Ad Campaign
As a former teacher of various ages of children, and former girl myself, I know what the following terms mean:
(these are approximations)
little girl: 3-6 years old
young girl: 7-10 years old
girl: 11-14 years old
older girl: 15-16 years old
I think when I was living a few states away from my parents and in college at 17, I would have told you to go %$&# yourself if you’d called me a “young girl.”
A big part of the social media operation to discredit Anthony Weiner, is to try to instill in the public’s mind, the phrase “Weiner and young girls”. It is a marketing campaign, and the phrase “young girls” is by no means random. The phrase was chosen very carefully as a misstatement that people might not even notice, but that would evoke a reflexive disgust toward Anthony Weiner if and when his name became associated with this phrase. The phrase appears no less than 13 times in an interview with the (still anonymous) person who said he saw the “underwear” picture tweeted from the RepWeiner twitter account. Do you think anyone actually believes that Anthony Weiner was sending underwear shots from his Blackberry to 7-10-year-olds?
The goal of the operation was NOT RepWeiner’s resignation. That is why, even after “Weinergate”, this social media disinformation campaign is ongoing. Even though RepWeiner has resigned, he is still eminently electable in New York, as polls have borne out. He will be even more electable one year from now.
When I type: Weiner “young girls” into google, I get “About 2,700,000 results”. And when I type Weiner “young girl”, I get back “About 2,980,000 results”.
Below is a sampling from just one short blog page. I include commenters as well as the Breitbart-associated blogger, because it is likely that those involved in the operation are frequent commenters on internet blogs and forums, as well as on twitter. Commenting under multiple nicknames and I.D.’s is an important way for social media propagandists to disseminate mistruths. You may notice that a number of “commenters” discussing “Weiner” and “young girls” on certain blogs, write better than the average person. We know that at least one person involved in this operation is a professional marketer.
Patterico: “the involvement of young girls in this story”
Patterico commenter: “the evidence we have about the young girl”
Patterico commenter: “enticed one of these young girls to a motel”
Patterico commenter: “he is a virtual fornicator— with young girls”
PROPAGANDA
Qritiq 
August 9, 2011 at 12:56 pm
Multiple names like razorusa90210, or patriot419 or dust92. That guy? His socks were pretty convincing.
August 10, 2011 at 9:11 pm
This particular protest is silly. It’s almost Asperger-y.
“Young girl” is a perfectly appropriate appellation for any young female and it is context that determines its use. Just as “behave yourself, young woman” might be applied to a girl of eleven,
“Young girl, get out of my mind/ my love for you is way out of line/better run girl, you’re much too young, girl” might apply to a married man of 48 chatting up a barely-twenty year old. And a high schooler is definitely a young girl by any standard but comparison with classmates.
August 10, 2011 at 9:49 pm
I respect your opinion Sarah. (I actually have always found that song to be kinda creepy. Catchy, though.)
August 31, 2011 at 3:00 am
Thank you for a great post.