"I’m not so egotistical as to believe that it has to be me, or it can only be me, to turn things around..."

It's the other woman: Sarah Palin.

An example of Newsweek's subtle approach to undermining Palin:

Palin has also become conversant on the subject of quantitative easing, the inflationary effects of which she illustrated with a personal anecdote. “I was ticked off at Todd yesterday,” she said. “He walks into a gas station as we’re driving over from Minnesota. He buys a Slim Jim—we’re always eating that jerky stuff—for $2.69. I said, ‘Todd, those used to be 99 cents, just recently!’ And he says, ‘Man, the dollar’s worth nothing anymore.' A jug of milk and a loaf of bread and a dozen eggs—every time I walk into that grocery store, a couple of pennies more...”

So does she understand quantitative easing or not? There's no answer. The anecdote is about inflation, which we all understand, and it's put in that paragraph as if it reflects her comprehension of the much more difficult concept, about which Newsweek provides zero information.

They choose an unflattering cover photo too.

"Murdoch hacking crisis deepens with war dead outcry."

Let's get up to speed on the big scandal.

"Dominique Strauss-Kahn's ever-loyal wife is plotting her revenge."

That's the headline in the Daily News, supported by — it appears — a single text: "Let's not forget those who spit in our face." She sent that to friends, then wrote: "We were right not to have any doubts!"

If you read the whole article — it's short — you'll see that the woman's story isn't one of plotting revenge, but old-fashioned wifely dedication. But women in the news must be reshaped into entertaining characters for the fun-hungry readers.

And yes, I know, the traffic I'm giving them rewards them more than my criticism, but I am not vengeful. I am a humble observer of the web, dedicated to sharing my observations with you, doing my part, in the search for truth. Am I not a sufficiently entertaining woman for you fun-hungry readers?

The local Madison newspaper can't handle the word "all."

Here is the Capital Times's editorial about the Wisconsin Supreme Court:

All of the defenders of Supreme Court Justice David Prosser would have Wisconsinites believe the man who had admitted to shouting obscenities at Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson before threatening to “destroy” her, and who now stands accused of trying to choke Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, is just a victim.

All who defend Prosser want people to believe he's just a victim? Why would a newspaper that cares at all about its credibility write like that? The usage collapses on its own lack of internal cohesion. There's no way the Capital Times has checked out everyone who has attempted to defend Prosser. And who could believe that — in amongst all those defenders — not a single person had seen any complexity in the story, that they all said he's just a victim?

It's knee-jerk politics too, but can you even stand to read it long enough to form an opinion of the politics? The first word of the first sentence repels the thinking reader.

"Why hasn't Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson held a news conference and said something along the lines of 'OK, we get it...'"

"'... We understand the public has lost respect for some justices and perhaps even come to doubt the court's credibility. We understand there are bitter divisions that occasionally explode into personal attacks. We agree with the public that physical attacks have no place in the court. More important, we understand the need to do something. We're going to spend a weekend on retreat with a mediator who will help us deal with our differences so that they don't ever again blow up into physical attacks or fistfights or chokeholds or altercations that demean this office.'"

Asks the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. How can you write that out and not immediately see the answer to your own question? Judges just don't do things like that. It would be great for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to figure out a way to look like... a court. (And by "court," I mean the ideal of a court possessed by ordinary citizens who care about the role of the courts in a democratic system.) But a news conference like that wouldn't seem judicial at all. Bringing in an outside mediator, turning yourselves into a geriatric therapy group — how can talking about that work?

Judges are supposed to work out their human frailty problems outside of public view. Which is why the "chokehold" incident should never have been leaked to the press. That's why my writing on the subject has focused on who leaked and why. I would like to think that it was someone other than one of the Justices, someone who didn't understand the stakes for the prestige of the court. If it was, in fact, one of the Justices, what was the reason? Why would you damage the reputation of the court like that instead of working on resolving the problems quietly internally?

