We won’t pretend to know the truth behind Weinergate whether Weiner was the victim of a hacker or prankster or conservative conspiracy, or whether he was personally responsible for sending a college girl a photo of a man’s bulge over Twitter. But what’s clear is that Weiner is only inviting more suspicion on himself by the way he’s handling the attention. During an encounter with reporters earlier today, Weiner refused to answer any questions about the incident, including whether that was his own package in the photo, why he contacted a lawyer instead of law enforcement, and why he was following the college student on Twitter in the first place. Instead, he pointed reporters to his previous statements (which don’t actually address those questions) and expressed his desire to move on to more important business.
If Weiner is truly innocent of Internet hanky-panky, such questions would indeed be irritating and tiresome. And on conservative blogs like the Daily Caller, where the angle of Weiner’s penis at rest is being closely scrutinized, the treatment of the controversy is becoming absurd, and frankly, gross. But dodging easily answerable questions is definitely not the way to make it all go away. For example, something like, “No, that was not my penis. I know this because I didn’t take a photo of my penis,” would have been a perfectly fine response. The mainstream press, at least, would be satisfied.
Evading questions, however, is a strategy most often utilized by people with something to hide, and will only further pique the media’s interest. Weiner either has something to hide, or he has no idea how the media operates.
Liberal congressman plays down Twitter controversy over lewd photo [CNN]
Update: In a separate and lengthier scrum with reporters, Weiner continued to refuse to answer questions about the Twitter incident. He also became more combative, even referring to a CNN producer at one point as a “jackass”:
