In the New York of the late 1800s, Boss Tweed famously complained about Thomas Nast cartoons: Though many immigrants in the city couldn’t read, even the illiterate could understand “those damn pictures.” Rep. Anthony Weiner and his staff now face a similar problem.
By now, you’ve heard about the Tweet picture sent from Weiner’s account to a young lady named Gennette Nicole Cordova. The congressman has insisted his accounts were “hacked.” Cordova, in a statement released late Sunday night (36 hours after the tweet in question), says, “The account that these tweets were sent from was familiar to me. This person had harassed me many times after the congressman followed me on Twitter.” She also said that her previous tweet, “I wonder what my boyfriend @repweiner is up to,” was a joke.
Such statements notwithstanding, those on the left trying to paint this as a conspiracy must deal with an array of odd elements that an increasingly tech-savvy public may find suspicious:
* Not just the offending picture but most of the congressman’s pictures were removed from the site.
* Not only did the young lady’s Facebook and Twitter accounts disappear from the ’Net (she’s apparently since started a new Twitter account, and may go back on Facebook), but also her bylines on articles in her college paper.
* The congressman made it a point to tweet what time an East Coast interview would be shown in Seattle, where the young lady’s from.
* Cordova reportedly wrote in the college paper in March about Twitter’s verifiable accounts giving access to celebrities.
Coincidences all, but there’s one more that millions of Twitter users will understand best:
On Twitter, famous people tend to have tens of thousands to millions of followers — but they themselves follow only a fraction of that amount.
Rep. Weiner is a man of national prominence, a rising star in the Democratic Party, frequently on TV, a past and likely future candidate for mayor. He knows and is known by thousands of movers, shakers, members of the press and politicians on the city, state and national levels.
Yet, as of yesterday, he was following fewer than 200 others — and, with all those famous folks to choose from, one of the few he followed was Cordova, a 21-year-old college student who lives nearly 3,000 miles away in Bellingham,Wash.
Run that though your head for a second and at the same time remember two important facts about Twitter:
1. If two people follow each other on Twitter, they can send private messages unseen by others.
2. The difference between a direct message, seen by only the recipient, and a public tweet, seen by the world, is a single character.
The biggest problem for Weiner and his defenders on the left is not bloggers from the right. It’s the details of “#weinergate” can be understood by millions of ordinary people in 140 characters or less.
Peter Ingemi blogs at datechguyblog.com. He is the host of Da- TechGuy on DaRadio Saturdays 10 a.m. on WCRN-AM 830 in Worcester, Mass.