And don't tell me: Because choking somebody is a serious crime! If it were that straightforward, the choker should have been arrested — or the charge should have come to light — shortly after the incident. Instead, a politically partisan journalist broke the story 12 days later. Someone made a decision to go public through him, and that makes it look like a political tactic. Is that someone a supreme court justice? Intolerable.

"Journalism has become a form of litigation."

"It's not about finding the truth; it's about advocating theories and presenting facts in a way that ensures that one 'side' wins."

Lueders responds to my post about him, saying "We absolutely did not have information about an alternative version that we purposely withheld."

"When we became aware of this alternative version. we included it. We further updated the piece to reflect that Justice Bradley has refuted this alternative version as 'spin.'"

I respond in an update at the original post. The point of this post is: 1. To direct you there, 2. To give you a fresh place to comment, and 3. To pull that particular quote for the purpose of highlighting its passivity and lack of curiosity.

"When we became aware of this alternative version. we included it." Is that investigative journalism? Aren't you supposed to think critically, generate questions, and probe — not sit back and wait for further information to arrive and then let us know when you "become aware" of it? You should seek awareness.  The story you passed on was bizarre on its face. You don't even need to be an investigative journalist to have a lot of questions about it.

Me, I'm always suspicious about things that don't look right... even that period after "alternative version."

ADDED: Rereading Lueders's vague comment the next morning makes me want to be especially clear about what we know about the questions I asked in my original post. The key question that framed the post was: How many sources, total, spoke to Lueders and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel? Both spoke of having 3 sources, but since all were unnamed, we never knew whether there was overlap, and so there could have been as many as 6 or as few as 3. With Bradley later making a statement by name, we may now have 7 sources, but the total number may still be as few as 3. I still don't know whether the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel got more detail from individuals to whom Lueders spoke or whether it turned up sources that Lueders couldn't get a response from, and Lueders does not say.

Lueders wrote in his comment on my post:

We had as reported "at least three" sources for the statement that Prosser allegedly put his hands around Bradley's neck. We also spoke to others who declined to give any information about what occurred. No one said or suggested in any way, shape or form that Bradley was the aggressor, a charge that Prosser himself has not made. 

No one said... but did Lueders probe with questions? What was the political affiliation of the sources? Did they have a motivation to present incomplete facts? Did Lueders share that motivation? That would explain the failure to probe with the obvious questions that spring immediately to the ordinary reader's mind. Lueders just says that they didn't come forward spontaneously with any allegations that made Bradley look bad, they didn't suggest anything, and that was good enough for Lueders, the supposed investigative reporter.

Lueders notes that Prosser has refrained from making a specific allegation about Bradley, but Prosser did say the charge against him would be shown false. It's true, as Lueders says that Prosser hasn't specifically alleged that Bradley was the aggressor, but if you look closely at Lueders's comment, you can see that he doesn't have Bradley specifically denying that she charged at him with fists raised. He only says that she "ridiculed the contention that this was somehow her fault" and that the story was "spin." The word "spin" reflects an opinion about how people are characterizing the facts. It's not an apt way to deny the facts. Calling something spin is itself spin. And ridiculing the idea that one is at fault is also a characterization of the facts rather than an assertion of facts. That is, it's spin.

At this point, Bradley and Prosser have done the same thing: claimed innocence with respect to facts that unnamed sources have supplied.

How stupid/evil was Bill Lueders's attack on Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser?

Yesterday morning, I first read the story written by Bill Lueders — of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism — saying that "Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser allegedly grabbed fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley around the neck in an argument in her chambers earlier this month."

I'm linking to the publication of the article in the Wisconsin State Journal, because it seems to be the original version of what Lueders wrote. The version that now appears at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism has been — according to a note in red at the top, time-stamped 10:15 p.m. — "updated to reflect reports of a statement from Prosser denying the allegations." But "updated" does not mean that there is an update at the bottom of the original text, adding new material or noting mistakes. The article has been rewritten, so the flaws that I am going to write about here can no longer be detected.

