to anyone with access to the internet (in other words, anyone on earth).
I want you to imagine for a second any other journalist in America -- any respectable gatherer and disseminator of news and information -- being so fucking mind-blowingly juvenile as to show off a picture of a U.S. congressman's penis just because he happened to have it. Yeah, Weiner screwed up by putting it out there in the first place, but can you even fathom the notion of, say, Bob Woodward gloating over the spoils of an investigation -- particularly one that took a high personal toll on an elected official, his family and, arguably, the country -- to the point where he revealed them to the crew of a fucking shock-jock radio show? The word "unethical" doesn't even begin to cover it, although at this point I'd expect nothing less from a bottom-feeding douche like Breitbart.
For the record, I've never held back when it comes to my appreciation for the Opie and Anthony show. I started listening to it years ago on WNEW in New York City and I'm a regular listener now that it's on Sirius XM; it's a funny as hell show and the guys who host it are for the most part whip-smart. The only time I tune out, though -- well, besides whenever terminally unfunny Rich Vos is on -- is when they start talking politics. This is because, while Opie tends to stay out of the way and Jimmy Norton is at least balanced in his views, Anthony is tyranically reactionary to the point of being intolerable. For a bright guy, he's an almost unimaginably laughable stereotype: a white multi-millionaire man-child who stalks around his mansion on Long Island fetishistically carrying a gun on his hip just in case one of the welfare queens he blames for taking all his hard-earned money -- that would be the money he makes working 4-hours-a-day -- breaks in and tries to kill him. He's like Howard Hughes, right down to the paranoid racism, if Hughes had never actually created anything worthy of a legacy. Again, funny as hell guy, but completely batshit when it comes to his far-right politics.
My point is that the O & A crew had a hand in circulating this picture -- the one that neither you, nor I, nor anyone else really needs to see, since we all kind of got the point -- but they're not the ones truly to blame here. They're shock-jocks; they're paid to push boundaries, indiscriminately ridicule, and basically be overgrown adolescents. They never claimed to be worthy of anyone's trust.
But Breitbart? I thought he was a journalist.
By the way, if you want to see the unedited photo it's not hard to find. I'm not posting a link to it here, though. Do your own heavy lifting on this one.
Update: Breitbart, as expected, is placing the blame squarely on the O & A show crew: "This is the first time that someone surreptitiously grabbed a photo of it. This is a complete breach of our arrangement that the photo would not be made public. It was a complete violation of trust," he said during an interview with, of course, Fox News.
Right. Except that, as I said, a shock-jock radio show isn't expected to abide by any personal or professional code of ethical conduct. Breitbart, if he truly considers himself a journalist, is. But the temptation was just too much for him; he had to show the other kids on the playground the dirty picture he had in his pocket so they could all have a good laugh about it and he could be the big guy. Breitbart is either being thoroughly dishonest about this or he's just flat-out stupid, neither of which should surprise anyone either way.
I really do love Breitbart; you can always count on him to show his true colors. Just three days ago he was demanding an apology from Anthony Weiner and now Anthony Weiner -- who's by no means innocent in any of this -- is within his rights to demand an apology from him. And everyone else can go right back to regarding Andrew Breitbart as what he is and has been from the very beginning: a fucking low-life.
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