Alex Wong/Getty
Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) speaks to the media as the controversy over a lewd photo posted from his Twitter feed heats up.Rep. Anthony Weiner can't say for sure the crotch shot posted online was not of him - and then he brushed off reporters' questions with a stream of dirty jokes.
"I'm sorry I was a little stiff yesterday," the congressman said, apparently bemused by the horde of reporters pushing towards him.
"Maybe it will turn out that this is the point of al Qaeda's sword," he said. "The jokes kind of write themselves."
Weiner tried to clear the air after his testy initial response to questions about why a Blackberry photo of an underwear-clad crotch was posted to his Twitter feed on Friday.
But in a series of interviews and impromptu press conferences larded with double entendres, he only raised more questions and fueled the right-wing bloggers baying for his blood.
He flatly denied that he posted the Blackberry photo of an underwear-clad erection which appeared Friday in his Twitter stream addressed to a 21-year-old college student in Seattle.
But in a head-scratching explanation said he could not say for sure the photo was not of him.
"I can't say with certitude. My system was hacked. Pictures can be manipulated," he told MSNBC Wednesday.
"We don't know," he told the Daily News. "We've asked (a law) firm to look into whether some of my photos could have been taken, they could have been manipulated."
"You would know if this is your underpants," asked the stentorian Wolf Blitzer on CNN, in one of the most surreal TV moments of recent years.
Weiner ducked the question.
"I don't know what photographs are out there in the world of me," he said.
The New York congressman told the Daily News he hasn't asked the Capitol Police to investigate the hack but instead hired a private law firm, Baker & Hostetler, to look into it.
Weiner said he didn't want to "make a federal case" out of it or use national security resources to track down who hacked his Twitter.
"We're treating it as a prank, not treating it as a national security invasion or anything," he told the News.
"I'm not sure it rises - no pun intended - to that level," he told MSNBC, still joking even as the issue seemed to be snowballing rather than dissipating.
The photo was sent Friday over Twitter to Seattle student Gennette Cordova, a fan of the congressman who says she's never met him but once jokingly called him "my boyfriend."
The photo was quickly deleted, but not before right-wing bloggers republished it, suggesting it was proof Weiner - a longtime target for his combative liberalism - was cheating on his wife.
Weiner is married to Huma Abedin, the glamorous aide to Hillary Clinton who was considered the biggest catch in Washington when they married last summer.
Willa Ford Penélope Cruz Christina Milian Tina Fey Carrie Underwood
