Tag: scandal

The strange reporting of the strange Matt Gaetz accusations

Matt Gaetz is a 38 year old Florida Republican Congressman that could best be described as possibly the Trumpiest person in Congress. He bucks his dumb party on issues of endless wars in the middle east, the drug war at home, restrictions on free speech and civil liberties, and dunks on the Left with the same snarky “merry prankster” jovial tone that has strong Andrew Breitbart vibes. That makes him a threat to the establishment of both parties, and with the OrangeOne out of politics, Gaetz is one of the top targets for those Cathedral types who don’t want him to be a part of the national dialogue.

At the end of March 2021, the New York Times reported anonymous leaks accusing him of having had sex with a minor, maybe having paid for it, and doing drugs. Gaetz immediately denied it all and revealed some cuckoo-bananas details surrounding the investigation, asking the Department of Justice to reveal even further details that he says exonerates him.

So what is really going on here? The reality is that nobody really cares. His haters are blindly claiming everything alleged (plus a lot of tangential claims not even alleged) are obviously true and his supporters are blindly calling it a Deep State coup against him. I don’t have any special report on whether any of the claims about him are true, but what I find interesting are the uncontested details of how the corporate media and social media bias swarms are using it as a textbook smear operation. Whether or not there is something legitimate to smear, I don’t know, and find endlessly less interesting than the known facts of how this report continues to be used (a week and a half after the story broke, at the time of this writing) to take Gaetz down and you don’t have to like Gaetz to find it interesting as well.

Using the appearance of impropriety to defame or criminally prosecute people you don’t like is the oldest Statist tactic in the system, but usually it’s over something completely stupid like “Donald Trump isn’t releasing his tax returns to the public” or when they successfully took down the Republican Governor of Virginia with bribery accusations (that the Supreme Court later threw out as total bullcrap, after the damage had been done) who was a rising-star until his Democrat enemies were able to use interpretations of the law that made a credible possibility that he’d serve jail time over a nothingburger. When you can make the accusations sound actually repugnant, however (read: something sexual that implies a layer of abuse as well), then that’s when you’ve got a quality smear on your hands.

The allegations against Gaetz, explained

As stated, last month The New York Times reported on a possible DOJ probe into Gaetz and citations of that report got an unusually high volume of traction on social media for how vague and unsubstantiated the details of the investigation are, raising more red flags than the allegations themselves if viewed through a media analysis lens and not just a “can I find an excuse to defame someone I hate?” lens.

The saucy part here was that Gaetz was “under investigation over possible sex trafficking” of a minor – a claim that the Times‘ own reporting failed to ever substantiate or support in any way, then later downplayed in a follow-up report. The investigation, per the Times reporting, was actually over an alleged consensual relationship with an anonymous 17-year-old girl who was not alleged to have been under any duress or threat or any other detail of having been sex trafficked in any way. The Times reported that the FBI stopped questioning the unidentified women involved back in January and acknowledged that “no charges have been brought against Mr. Gaetz”, but they use the term “sex trafficking” despite any evidence of coercion. Super weird.

The use of this horrible term, that typically describes a horrible legal and moral crime, set his many critics and haters ablaze in hopes that they are either true or just glee in the ability to act like they are in the meantime. The actual facts of the case however, started as murky, and then just kept getting reframed to lesser and more convoluted offenses.

Another guy whom Gaetz knows is alleged to be shadier and have a history of facilitating “sugar baby” relationships or something, but “knowing a shady/creepy dude” is a guilt by association fallacy so that too raises questions on the use of these suggestions in service to defame rather than to inform.

Anatomy of a Smear

As the initial salacious claims about “sex trafficking” actually being “not that at all” and the 17 year old part having no evidence other than an anonymous source, the narrative began to crumble a little bit but the common response on social media was a “yea, but still…” argument that just because The NY Times appears to have used a fake claim as the central point of their report, doesn’t mean that the rest of it (potentially paying for someones travel so they will have sex with you – plus still keeping alive the “and maybe she was 17, if this actually happened – we don’t know” part) is okay.

