(Edward Wilkinson-Latham)
It’s all over now except for the reality show guest spot, but I thought it might be worth pointing out something that made me feel all warm and gooey inside: George Lepp’s penis.
Remember that? You very probably don’t, and that’s what gets me right where I live.
Two days after Anthony Weiner sent off that picture of his penis to yfrog, would-be provincial PC candidate George Lepp did the same thing from his own BlackBerry to his own yfrog address. Maybe.
I love that maybe.
That maybe means we didn’t care enough to really pursue it. It means we realized, over and over again, as many times as there are journalists and newspapers and websites and TV stations, that the fact of Lepp’s penis and its possible image is not that big a deal.
True, Enzo Di Matteo tried to make it into something over at NOW. And then a PR guy said he’d been misquoted, which the Star quoted. And then, poof! It evaporated.
Google Lepp today, and the second return is his own website. So is the fifth and the sixth. The eighth is his Facebook page.
You could Google Anthony Weiner, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The Wikipedia page comes out on top, but that’s likely just because it’s been updated to include the penis.
Weiner had his political ups and downs, but as late s June 6, after most everything had come to light, a poll of New Yorkers conducted by NY1 and Marist College found that 51 per cent of them thought he should remain in office.
But of course, he resigned, and though Americans might say it was his own damn fault for taking and sending those pictures, I think we here can be confident that the resignation was forced by the incessant coverage the incident got, and by the digging journalists did to find more and more.
And of course there was more. I would guess there are, by this time, approximately a billion junk shots out there in the ethersphere. Guys take them to send to their wives, to their husbands, to this girlfriends and boyfriends, to pals as jokes, or post them on dating websites as proof of whatever claim they may have made. They’re everywhere. There is probably a photo of your father’s penis somewhere online.
If people had dug into Lepp’s lap, they almost certainly would have found something. That’s the absurdity of this kind of investigative journalism: if you dig into almost anyone’s life, you’re going to find a few sexual things that make them look bad. And we no longer have to rely on the accidental leaking of a tape of Prince Charles expressing his desire to be Camilla’s tampon; the stuff is out there, resident on random phones and laptops, waiting for things to get frothy enough for someone to send them in. “Hey, I hooked up with that guy; I think I have a picture of his penis around here somewhere…”
Weiner denied things too, at first. But journalists wouldn’t let it go. They published the pictures, or provided links or references to places that did, and they put out the call for more. And they found more, and published or linked to those, too.
As Jon Stewart said, and many others knew, a story about Weiner’s wiener was just too good to let drop.
Stewart himself struggled with the issue, but only because Weiner was a friend. He eventually decided to let loose, which was the wrong decision even if they hadn’t been friends.
The first stories that appeared about the Lepp shot quoted PR hack Alan Sakach as confirming it was, indeed, a Lepp shot.
Here’s what the Sun ran:
Alan Sakach, communications director for the Ontario Conservatives, said the photo was inadvertently taken by Lepp’s BlackBerry when it was in his front pocket. The photo was posted after someone took it from the candidate for the riding of Niagara Falls, according to Sakach.
“He is pretty upset and embarrassed,” Sakach said of a photo that was posted on Lepp’s account Sunday. “It was removed as soon as it came to his attention.”
The Toronto Sun obtained grainy copies of the Twitter page images before they were removed.
The pictures — too graphic to reproduce in the newspaper — are of a man naked from the waist down, showing a close up of his penis and his crossed legs.
Sakach said the device was operating on camera mode in his front pant pocket when it went missing. He added that Lepp suspects it was taken as he was jostled by protesters outside the Dixon Rd. convention centre where the Tories met for the party’s weekend convention.
Sakach said he didn’t know if police were called about the stolen BlackBerry.
“It was an unfortunate circumstance,” Sakach said on Sunday. “This is pretty low and juvenile and we don’t believe it is politically motivated.”
That story was posted online. And later the same day, the Star ran a story with the headline “Lewd picture on Twitter not of Tory candidate aide says.”
This is what the Star ran:
“This is ridiculous. That wasn’t actually what I said. This is obviously a misquote,” Sakach told the Star. “I have no idea how the photo was taken.”
Lepp was pickpocketed outside the Dixon Rd. convention centre Saturday as he was leaving the party conference, Sakach said. Lepp’s son noticed the “very unusual Tweet” on Sunday and removed it immediately, Sakach said.
“I know he was pickpocketed and somebody posted a link to a pornographic photo,” Sakach said. “Obviously it had nothing to do with George. It’s something he is very upset about.”
The NOW story appeared the next day, and that was pretty much that.
In the U.S., they would have seen any number of ways to run with this. Was that whole stream of narrative from the Sun a misquote? If so, Tom Godfrey should be hauled out and picked apart himself. Was it not a misquote? Then Sakach should be grilled some more. BlackBerries come with GPS trackers — if it was stolen, it wouldn’t be too tough to find. Did Lepp get it back? If not, why not? And if it was somehow determined to definitely not be Lepp’s penis? If, for instance, Lepp decided to declare himself circumcised (the picture, from what I can tell, was uncut), then there’s the story of whose penis it is? An anti-Tory activist? A mischievous son?
But all that takes a lot of work, the deployment of the best sort of skills the best sort of journalists have in their arsenal. And thankfully, the best of our best decided those skills might better be used elsewhere.
You can add Weiner’s wiener to gun laws and anti-healthcare activism the next time you get edgy about there not being that much difference between us and U.S. There’s a big fat chasm between us, and sometimes it’s filled with crap.