I first read the Lueders article after it was noted in an email that went out to the Wisconsin Law School faculty. I won't quote that email, but my immediate emailed response was: "I think it would make an interesting object of study for a journalism class."

By the way, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, as you might imagine, purports to model high journalism values. It is "a first-of-its-kind alliance with public broadcasting journalists in six cities around the state, plus students and faculty of the journalism school at Wisconsin’s flagship university." Wisconsin's "flagship university" is, of course, the University of Wisconsin—Madison, my place of employment. I'm not inclined to hurt my own university, but I will make my observations as I see them. This is an object of study for the little journalism class of the internet that is this blog post.

Over the course of the day, yesterday, on lefty blogs and Twitter, there were vicious attacks on Prosser, with many opponents of Prosser (and Scott Walker) asserting that Prosser must leave the court. He should resign (or be impeached or recalled). I linked to a blog post over at Think Progress, where Ian Millhiser concluded:

Should the allegations against Prosser prove true, it is tough to imagine a truer sign that our political system has broken down than if the calls to remove him from office are not unanimous.

I agreed with Millhiser that "if it's true Prosser reached a breaking point and started strangling Bradley, he should go." But I wanted to know the whole story. It seemed to me that Lueders had given us "just the snapshot of one hard-to-comprehend instant within the longer event."  I was skeptical about the version of the story Lueders had put out, because there had been no arrest and because I found it hard to picture an elderly, dignified man suddenly grabbing a (somewhat less elderly) woman by the neck.

I first noted the Lueders article in this post, where I excerpted 2 paragraphs and wondered about Lueders's reference to his sources: "The sources spoke on the condition that they not be named, citing a need to preserve professional relationships." Lueders said he had "three knowledgeable sources," and that he had contacted Prosser for a response and that Prosser had said "I have nothing to say about it."

He repeated this statement after the particulars of the story - including the allegation that there was physical contact between him and Bradley - were described. He did not confirm or deny any part of the reconstructed account.

Later in the day, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel came out with an article that revealed more complexity to the allegations. I wrote about that post last night, noting the account of "a source" who had spoken to "several" of the justices who witnessed the incident (there were "[a]t least five"), and said that Prosser "put his hands around" Bradley's neck, without "exert[ing] any pressure," which Bradley "described as a chokehold."

The Journal Sentinel then cites "another source" that said "that Bradley attacked Prosser." Here we get the first allegation that Bradely "charged him with fists raised" and that Prosser "put his hands in a defensive posture," blocking her, resulting in hand-neck contact.

The Journal Sentinel begins a new paragraph with "Another source..." If that is not miswritten, we now have a third source — "another" and then "another" — that's the second and third source. This third source, like the second source, has Bradley coming at Prosser "with fists up" and Prosser reacting defensively. This source — which I'm seeing as the Sentinel's third source — confirms the first source in saying that Bradley called it choking at the time. This source also has a Justice (not Prosser) reacting by saying "You were not choked."

Now, we've just reviewed the stories of various unnamed sources, as reported by Lueders and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. What I want to know is: What is the total number of sources? Is it 6? 5? 4? Or is it 3? It could be only 3! That is, 2 of Lueders's sources could have been the sources who gave the fuller context, with Bradley as the aggressor. What did Lueders know and when did he know it? Did Lueders have the fists-of-fury version of the story and deliberately leave it out? Did he leave it out when he contacted Prosser for a response and recited "the particulars of the story," the "reconstructed account" that he referred to in his article.

I told you this was going to be a little journalism class. Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, will you investigate your own journalism?

Maybe Prosser had "nothing to say about it" because the "reconstructed account" Lueders recited contained the allegation that Bradley charged at him with raised fists. Prosser did comment later in the day — a day full of destructive attacks on him, which speculated about the meaning of his absence of comment. Those attacks assumed that Prosser knew the story in the form that would appear in Lueders's article. But did he? I want to know!

