More great moments in media contortions.

Barbara Walter blames Weiner's behavior on Viagra.

Behar hypothesized Hillary Clinton stuck with Bill Clinton because of political ambitions. However, Walters offered viewers one reason that she found plausible for why Weiner and others have ended up going down this road of infidelity – erectile dysfunction medication.


“To get back to what you asked me earlier,” Walters said. “So, I was with some doctors last night and one of them said and ‘You know, we keep saying, why did he do it?’” Walters said. “He has a lovely wife. Why is he doing it? This is not my theory. That it is a result of Viagra and what is the other one?”

“Cialis,” the various members of “The View” panel replied.

What is going on here?  Ed Schultz and Joy Behar are sounding sane compared to Barbara Walters?

Weird, Wacky Stuff.

Well, here's one reason why Anthony Weiner thought he was immune from his own stupidity.

Barbara Walters defends Weiner by (a) offering a ridiculous theory and (b) tossing in an insane gibe at Sarah Palin.  To see is to believe:



That's right, even Joy Behar thought Walters was off her rocker!

The Anchoress deconstructs that 30 seconds of infamy:

Listen (if you can stand the noise of this show) to Walters talking about how she “knows” Weiner and “knows” his wife, who of course works for Hillary Clinton, whom she also knows.


This is the problem with the mainstream media in a nutshell. They “know” the people they’re supposed to be covering, and they consider themselves “friends” of those people. And it has ruined them. As you listen to Walters, all you see is passionate advocacy; not a newswoman concerned with the truth of a story, but a partisan doing everything she can to divert attention from a story she doesn’t like — even to comparing a private citizen on a bus to a sitting congressman having some sort of cyber-engagement in his office — and championing her “friend.”

This has never been a nice story, which is why I haven’t written about it until now. But I still am less interested in Weiner than in how the press reacted to this story. Some were willing to believe him, simply because he said they should. Some seemed like they didn’t want to believe him, but didn’t want to not believe him, even more. The usual partisans tried to blame and smear the usual partisans.

We don’t actually have a genuine press any more.

Thank God for the Internet, says I. I wonder how much longer we’ll be able to traipse its environs freely.

And here's another example - Chris Matthews attempts to blame Weiner's wife for the fact that Weiner has the maturity of a horny 13 year old.

And let's ignore what Weiner did - which is the least of issues - but look at this ABC clip and realize how well Weiner lies.



Any reasonable person looking at that ABC clip would come to the conclusion that Weiner is a pathological liar, a psychopath.  As Hot Air points out:

Creepy must-see flashback: Weiner lies shamelessly to ABC about what happened.

How creepy? Creepy enough that ABC posted this footage (which was recorded a few days ago, of course) just within the past hour and then sent around the link via e-mail. I didn’t go hunting through their archives for it, in other words; they’re pushing it on people tonight themselves because, understandably, they (a) want to atone for having aired this guy’s lies as news last week and (b) presumably want the world to see what an almost pathologically fluid liar he was when cornered. The last 80 seconds of it will have you squirming in your seat — not only the way he claims to be the innocent target of a hoax but his insistence on lecturing the interviewer for assuming the worst, taking care to maintain accusatory eye contact the whole way. It’s genuinely disturbing.

Jack Shafer at Slate gets the point:

For me, when the mass of lies equals the mass of apologies, the whole package congeals into some new sociopathic form for which there is yet no name. (Weinerite, perhaps?) That he was caught lying about his personal life, and not about public policy, doesn't really matter to me. By demonstrating that he's as good a liar as he is an apologizer, Weiner tells us everything we need to know about him.