These critics shouldn’t be let off the hook so easy. The original claim, and phrase that was all over Twitter in particular, was “sex trafficking” and there is zero evidence of any such thing ever even being alleged. It was just included in the original Times report through a convoluted loophole that i’ll show you their explanation for in a minute. But “sex trafficking” is a term with a legal definition that is not supported by the Times piece. The claim the anonymous sources made is that Gaetz is accused of having a consensual sexual relationship with a 17 year old in a state where that’s a legal thing to do – but it’s “sex trafficking” because he allegedly paid for her travel. Not advisable and maybe a really bad thing to do, but not exactly kids in a Wayfair cabinet. Also just not what sex trafficking is, even loosely defined. The Times sort of acknowledges this, but justifies their lie through a strange loophole of a claim that even when sex trafficking doesn’t take place, it can be accused if something different takes place. Kindov like saying “We are reporting that Mr Smith is under investigation for robbery. He is not accused of taking anything that wasn’t his, but if prosecutors think they can prove that he arrived at the store by taking a ride sharing service in a county where those are banned from use, then they could accuse Mr Smith of robbing the store”.

Sounds really stupid, right? Sounds like something I would absolutely have to be grossly misinterpreting or just making up to make the Times look bad, no? Read the admission for yourself. From the Times:

It is not illegal to provide adults with free hotel stays, meals and other gifts, but if prosecutors think they can prove that the payments to the women were for sex, they could accuse Mr. Gaetz of trafficking the women under “force, fraud or coercion.” For example, prosecutors have filed trafficking charges against people suspected of providing drugs in exchange for sex because feeding another person’s drug habit could be seen as a form of coercion.

Some of Gaetz’s haters refused to go along with the re-defining of what “sex trafficking” means in order to score points on someone they hate:

To recap, Gaetz was accused of: Knowing a shady guy; having a sexual relationship with a 17 year old; paying for her travel (which was sneakily called “sex trafficking”); and maybe taking MDMA.

Gaetz’s Response, Denial, & Defense:

Gaetz says he’s never had a relationship with anyone who was 17 and that such a person doesn’t exist and they’re just smearing and then attempted to extort him, demanding $25 million from his dad “in exchange for making horrible sex trafficking allegations against me go away”, as he told Tucker Carlson.

On April 1st, Gaetz linked to an article with details of the alleged extortion plot in his denial of the claims made against him:

At the time of this writing, the details are still unfolding about what is verifiably true regarding either sides accusations of the other, but we do know that the extortion thing was real for a few reasons: One being that there is a paper trail of Gaetz reporting the extortion attempt:

The congressman further said about the matter the day prior (as reports of the allegations were still unfolding):

Further: the extortion plot against Gaetz was confirmed the same day as the allegations against him.

A week later, more confirmations that Gaetz was being extorted, including from the person alleged to be extorting him.

In a follow-up Times article on the Department of Justice probe, the allegations against Gaetz were reduced from having been with a 17-year-old – who again, Gaetz denies and says no such person even exists for which to make such a claim – to a much lesser and much more speculative claim and tone. And just like the initial Times story, their follow up report is delivered entirely through anonymous “people close to the investigation” with no sources named, official statements, or documents related.

So, while it’s not my job to attack or defend the Congressman, and I won’t venture to try out either direction – the smear attempt is clear as the Times would and should have framed all these details in far different journalistic language and notation of its speculative nature if the intended thesis was not to defame Gaetz with the charges.

Why they’re going after Gaetz

With the smear so evident, you might ask why. Is there any doubt that this is only a frenzy because he is an effective voice for the right?