In my last post of the day, commenting on the Journal Sentinel article, I said: 

I want to know not only what really happened at the time of the physical contact (if any) between the 2 justices, but also who gave the original story to the press. If Prosser really tried to choke a nonviolent Bradley, he should resign. But if the original account is a trumped-up charge intended to destroy Prosser and obstruct the democratic processes of government in Wisconsin, then whoever sent the report out in that form should be held responsible for what should be recognized as a truly evil attack.

When I wrote that, it did not cross my mind that the "truly evil" person might be Lueders himself. That's something occurred to me when I woke up this morning and began thinking about the possibility that the total number of unnamed sources was only 3.

Lueders needs to tell us whether or not he knew the Bradley-as-the-aggressor story when he presented his original work of investigative journalism under the name of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. If he knew it, why didn't he present the whole context at first? And what was in the "reconstructed account" that got Prosser to decline comment? If Lueders didn't know the alternate version of the story, in which Bradley was the aggressor, why on earth didn't he know? The story he presented is so weird that any thinking person would demand to know more of the context. Did Lueders keep himself willfully ignorant of the more complicated version of the story, and if he did, why? What kind of journalism is that? Truly evil?

Now, let's go back to what Ian Millhiser said: "Should the allegations against Prosser prove true, it is tough to imagine a truer sign that our political system has broken down than if the calls to remove him from office are not unanimous." All right, Mr. Millhiser, I appeal to you. Let's be unanimous about this and show that our political system has not broken down. I agreed with you that if Prosser did what Lueders's story made it seem that he did, Prosser should resign. By your own standard, will you say that if Bradley initiated the physical aggression, running at Prosser with raised fists, that the integrity of our political system demands that there be unanimous calls for Bradley to be removed?

Finally, it must be said: If Lueders had the larger context of the story — including the allegation that Bradley was the aggressor — and he suppressed it in his original account, what he did was not only evil, shameful journalism, it was freaking stupid. All sorts of bloggers and tweeters like Millhiser committed themselves to the firm, righteous position that if Prosser did what is alleged, he must leave the court. Lueders's article lured them into stating a firm and supposedly neutral principle about physical aggression. With that principle in place, they are bound to call for Bradley's ouster, if Bradley really did take the offensive and transform the verbal argument into a physical fight.

And what are the methods of ouster? Refer to the list in Millhiser's post: 1. Resignation, 2. Impeachment, 3. Removal by Address, and 4. Recall. A newly reelected official, under Wisconsin law, cannot be recalled for a year. Unlike Prosser, who was just reelected, Bradley is subject to recall. Impeachment and removal by address are procedures that take place in the state legislature. But the state legislature is controlled by the Republicans, who aren't likely to go after Prosser. Only Bradley is vulnerable to impeachment and removal by address if the legislature is influenced by political ideology. And if either justice is removed, the replacement will be named by Governor Scott Walker, so only Bradley's ouster will change the conservative-liberal balance on the court.

See what I mean about stupid? If Lueders didn't know the allegation about Bradley after doing his investigative journalism, that was stupid. How could he investigate and not find that out?  If Lueders did know the allegation and suppressed it he was not merely stupid but evil. And make no mistake about how stupid: His article initiated a day of furious writing by liberals that threatens to hurt Bradley and the liberal interests in Wisconsin.

ADDED: I corrected a mistake in the paragraph that begins "Maybe Prosser had 'nothing to say about it'..." It was originally missing the word "had" and said "the 'reconstructed account' Lueders recited contained the allegation" instead of "the 'reconstructed account' Lueders recited did not contain the allegation..." UPDATE: It was right the first time, as someone in the comments pointed out! I uncorrected it. And now it's un-uncorrected. Sorry for the confusion!

ALSO: Instapundit says: "It’s as if the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism is just a partisan hit shop or something."

