The tendency for everyone in this country to attach the “gate” suffix to every scandal typically annoys the hell out of me. “Gate” is not a suffix meaning scandal or controversy, it’s just part of the name of the Watergate complex. Just like “holic” isn’t a suffix that means “addicted too,” but people continue to say things like “chocoholic” and “sexaholic” much to my chagrin.

But I digress.

In this instance, I am happy to discuss the weekend scandal being called “Weinergate.” It involves Congressman Anthony Weiner and a lewd Twitter pic of a, well, a wiener posted to his feed.

The story was first reported on conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart’s site Big Government. A tweet appeared on Democratic New York Congressman Anthony Weiner’s timeline directed @ a young woman with a link to a picture. The pic consisted of a close-up of a man in gray underwear with an erection. The tweet was quickly removed. A screen cap of the original pic is available over on Big Government.

Weiner has responded, saying that the tweet was obviously due to his account being hacked. He hints that the prank was a “distraction” in a statement obtained by Politico:

“At a time when the GOP is playing games with the debt limit, a member of the Supreme Court is refusing to recuse himself from matters he has a financial interest in, and middle class incomes are stagnant, many want to change the subject. I don’t. This was a prank, and a silly one. I’m focused on my work.”

He also joked about the incident on Twitter, but failed in differentiating Twitter from Facebook:

The person who the twitpic was addressed to has been identified as 21-year-old college student Gennette Cordova. The NY Daily News published a statement from Cordova, where she stated that she has never met Congressman Weiner and believes this all to be an unfunny prank.

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 a month or so ago. Since I had dealt with this person and his cohorts before I assumed that the tweet and the picture were their latest attempts at defaming the Congressman and harassing his supporters.

Spokesmen for Congressman Weiner have said that they “retained counsel to explore the proper next steps.”

If you want to join the discussion on Twitter, #weinergate tweets are rolling in at a quick clip.

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