I lead this piece describing Gaetz as “the Trumpiest person in Congress” – Which means he’s also a threat to the establishment of both parties, like Trump since he is an upbeat sort of merry prankster in his delivery and is always making snarky comments that get peoples attention and the things he gets their attention to are the red pill type issues the establishment doesn’t want talked about (endless wars in the Middle East, how the government colluding with big banks is totally stealing everyones time and labor, how the drug war is bullshit, etc).

If that analysis is wrong, then why have none of his critics been able to substantiate these claims despite using the worst-imaginable terms to describe them, that then keep getting leveled down in severity as details are revealed? Journalism that sloppy is virtually always intentional. It puts out fragments of the truth for the purpose of muddying the waters around a person or issue and gives that person or issues critics the ammunition to extrapolate into whatever their imagination can conjure.

When sex acts or their allegations are attack-worthy or not (according to Democrats)

#MattGaetzisapervert was trending on Twitter for a day, and hundreds of tweets invented details and conclusions not reported by the Times or any other source. To a degree, that is understandable since, for the people who hate Gaetz – why give him any benefit of any doubt? But since the details keep showing nothing heinous they can pin him with, his Progressive critics have to resort to 1950s style Conservative notions of sex to smear him with.

The Lefts unabashed defense of Bill Clintons several admitted affairs, dismissals of the rape and assault claims against him, and of course the most famous sexual misconduct by a man in power in the past 200 years – the White House Intern “sexual relations” he had in the White House, lied to the public about, perjured himself under oath about, had his administration publicly attack/pressure/&smear an intern over, and then admitted when his seaman was found on one of her dresses.

While the Right, with their adorable and antiquated sense of honor and goal of consistency always thinks they’re being so righteous and clever by pointing out the hypocrisy of the Left – the Left openly flaunts it. In this case, they never made a secret of the fact that they selectively use sexual misconduct as a smear while giving zero fkks about it when their power players are caught dirty-handed.

Nina Burleigh, the former White House correspondent for Time Magazine who covered the Clinton White House once famously said that she would be “happy to give [Bill Clinton] a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.”

It may not be an effective tactic to point out, but it’s still noteworthy here with Gaetz. Raheem Kassam pointed exactly this hypocrisy out by pulling a repeat of that same laughable Clinton defense, this time in a recent context from former Times editorial board member Gail Collins who “suggested ex President Bill Clinton was entitled to a defense over his sexual exploits because he grew the U.S. economy”…

Writing in The New York Times, Collins’s article literally states:

“Nancy Pelosi once defended President Bill Clinton after he got an intern to fellate him in the Oval Office,” Gaetz argued in an opinion piece in The Washington Examiner. This is true, and we would hope the congressman gets the same kind of loyal support the very second he presides over one of the longest economic expansions in American history.

In other words: as soon as we like you, *then* and only then, are you entitled to a defense over accusations you may have not even done. As if Nancy Pelosi’s defense of Bill Clinton’s abuse of power for sex on the job in the White House was because he “presided over” (a way to make “was president during” sound more kingly in a context when talking about him doing the nasties) a time when the Republican House controlled economic bills and .com boom led to a good economy. lol.

Again – none of the allegations against Gaetz are, at the time of this writing, officially public, and again – Gaetz claims that no under-18 person he’s had any relationship with exists to be able to make such a claim about him (and no one has shown any evidence otherwise).

One needn’t go back to the late 90s to find a Democrat accused of sexual impropriety that Democrats don’t treat seriously, however. Even ignoring the credible accusations against sitting Democratic President Joe Biden, the current Democratic Governor of New York is in the same position. Some pointed it out –

Developing…

The Politician ShameFace

The names change but the faces stay the same….


The New York Times called Dan Hill, the president of Sensory Logic, a market-research firm in Minneapolis that uses facial expressions to quantify emotional response to explain the face that every politician makes when confessing they lied about something naughty. He explained:

Lips pursed and pulled tight is a sign of anger. Anger as an emotion typically means you feel like you’re not in control of circumstances. It arises from lack of progress, confusion, feelings that one’s being dealt with unfairly, i.e. resentment. These are powerful men used to being in charge. So it likely signifies feeling vulnerable (not in control).