IN THE COMMENTS: Bill Lueders himself responds:

As our original story reported, the Center and WPR made individual inquiries to every member of the Supreme Court...

We had as reported "at least three" sources for the statement that Prosser allegedly put his hands around Bradley's neck. We also spoke to others who declined to give any information about what occurred. No one said or suggested in any way, shape or form that Bradley was the aggressor, a charge that Prosser himself has not made. The Journal Sentinel says it found sources who contend this, so we updated the story to reflect that, but I do not know who these sources are and have no way to gauge their credibility, as I do for the sources we had.

As you know, Justice Bradley has now publicly accused Prosser of putting his hands around her neck and ridiculed the contention that this was somehow her fault....

We absolutely did not have information about an alternative version that we purposely withheld.

So, it's a mystery how the Journal Sentinel came up with the 2 sources who portrayed Bradley as the physical aggressor. Lueders does not say whether he went back to his original sources to inquire about about the truth of that story — unless Bradley was one of the original sources. Whether Bradley was one of the original sources or not, he's giving us only an ambiguous statement with respect to the question whether she did anything like charging at Prosser with raised fists. We get the conclusory assertion — not in the form of a direct quote — that she "ridiculed the contention that this was somehow her fault." Her version could be that Prosser verbal statements made her extremely angry and refused to leave her office, so it was his fault that she ran at him with raised fists. What exactly happened? Why didn't she call the police?

Lueders doesn't say how much (if at all) he probed into the context of what happened. I'm puzzled by his lack of curiosity about a story that is so inherently hard to believe. Why did the Journal Sentinel so quickly turn up a more complex version of the story? Was Lueders willfully incurious? Why did he pass on such an odd story without asking the questions that an ordinary person would instinctively ask? Or did he ask those questions? Did his sources insist that Bradley was sitting or standing peacefully and Prosser suddenly lunged at her? Or did he snap up the useful version of the story and run with it? It just doesn't add up to me.

A nicely intense exchange between Jon Stewart and Chris Wallace.

Say what you will, I loved this balance of hostility and respect... and facts and emotion.

(Via Memeorandum.)

"It was always kind of fuzzy whether he was engaged in journalism or a kind of guerrilla social justice law operation where the ends justified the means..."

"David [Protess] was not totally irresponsible. He was zealot in pursuit of a cause, a cause you could not question.”

Will the "lamestream" journalists now look straight into the camera and proclaim Sarah Palin a media genius?

"The Daily Show" had a great montage of the idiotic media excitement over Sarah Palin's email.

A few thoughts:

1. This intense eagerness to get Sarah Palin for whatever it is she might have done on line unfolded concurrently with all the attention that had to be paid to Anthony Weiner for his on-line antics. What we can't see is the agony the poor journalists must have endured as Weiner's wienerisms hurt the Democratic Party just when they stood ready to damage the Republican Party with Sarah's misdeeds. And then — oh, how awful! — they got nothing from Sarah. Nothing but hard work and — urrrgghhh! — good government and — damn! — family values.

2. The fact that there was nothing was actually news, and the journalists should have protected their integrity — appearance of integrity — by reporting the nothing with clarity. In the run up to the receipt of the boxes of xeroxes, air time was devoted to speculating about what might be in those emails. Most notable — it's in the middle of the "Daily Show" montage — was the suspicion that the governor's husband was secretly running the show, pulling the strings. (You know, the shameful sexism.) But there was absolutely nothing that looked at all like that. Maybe there's another montage that could be made of these reporters spelling out clearly what was disproved by the emails. But I think what they did was dribble out statements like "no smoking gun yet" — seemingly expecting that we'd gradually lose interest and move on to something else.

