Monday, June 6, 2011

Did Loesch Dana Distort The #Weinergate Image? And If So, Why?

According to the suspicious conservative who hinted about a Weiner scandal weeks ago and mysteriously was the only person to retweet the original post before it was deleted, Dana Loesch grabbed the original screen shot used on Breitbart's websites to kick of the so-called #weinergate scandal:

And Loesch's statements from that night were consistent with the suggestion:


Since the photo was deleted within hours and no one else seemed to have a copy, the Loesch/Breitbart version of the photo is the one used by every news outlet since the story broke. However, a funny thing happened since that time. Someone actually found the original photo. And, at the very least, it seems to change the, err, context of the the situation. Cannonfire, which I found via a diary by Stef at Daily Kos, points out that the Loesch/Breitbart version of photos is actually upside down, and edited to hide that fact.


Here's the version posted on Breitbart's web sites:




And here's what the yfrog image looked like before being cropped by someone at Breitbart's site:



Since the table leg clearly shows that image is upside down, here's what the actual image looks like:


The new angle on the photo changes it significantly:
The image has been manipulated. It has been rotated to look like the person is standing when in fact they are sitting. Further, Breitbart has cropped it to omit the table leg which gives this away.

An ordinary guy who wants to send photos of his junk to a woman does not stop first to rotate the photo so it will look like he's standing instead of sitting.

The upside-down image is more plausible, which is why they rotated it. The rightside-up image is ridiculous. Humongously ridiculous.
So questions: was Dana Loesch the person who cropped the image to change the context? If so, why did she do so? And what's her justification for misleadingly presenting the information?

Also, yes I know that there have been "shocking new developments" today in the story. Obviously, I can't claim to know what happened, especially when Breitbart and other publications have not yet released full information nor provided evidence for their claims. But even if it is true that Weiner is stupidly sending messages online, that does not rule out the possibility that he was hacked on this occasion. After all, why would he say that he was hacked and that he didn't send the picture but claim that he "couldn't say" that the picture was of him? It seems like he's at least trying to not state any falsehoods. Anyway, my cynical guess is that even if Weiner was provably hacked, our lame media will completely ignore that story. Cannonfire has been doing a great job on covering this story, and his take on the latest developments is worth reading.

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