Mike Webb is a conservative Christian.
He’s also running in Virginia for a position in the United States congress.
In a (now deleted) Facebook post on his campaign page, Webb yesterday published a screenshot to illustrate a story.
However, the media was more grabbed by the titles of two of the other tabs in Webb’s browser:
“IVONE SEXY AMATEUR”
“LAYLA RIVERA TIGHT BOOTY”
Gawker was helpfully on hand to explain that those two phrases related to a couple of pornographic movie clips.
Not necessarily the kind of thing you would expect a conservative Christian running for US congress to want to make public.
And, as if that wasn’t embarrassing enough… who uses Yahoo as a search engine?
In a follow-up (also now deleted) Facebook post Webb appeared to be blaming the incident on a computer virus.
I say appeared to blame a computer virus, because quite frankly despite trying on multiple occasions I still can’t quite parse what Webb posted into anything approaching coherent thought:
“Curious by nature, I wanted to test the suggestion that somehow, lurking out in the pornographic world there is some evil operator waiting for the one in a gazillion chance that a candidate for federal office would go to that particular website and thereby be infected with a virus that would cause his or her FEC data file to crash the FECfile application each time that it was loaded on the day of the filing deadline, as well as impact other critical campaign systems. Well, the Geek Squad techs testified to me, after servicing thousands of computers at the Baileys Crossroads location that they had never seen any computer using their signature virus protection for the time period to acquire over 4800 viruses, 300 of which would require re-installation of the operating system.”
if anyone smarter than me can work out what that’s saying, please leave a comment below.
But one thing I do know. Although not impossible, I’m certainly not aware of any malware which would have opened those tabs on Mr Webb’s browser.
Mr Webb meanwhile, in a Facebook post that hasn’t been deleted, claims that – if nothing else – the incident helped to publicise his name and campaign on social media:
“THANKS FOR THE TAB CHECK, RANGER BUDDIES!”
“Today’s notorious post reached almost 200,000 people. The succeeding post reached a little more than a tenth of that, and all through the viral infection of social media and word of mouth. And, I certainly received my share of “interesting” comments, but no more out of the ordinary than what I have received since beginning this quest. But, the truly amazing thing about today was that “I saw also the Lord, high and lifted up,” and I was very much moved by the love and support of those who expressed their encouragement and support, even some in the national and local press.”
Always be careful when taking screenshots folks. You could be revealing more than you bargained for.