3. Let's credit Sarah Palin for phenomenal, hilarious restraint. She knew there was nothing that would hurt her in there. She resisted the disclosure for legitimate privacy reasons, but she had to also know that the revelation of nothingness would backfire on her disgustingly salivating opponents. Her designation of them as "lamestream media" is vividly vindicated. And, because there was nothing, the invasion of her privacy looks especially unkind. Finally, she knew that the most interesting thing in the big box was the full text of the letter from God. She'd edited it down for publication in her memoir "Going Rogue." It might have seemed maudlin to reprint the whole thing at that point. But now we get the entire missive, and we're stunned and weeping. Oh, Sarah! The idiot is a genius!

People who believed in the "Gay Girl in Damascus" need to explain why they believed this person was real and not fictional.

I'm not interested in the 40-year-old man who pretended to be young, Syrian, and lesbian. I'm interested in how intelligent people allowed themselves to be taken in.

For nearly a week, the world followed the saga of Amina Arraf, the blogger who was celebrated for her passionate, often intimate writings about the Syrian government’s crackdown on Arab Spring protesters. Those writings stopped abruptly last Monday, and in a posting on her blog, “A Gay Girl in Damascus,” a cousin said Amina had been hauled away by government security agents.

News of her disappearance became an Internet and media sensation. The U.S. State Department started an investigation. But almost immediately skeptics began asking: Had anyone ever actually met Amina? On Wednesday, pictures of her on the blog were revealed to have been taken from a London woman’s Facebook page.

Almost immediately... How slow on the uptake can you be and still get credit for catching on quickly. There are many ways to embarrass yourself in new media. Anthony Weiner made it very clear to us what one way is. He embarrassed himself. In the "Gay Girl in Damascus" incident, it is not the blogger (Tom MacMaster) who embarrassed himself. It's everyone who believed in the fiction and spread it around as truth without checking.

News organizations around the world, including The Washington Post, reported on the blogger’s disappearance Tuesday.

Mainstream media got played. Idiots!

"Hunkered down in her trailer in the Texas Panhandle..."

"... a grandmother who had a vision that sparked a media circus and police search for alleged mass graves in Liberty County said she is being wronged and fears for children who may never be found."

"It’s really outrageous. The implication is outrageous. First of all, if you ask the question, if it’s outrageous, I have a right to say it’s outrageous. It’s outrageous..."

Replaying Anthony Weiner when he was in full liar mode. This interview with ABC's Jonathan Karl is now hilarious. Don't just read it. Play the clip to experience the intensity of the pressure Weiner brazenly applies to Karl. He tries to shame Karl: you did "zero research," you don't "understand how social networks work," you're impugning the ordinary people who follow me, you're making "a pretty charged supposition," "Do you really think that’s fair question? I mean do you?," I am "a person who’s married"...

... I want you to take it seriously that when you ask a question like that it  is charged with implication and it is simply not fair. It is not fair to me. It’s not fair to my family. It’s not fair to that poor girl who’s now been besieged because of the implication.... I would urge you. I would urge you my friend to refocus on what you think the actual issue is. This is a Twitter hoax, a prank that was done. I was the victim of this. This poor girl was the victim of this.

... This poor girl! I was the victim! Unfair! Unfair! What a terrible journalist you are! Shame!

Every would-be journalist should study this clip. This is what lying looks like. This is how a powerful, ambitious individual endeavors to push you back.

Do some perceptual learning. Develop an eye and an ear for lying.

Politico says: "Sarah Palin's bus tour leaves GOP cold."

Evidence?

While Palin has reveled in giving an extended one-fingered salute to the national press, refusing to give out details about her travel schedule and forcing reporters to literally chase her vehicle up I-95 in order to cover her, she reached out to precious few activists and party leaders in the states she visited.

So "leaves [them] cold" means that she was cold to them? In normal English usage, when you say X leaves Y cold, it means that Y isn't responding to X's overtures. It's not another way of saying X cold-shouldered Y.

Pennsylvania Republican Party Chairman Rob Gleason, whose state hosted Palin on visits to Gettysburg and the Liberty Bell, voiced a common exasperation about Palin’s tour: “I don’t think theater wins elections.”

“Running for president is a very serious thing and you need to deal with it as such,” Gleason said. “I’m looking for party builders.”

