Watched too much MSNBC the last couple of days

As I said in my prior JE, it's awful.

The obsession with Weiner's weiner is absurd, and I have to say I feel for the guy. If there ever was a situation where it's legitimate for a politician to "lie" about something, it's where people are asking personal questions they shouldn't be asking in the first place, whose true answer would never reflect in any way upon any principles the politician has ever claimed to be supportive of.

The similar situation with Bill Clinton was at least fractionally more legitimate in that the claim was that Clinton may or may not have lied during a legal deposition, and if he hadn't lied he certainly had used language that was misleading, but none of this applies here. Weiner is not the head of state, he's not someone who's committed a legal offense by lying, the only real victim here is the one person he's personally responsible to come what may, election or no election - and that victim's situation is arguably a million times worse because of the media attention.

And as I've said on Twitter, what's the coverage of Weiner's weiner vs the coverage of the fact that Breitbart - and others - lied about ACORN, what ACORN is, and what ACORN does, going so overboard as to ultimately killing an organization that was doing good work sticking up for the little guy.

I'm almost tempted to suggest that the Breitbart angle is exactly why the media is covering this to the degree they are: to report Breitbart lied about ACORN is to admit their own complicity in ACORN's downfall as they amplified the lies about it. To report on Weiner's weiner is, therefore, a counter to this, a case where they can say "Yes, we report what Breitbart says, but look, we have a real scandal to report on as a result of this!"

There is no real scandal, but the media certainly can turn nothing into one if they have to.