ORIGINAL ARTICLE: You remember how we said the Madonna performance was flawless? Well, it’s not so flawless anymore.

It has been revealed that M.I.A. flipped off the camera when she came out on stage to support Madonna for “Give Me All Your Luvin’.”

The scandal has rocked the part of the Internet that asks us to remember that children watch the Super Bowl too.

It does beg the question of whether this matters or not. Are you mortified to find somebody flipping off the camera for less than a split second?

[lead image and photo courtesy of Buffalo Eats]

Unlike Weiner’s wiener pictures and the long, drawn-out circus of lies, denials and eventual admissions, Wu is making a quick exit from the 112th Congress.

Only days after allegations surfaced that Representative Wu had an “unwanted sexual encounter” with an 18-year-old woman, the seven-term congressman has announced that he will resign.

From his statement today –

It has been the greatest privilege of my life to be a United States Congressman. Rare is the nation in which an immigrant child can become a national political figure. I thank God and my parents for the privilege of being an American.

The wellbeing of my children must come before anything else. With great sadness, I therefore intend to resign effective upon the resolution of the debt-ceiling crisis. This is the right decision for my family, the institution of the House, and my colleagues.

Wu, who was elected out of the state of Oregon despite a rape accusation from the 1970′s hanging over his head, told Rep. John Larson (D-CT) that he did not use good judgement, but did nothing illegal. Although the girl involved in the accusation hasn’t yet filed any criminal complaints, the allegations seems to be enough to force Wu’s resignation.

This isn’t the first time that David Wu has been involved in a strange scandal. Months ago, Wu sent the lead image above of himself in a tiger suit to a female staffer in his campaign using his congressional Blackberry. The message contained no text, just the photo of Wu dressed like a tiger.

He later explained that he was under the influence of painkillers and mental duress due to stress. He later sought mental-health care and medication.

But Wu in the tiger suit, sadly enough, may be the man’s legacy. You can imagine how the “furry” jokes piled up following that incident. And with his resignation today, Twitter is proving that it remembers. Oh, how it remembers –

And here are some other tiger-less responses from the Twitterverse –

Trump, who has been a fixture of the national political discourse since he hinted at a Presidential run, calls Weiner a “bad guy” and a “psycho” who attempted unsuccessfully to solicit campaign contributions from the Donald.

For somebody who just announced he will not be running for President, Trump sure looks like he is attempting to remain in the political spotlight. Or perhaps he is just jumping on the most popular story in the media right now for publicity. Yeah, I’m going to go with the latter.

Check it out, “From the Desk of Donald Trump.”

Yesterday, Anthony Weiner held a press conference to admit to sending the now famous picture of his penis to a 21-year-old Seattle college student. When the photo first emerged, Weiner claimed that he has been hacked, and denied sending the photo. But yesterday he confirmed that he not only sent the photo in question, but that it is part of a pattern of inappropriate virtual relationships with at least six different women.

TMZ is reporting that one of those women is Porn Star, Stripper, and model Ginger Lee. According to her blog, she is from Nashville, Tennessee and suffers from the chronic illness lupus.

According to TMZ, she has been exchanging a large amount of sexual emails with congressman Weiner for a long period of time. Apparently, when the heat began to come down on Weiner for the tweeted penis picture, he went into PR crisis mode and asked Lee to lie about their relationship. He even offered to help her with a professional PR team. Some of the alleged emails from Weiner to Lee:

Do you need to talk to a professional PR type person to give u advice? I can have someone on my team call. [Yeah, my team is doing great. Ugh].

The key is to have a short, thought out statement that tackles the top line questions and then refer people back to it. Have a couple of iterations of: ‘This is silly. Like so many others, I follow Rep. Weiner on Twitter. I don’t know him and have never met him. He briefly followed me and sent me a dm saying thank you for the follow. That’s it.

And this is Weiner reportedly suggesting an actual statement for her to give:

I have nothing to do with the situation involving Rep Weiner. I follow his twitter feed. And for a brief time he followed me. Much has been made of the fact that I have posted about my admiration for Rep Weiner and his politics. All I can say about that is that I’m a fan of his. Rep. Weiner sent me one short direct message thanking me for following him. I have never met Rep. Weiner and he has never sent me anything innappopriate (sic) …

How’s it [the proposed statement] feel?