How far down on the list did Politico go to get a GOP politico to give the quote it wanted for an article disparaging Palin's bus tour? (And I love the locution "whose state hosted." Americans have a right to travel from state to state. We don't need the state to extend any invitation or hospitality. )

In New York – where Palin stopped at Ellis Island – GOP Rep. Peter King mused that the Alaskan “probably has more hardcore support than any other candidate.”

“But she needs to show that she can go beyond that, and this tour doesn’t accomplish that,” said King, who is urging Rudy Giuliani to enter the 2012 race.

So... King is pushing another candidate.

To former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, Palin’s visit to his state seemed more or less irrelevant. Asked for his thoughts on her arrival Thursday, the Republican shrugged: “I don’t think she’s running.”

Because nobody's more relevant than John Sununu.

Conclusion: The evidence in Politico's article is best seen as evidence of Politico's desire to undermine Sarah Palin.

"In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth."

The true believer is Jill Abramson, the new executive editor of the New York Times, replacing Bill Keller (who replaced).

Let's analyze the analogy. A newspaper is like religion, believed in, and taken, unquestioningly, as true. Then what happens when you are in charge of it?

1. You have a deep moral obligation to insure that it is absolutely true, to respect the faith that others put in it and to preserve and grow the community of believers because of your dedication to truth, or...

2. You are embedded in the faith, carrying on the commitment to the idea that it is the truth and impressing that faith that it is the truth on readers, so that they keep looking to you as the mouthpiece of truth and don't go wandering off looking for some other viewpoints.

It could be #1 or #2 or both or neither.

"Rep. Anthony Weiner follows only a select 198 of his nearly 49,000 Twitter fans — and a surprising number of them are total babes."

The NY Post does some investigative journalism.

And includes this video, where Weiner looks so uncomfortable that I'm feeling pretty sorry for him... and then he up and calls CNN's Capitol Hill producer Ted Barrett a "jackass."



The man is stressed. Would it really be so bad to check out who's following you on Twitter and — there's always a little picture — click "follow" if the follower looks cute?

IN THE COMMENTS: johnroberthenry questions the veracity... of the pie scenario:

Weiner talked several times about a guy in the back of an audience of 145,000 people throwing a pie at him.

I would be amazed if he could attract an audience of 145,000 people. Where would he make this speech? I suspect that only a NASCAR track would be big enough.

And then a guy in the back throws a pie at him? I'd like to meet that guy. He must have one HELL of an arm.

"Matt Drudge's disgusting race war awareness campaign."

As perceived and presented by Alex Pareene.

"Sarah Palin's bus tour treats reporters like paparazzi."

Ha ha. Great headline.

"The excuse that you're not breaking new gossip you're just helping to spread gossip seems like a pretty lame excuse."

Jack Craver — the Isthmus writer who did that hit piece on me — takes some heat for writing "Oh, and Herb Kohl is long-rumored to be gay." That came in the context of talking about whether Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin — who is openly gay — could run successfully for Herb Kohl's Senate seat.

If the question is what counts as outing? then it's not outing to report the existence of well-known rumors. How well-known are the rumors about Herb Kohl?

But the question isn't really how to define the term "outing." It's whether it's whether a journalist should bring up the subject of rumors in a particular context. Here, the context is whether an openly gay candidate will be successful running for an political position now held by a rumored-to-be-gay person. Another context where it might seem justified is reporting the rumored-to-be-gay person's vote on the repeal of Defense of Marriage Act or Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

I think the mainstream norm is to avoid mentioning the rumor and to wait until the person identifies himself as gay — even in those special contexts. Perhaps it depends on how obvious the rumors have been balanced against how gay-related the context is. And the thumb on the scales is: How edgy/mainstream do you want to be?

Isthmus is our "alternative newspaper." We could talk about what that term means. And Craver's on-line writing self-identifies as a "blog," whatever the hell that is.