THAT photo

I noticed something odd about the notorious crotch photo: Everyone is displaying it upside down. The table legs visible in the photo reveal the proper orientation.

Here, I have displayed the photograph correctly. Click to enlarge.

The original version was (intentionally?) cropped to make it appear that the subject of the photo was standing. In this version, it is clear that subject is sitting. (The cropped and reversed version -- the one you've all seen -- is below.) Once the image is oriented correctly, it becomes pretty clear that someone else might have snapped it from behind the left shoulder.

It's also pretty clear that the subject is not Weiner. The guy in this shot is massive -- incredibly huge -- and he's not even erect. In fact, he seems flaccid. The universe of possible candidates is actually pretty small. Judging from other photos of Weiner, the congressman is not in that universe.

Incidentally: Those of you who have said that "he hasn't denied" are guilty of selective quotation. Weiner has denied. He has made clear that he isn't built like this. (His words to Rachel Maddow: "I wish.")

I don't think that this image has been Photoshopped. For one thing, enlarging the penis to cartoonish proportions hardly helped the framer make his case. If anything, enlargement of that area would have been a supremely foolish move. The smear job would have been more persuasive if a the photo depicted a normal-sized man. Besides, I can see no "tells" indicating image manipulation, and I have some experience with Photoshop.