If Weiner offered to use his congressional PR team to hide the cyber-affair, he could be looking at a whole mess of ethics rules violations. Yesterday at the press conference he explained that although what he did was regrettable, he would not be resigning because he feels he has broken no laws.

It looks as though Ginger Lee was a huge fan of the congressman, and there is evidence of a relationship between the two on Twitter. Prudence Paine has some screencaps of the tweets, whose links are now broken. They reference in particular a direct message:

Multiple women are coming out claiming to be online mistresses of the congressman. A 26-year-old woman from Texas has offered photos, Facebook messages and emails allegedly from Weiner. Meagan Broussard claims that they exchanged messages, and that he “tried to get [her] to talk about [her]self sexually.”

A blackjack dealer from Vegas, Lisa Weiss, has also reported that she sexted and even had sexual phone interactions with Weiner.

While these relationships on their own are not against any law, if Weiner used government resources to attempt to conceal his behavior, then he will have a real problem – just ask John Edwards.

[Image Courtesy]

Apparently the Governator informed his longtime wife Maria Shriver of the affair and subsequent love child with the staffer when he exited office. Shriver has since moved out of their Brentwood mansion.

In a press conference yesterday, Schwarzenegger asked for respect from to media towards his family:

“I ask that the media respect my wife and children through this extremely difficult time. While I deserve your attention and criticism, my family does not.”

While this simple request may keep some traditional media a little more cautious when covering the story, it in no way affects the world of Twitter. And while the world of Twitter has been respectful of Shriver and the children from what I can tell, they have put the screws to Arnold for his indiscretions.

From the political sphere, former Governor of Michigan Jennifer Granholm took the opportunity to espouse the need for more female governors, who might be, well, more restrained:

The flood of tweets that have come from comedians and other celebrities have mostly taken aim at Schwarzenegger with references to his many films. Two of the most popular hashtags to emerge have been #sperminator and #Bonan.

In my personal experience I’ve also seen #Ahhhhnold and #Schwarzeneverwearacondom in circulation. The possibilities may in fact be endless. #PastActionZero? Nah, scratch that one.

Here is a collection of the funniest from the Twitterverse:

Two of Schwarzenegger’s children have also tweeted following the breaking of the news. The first, his oldest daughter Katherine and secondly their 17-year-old son Patrick. Arnold or Maria have not said anything on Twitter about the news.

What API reported as Mrs. Obama’s words are fairly benign, but enough to get a segment of the blogosphere riled up. In an incredibly poorly spelled and punctuated post, API said she criticized them for supporting “American white racists” who had made an issue of Obama’s adoption by his Indonesian stepfather. Strangely based in Norway and publishing via WordPress, API also reported Mrs. Obama told them “not to dig that which will support evil people who are out to stop her husband from getting the presidency,” and that black people who opposed Obama did so “because of envy.”

Jake Tapper, ABC News’ Senior National Correspondent based in the network’s Washington bureau, has word from the Obama campaign that the interview API claims to have conducted is “100% bogus.”

He writes:

"This morning my inbox is filled with the ‘WHY ARENT YOU COVERING THIS?’ e-mails on the subject. The answer is: because it doesn’t appear to be in any way real."

If you think ABC News is too liberal and somehow less credible than API—established, so the blog header says, in 2006 and virtually invisible in Google search results other than the blog posts mentioning this very controversy—then maybe you’ll believe the National Review, conveying from campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor, “The answer is no, it’s not real, the report is made up.  She did not speak to the organization.”

API, which seems to be in pretty tight with, or likes at least to make mention of smear-master Jerome Corsi and misspells words like “Farakhan” and “innoguration,” is sticking to its story, and says if you call them, they’ll tell you the same. They provided their phone number in an update if you’d like to verify with them.

According to a subsequent post, API says it will release audio recording of the phone call “when we are satisfied it is not intended to be misused in any way or for any gains by an group.”

Or, my guess anyway, as soon as they can create one. The better question for ABC would be why they killed a 2006 whistleblower report by former ABC investigative reproter Rebecca Abrahams about how evoting machine company Diebold rigs elections, or why nobody’s talking about Stephen Spoonamore and Mike Connell just a few short weeks before the election. And if candidate wives are going to be a big controversy, Verizon and AT&T rushing out to Sedona to install special cellular towers just for Cindy McCain should be a bigger one.