I officially know now that you can’t die from being a complete and utter hypocrite.   If you could, this exchange would have created a heart attack.

It only took two days.

After conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart claimed Monday he had an X-rated photo of Rep. Anthony Weiner, the purported image has surfaced on the Internet. And Breitbart’s not happy.

“I’m mortified,” Breitbart told Fox News.

The image of what are said to be Weiner’s genitals was posted online after Breitbart appeared on the satellite radio show of shock jocks Opie and Anthony Wednesday.

(Caution: graphic image)

Breitbart said that while he was in the studio, Opie — real name, Gregg Hughes — snapped a photo of the graphic image “without my permission.” Breitbart said he’s shown the image to other members of the media as proof of his claims, but until now nobody has made that image public.

“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,” Breitbart told Fox News. “It was a complete violation of trust.” 

Remember folks, it’s perfectly all right for Andrew Breitbart to publish photos that he stole, or someone else stole…but golly gee willickers if you do the exact same thing to him that he does to others…well…if that’s the case, you are the worst kind of scum.

Kinda like Andrew Breitbart.    This whole episode has been disgusting.  Now the the most disgusting part of it is claiming *again* victim status.

Update: Someone saying it better than I did…

What makes the Anthony Weiner story somewhat unique and thus worth discussing for a moment is that, as Hendrik Hertzberg points out, the pretense of substantive relevance (which, lame though it was in prior scandals, was at least maintained) has been more or less brazenly dispensed with here.  This isn’t a case of illegal sex activity or gross hypocrisy (i.e., David Vitter, Larry Craig, Mark Foley (who built their careers on Family Values) or Eliot Spitzer (who viciously prosecuted trivial prostitution cases)).  There’s no lying under oath (Clinton) or allegedly illegal payments (Ensign, Edwards).  From what is known, none of the women claim harassment and Weiner didn’t even have actual sex with any of them.  This is just pure mucking around in the private, consensual, unquestionably legal private sexual affairs of someone for partisan gain, voyeuristic fun and the soothing fulfillment of judgmental condemnation.  And in that regard, it sets a new standard: the private sexual activities of public figures — down to the most intimate details — are now inherently newsworthy, without the need for any pretense of other relevance.

Full post.

Yes, Anthony Weiner lied — about something that is absolutely nobody’s business but his and his wife’s.  If you’re not his wife, you have absolutely no legitimate reason to want to know about — let alone pass judgment on — what he does in his private sexual life with other consenting adults.

Mr. Greenwald does get it wrong a bit later though…

Can one even imagine how much different — and better — our political culture would be if our establishment media devoted even a fraction of the critical scrutiny and adversarial energy it devoted to the Weiner matter to things that actually matter?  But that won’t happen, because the people who comprise that press corps, with rare exception, are both incapable of focusing on things that matter and uninterested in doing so.

Hate to break it to you Glenn, but the people who drive the news business ain’t the reporters.    It’s the bean counters.  Weiners story hits the perfect mark for the modern media business…it’s got sex, it’s got deceptions, and it doesn’t cost a dang thing to cover.  It’s all opinion about sex, which humans love.  This leads to ratings, which leads to money, which leads to competitors copying your style.

And BTW, Glenn, you’d probably get more traction on this if all the rest of your reporting wasn’t about how everyone’s a crook and nobody does anything right.   Who wants to read that all day?