For what it's worth, I totally get why Andrew Weiner is doing the whole "I can't say with certitude"

First, is "certitude" really a world? The spelling checker recognizes it . . . ah, I see. "Certainty" is a measure of confidence in the accuracy of a factual question, while "certitude" is a measure of confidence in a matter of opinion.

Um. I think Representative Weiner is using the wrong word.

Anyway, for those of you who haven't been following this, a photo of a very well-filled pair of boxer-briefs was sent from the Twitter account of Representative Anthony Weiner to a female journalism student who was a follower of his Twitter feed, and who he, also followed.

Or, possibly, was sent from a spoof account that was set up to look like Weiner's account.

The journalism student and Representative Weiner have never met in person, and have apparently communicated only to the degree that relative strangers who follow each other's Twitter accounts would be expected to do so. So, there you go. Non-story, right? Somebody hacks the account of a public figure named Weiner to send someone a picture of someone's weiner, claiming that it's Weiner's weiner, and that Weiner is the kind of weiner who would send a picture of his weiner to someone. Okay. Not really that funny, but, whatever. Tasteless, but, heck, the picture isn't even particularly lewd -- it's completely covered, and even the networks don't feel that there's a real problem with showing the photo uncensored. Stupid prank, let's go on to the next story.

But it's still in the news cycle. Why? Because, while Weiner is flatly denying that he sent the picture to the student, he HASN'T, exactly, denied that it's a picture of HIS underwear. He's said that he doesn't RECOGNIZE the picture, but he can't say, "with certitude", that it's not him. Now, why won't he just come out and say, "That's not my crotch"?

Well, there are a couple important reasons, I think.

The first is it's still in the news cycle. Nobody who would possibly vote for Weiner believes that this was actually him, so the story isn't damaging him. But, by not doing the categorical denial, he's keeping the story alive, and keeping his name out there. That's important. He's getting name recognition in a dead-easy way, without actually doing anything wrong, and without, actually, hurting himself.

Second, if it does turn out that this was a prank done by someone significant, he has kept the story alive long enough that he'll be able to turn around and use the "THAT PERSON IS THE ONE WHO FRAMED ME" to whack THAT person. If it's some nobody, no big deal. But if the person who did it is someone who Weiner can benefit from attacking, well, that person just handed Weiner a weapon, (do you know how difficult it is to not keep doing dick jokes in this? I really wanted to say, "just put a big stick in Weiner's hands. . . ") that he can later use -- but only if everyone still remembers this story.

Second-and-half, it looks like there may be some sort of connection between this thing and Andrew Breitbart. Who, you may remember, is the person behind the trumped-up "ACORN helps pimps defraud the government" thing, in which he took a bunch of out-of-context . . . stuff . . . and made a bunch of pretty much innocuous comments look like a really hideous breach of ethics. And he has done similar things another two or three times.

Nothing he's ever said in any of those things has been actually a lie -- but he arranges stuff to be deceptive. And he manipulates people in order to put them in situations where he knows they will say certain categories of things that he will be able to use.

So.

The following is a complete "what-if". I have no evidence, I don't even really have a suspicion here. All I've got is a "what-if" situation.

Let's say that Breitbart got a photo of Weiner wearing a swimsuit. From somewhere. News photo. Whatever. And he handed it to a friend, who added a fly and generally made it look like a pair of boxers instead of a swimsuit. Then either hacked Weiner's account, or made a spoof account, or whatever, and then posted that as a comment on someone's Twitter feed. Or whatever it is that one does on Twitter.

The journalism student deleted the pic as soon as she noticed it, but, before she managed to delete it, someone had sent it to Breitbart.

Now -- remember, we're playing "what-if" only -- Breitbart waits for Weiner to make a denial that it's a photo of him, then reveals the original photo. He reports that Weiner has lied about it not being a photo of him, because he's FOUND the original photo which has Weiner's face.

This would, of course, be true, but completely and totally misleading. Which is what Breitbart does -- he posts technically true but totally misleading things to attack liberal targets.

What does Weiner do? He plays it both ways. He denies sending the thing, which he CAN do, because he didn't send it. But he backs off categorically denying that it's a photo of him, in case someone is holding back some sort of trick like that. If Breitbart, or someone else, is playing THAT game, Weiner can hold off playing his obvious move to set up Breitbart's move.

It's a bit paranoid, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.

And now let's go on to the third reason, which I think is the most important of all.

The guy in the photo? Is hung. By not denying that this is him, Weiner is implying that, fake photo or not, it's completely plausible that it's him because Weiner is that well-hung, too.

No guy is going to give up a chance like that, not even if there's a political cost. Weiner COULD say, "Nope, that's not me -- I would only look like that if I'd run out of convenient ways to carry cucumbers." But no guy is going to say that. He wants to make sure that it's in the public record that, even if that's not a picture of what is in HIS pants, what IS in his pants is comparable.

Edited To Add: Or, I guess, he could be guilty as charged. Which, honestly, really surprises me. And saddens me. But it's a reminder to myself to keep in mind that, just because I like someone and dislike their accuser, doesn't make the person I like automatically right.

Things that aren't in the Bible

So, else-livejournal, a person mentioned the "give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, blah blah blah" thing as a Biblical quote. It, of course, isn't -- I first encountered it labeled as "a Chinese proverb", which seems almost as dubious. It's been mis-attributed to both Lao Tsu and Confucius. I'm certain that SOMEONE in China uses it as a proverb -- probably lots of people. And probably a lot of those people in China think it's from the New Testament. Or maybe that it's an African proverb, or whatever.

The point is, it's not in the Bible.

Neither is "the Devil can quote scripture to His purpose," which is from MERCHANT OF VENICE. Or "God helps those who help themselves," from POOR RICHARD'S ALMANACK, by Ben Franklin. "This, too, shall pass" is from the writings of Medieval Sufi poets.

Poking around, I find that most parts of Polonius's lecture to Laertes have been mis-attributed to the Book of Proverbs.

And, of course, Adam and Eve never ate an apple. (It's the "fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil," with no mention of what kind of fruit it was. That reminds me to tell y'all of one of the absolutely awesome things in ECHO BAZAAR that literally sent chills up and down my spine -- at the very center of the Museum of Mistakes, in its most prominent display case, is an absolutely unlabeled half-eaten and ancient fig. That one moment, right there, will keep me playing the game for YEARS, just on the off-chance that they come up with something else that absolutely mind-shatteringly cool.)

What other things have you heard people assume are Scriptural?