The Three Lies of Andrew Breitbart
Just kidding! Obviously there are many, many, many more lies. But a video released yesterday of Breitbart yucking it up with the folks at Opie and Anthony while passing around a photo of Anthony Weiner's cock—a rather cavalier little party trick that resulted in a photo-of-a-photo-of-a-photo of the cock shot seen 'round the world making its way on to Twitter and this here web site—exposes three. Let's take them in turn:
1. Opie and Anthony Secretly Recorded Me
In his statement on the release of the photo, Breitbart claimed that "somehow, without my knowledge or permission," a photo of the cock shot on his phone was captured. (Briefly, here's how the pic came out, according to Opie: As Breitbart's phone got passed around the room, a stationery camera recording the show's live stream picked up a glimpse. An alert viewer grabbed a screencap of that shot and emailed it to Anthony. As Anthony was looking at that screencap on his phone, Opie took a photograph of Anthony's phone and posted it to Twitter. So it was a photograph of a photograph of a screencap of a photograph.) Last night on Fox News, Breitbart told Greta van Susteren that Opie and Anthony "surreptitiously" recorded his appearance. In other words, Breitbart claims to have had no idea there was a camera in the room that might capture his phone.
As Little Green Footballs has noted, that's a fairly obvious lie, given the fact that the video above proves that a handheld camera was sitting right in front of Breitbart's face during the interview. Unless Breitbart was still so blitzed from his night out "draaankin" with Anthony and Ann Coulter earlier that week that he failed to notice it.
2. Jim Norton Promised Me There Were No Cameras In the Studio
Despite the plain evidence that there was a camera recording him, Breitbart also claimed to Van Susteren that co-host Jim Norton specifically and affirmatively told him there were no cameras, an assurance that lowered Breitbart's guard and induced him to share the image: "I said make sure you don't show it to anyone, and Jim Norton said, 'There aren't any cameras here.' [I]t's very troubling for an employee of Sirus XM to say, 'there are no cameras here,' and then you find out that there are cameras here and they're going against their word and taping it, it's deeply problematic."
According to the Breitbart standard, by which the failure of a video camera to capture an event is definitive evidence that the event did not happen and that anyone claiming the event did happen is a liar, Breitbart is lying. Watch the video. Do you hear Norton telling him there are no cameras? That means Norton did not tell him there are no cameras. Nor did Breitbart say, "Don't show it to anyone." What he did say was, "If I were to title this, and I'm like a photo editor at the AP, I would call it two-balls-one-shaft.jpg," and "Oh, he's an excited chap," and "unless he has that hair disease where you don't have any hair," Weiner's been shaving his pubic hair.
3. I Was Just Trying to Do the Decent Thing For Weiner's Family
Breitbart explained his decision not to release the cock shot this way at his impromptu press conference opening for Weiner this week: "I have no intention to release that photo.... I'm doing this to save his family, OK? And if this guy wants to start fighting with me again, I have this photo. But I'm not doing this for nefarious purposes... I'm trying to do the decent thing here and not release the photo." The next day, he told NBC News' Matt Lauer that if he could destroy it, he would: "I don't know what to do. If there's a place where I could go publicly burn it.... I can't foresee a circumstance in which I would release that. I don't think I want to put his family through that type of thing."
As you can see, Breitbart's idea of treating Weiner's family decently is flashing around Weiner's cock to his drinking buddies for shits and giggles. If only I could somehow burn it publicly!
Of course, the right thing to do in this instance would have been to simply publish the photo immediately and not try to pose as some sort of dignified messenger. Because no one believes that you are, Andrew.
[Photos via Getty Images]