The chin raiser, where the chin boss pushes upward, causing the lower lip to push upward, could also be called an upside-down smile. It’s a muscle movement implicated in expressions of anger, disgust and sadness.

Disgust is an emotion that relates back, in evolutionary terms, to “bad taste” or “bad smell.” The bad-taste version is as if to protect the mouth from taking in something that is poisonous. Clearly, these scandals are (sometimes fatally) poisonous to the politicians’ careers. It’s as if the whiff of scandal tastes bad to them.

Eyes and head down both correspond to sadness, i.e., disappointment in oneself. Regret. Like disgust, it’s a sign of withdrawal, as if to remove oneself from what has caused shame or embarrassment.

The basic package you’ve got here is anger, disgust and sadness.

Weiner Confesses

Like Jon Stewart, who has been friends with Congressman Weiner for years and relayed his reluctance on making jokes about this Weinergate scandal, I was disappointed at todays news when a press conference was called to admit that he did in fact send the picture of his Member of sexual Congress.



I thought his speech and confession and answers to the reporters questions afterward went as perfect as a situation like this could have gone. “I was trying to protect my wife. I was trying to protect myself” and he apologizes. Perfect response to me. and no excuses, even. He says he wasn’t on drugs, wasn’t drinking – it’s all him and his fault. bra-vo, dude. This press conference only makes me like him more.

The only creepy thing that brakes my heart is re-watching footage from, what I thought were kickass “throwin it right back in your face” exercises in Awesome and now are revealed to be really scuzzy politician Clintonian weaseling.

They’re reminiscent of Clinton to their performance core: attacking the people reporting on the story, ridiculing the media for covering the story at all, then getting angry at reporters with more brash ridicule paired with firm “I. Did. Not” super accusatory defenses. I know we’re all taught that all politicians are like that but I don’t like that “they’re all evil” kind of cynicism. This certainly is a win for the cynics though.

An important thing to note though is that the “it was just about sex” line used so often to defend Clinton’s in-your-face denial/lying about one of his affairs was an inaccurate soundbyte that was spread because it sounds persuasive. The reason there was a drawn out battle over something that started as sex was because Clinton was accused of something and lied under oath in denying it.

The truth is that if both Weiner and Clinton had given quick “i’ve sinned and i’m sorry. gonna deal with it on my own time and get back to working for my constituents, thanks” response right away, both their poll and press would be high. However, Clinton comitted perjury as President of the United states and Weiner actually really did just “lie about sex”. There will be an ethics probe (see pic below and lul)

Heres some other stuff:





The most painful one though is this re-posting of a 1996 Cosmo article touting Weiner as a possible future president, which I think would have been difficult given his name and nothing else. He would have been an excellent VP if not for this…

I Support Rep Weiner

I support Rep Weiner even if this turns out to be true. it was supposed to be private, so who cares and carry on. Even though he’s my favorite congressman* and I hope he comes out of this okay, even I have to admit that this is amusing, though unfortunate, given his last name.

he’s my fave cuz I think he’s honest, he’s bold, actually explains what he believes and never shys away from opposition – always willing to take it to Fox or a right wing show that invites him on and battles it out like a champ. Stick it out and stay in office!

PS: yes, I admit that I am not going into detail and/or posting the pictures here because I like the dude. I’m biased, but I’m forthright about it…

Via ShortFormBlog:

Look, we don’t want the Weiner story to be true. But we’ve done enough tweeting in our day to know all the tricks for reading someone’s social media tracks. We spent a couple of hours digging through tweets to find out more info. And, to us, there seems to be some evidence pointing in both directions on this story. The key thing for us is the existence of the rogue tweet, which was captured by TweetCongress.org even after it was deleted. But there’s also stuff that makes us wonder. The patient zero — the first person to retweet Anthony Weiner’s NSFW tweet — was this guy, who we’ve found in our research to be overly fixated on the congressman even BEFORE the tweet in question. In fact, he posted about a cheating scandal just like this one over TWO WEEKS AGO. Really? How was he so quick to hit the trigger on this? Some other things we noticed from the scandal:

  • for On Twitter, Weiner noted the Seattle time of his Friday TV appearance. The recipient of the NSFW tweet, from Seattle, retweeted.
  • for The person at the center of the drama deleted her Twitter account — which was active as of yesterday — after the tweet.
  • for The girl in question said Weiner was her “boyfriend” in an April tweet. Yeah, so? Her and every other liberal teen female has!
  • against To disprove that the photo was of Weiner, Daily Kos has a testof the NSFW photo that suggested it was ‘shopped. Hm.

» The important things to take from this: We don’t think Weiner did anything wrong as of yet, but we do think that there is a lot to suggest one of two things: One, this was possibly a scandal planted by someone who had closely followed the congressman’s Twitter account (because, based on our research, people have), and there were somewhat bizarre things that may have connected Weiner to the girl. Given the track record of Big Journalism,where the story originated from, we’d like to see a better source tackle this thing, because we don’t trust Breitbart as far as we can throw him. We rate this an “inconclusive.”

-I don’t know what they’re talking about with Big Journalism’s track record and the author doesn’t elaborate. As far as I know, the site has a solid track record on facts (nothing has a solid record on opinion/commentary), but they may be referring to the Sherrod Brown thing, which was misreported by right wing outlets including Glenn Beck to claim Breitbart clipped a video out of context but the context was in fact present in the original post. Anyway: that part aside, I too am skeptical of this story, not because of inherit distrust of Breitbart but just cuz. Mostly cuz I want it to not be true. lulz. but whatever. Even if it is, I say if he doesn’t weasel out of it and just comes clean, he will get more support than before, including from some of his more fair minded critics. Maybe even Breitbart (who is being accused of making this whole thing up now). Actually, probably even Breitbart I’d bet. I’d put money on it that Breitbart would drop it and instead just note that no liberal would give a conservative the same free pass and move on.

UPDATE: I don’t know what any of this means but if it’s correct info then it is evidence in the direction of Weiners innocence.

UPDATE: oh wow… Breitbart issues challenge directly to Weiner and basically says exactly what I described his possible reaction being (though he might not be serious about it):

Arnold has secret son. Maria Shriver has secret class.

Aside from this very subtle lulz from Wikipedia – No punchline here – just saying: How classy is Maria Shriver? i mean gead daymn. unless there is some attention whoring tell-all book or string of Oprah appearances coming up, i gotta hand it to the lady for being Dignitary of the year.

“This is a painful and heartbreaking time,” Shriver said in a statement. “As a mother, my concern is for the children. I ask for compassion, respect and privacy as my children and I try to rebuild our lives and heal. I will have no further comment.”

Schwarzenegger and Shriver recently announcedtheir separation after 25 years of marriage, but failed to give a reason for the split. The Los Angeles Times reports that Shriver moved out of the family’s Brentwood home earlier this year when Schwarzenegger confessed his paternity.

Arnold had a kid with a member of the staff and kept it a secret through 2 successful elections as Governor…wtf?

“For at least 10 years, throughout a spectacular and closely-scrutinized political career, Arnold Schwarzenegger managed to hide the existence of a love child with a member of his own household staff. Only now, after leaving the governor’s office and splitting from his equally famous wife of 25 years, are we finding out… “It’s almost mindboggling that information like this did not become public over his political career,” said veteran California GOP strategist Dan Schnur, who now teaches at the University of Southern California. “If this had come out when he was running for governor, he wouldn’t have gotten elected.” – Washington Post

How pissed off is Meg Whitman right now? The former eBay CEO spent a record $150 Million of her own money to gain the privilege of saving California from bankruptcy and she was derailed by a phony scandal that caused weeks of election-costing bad press when Gloria Alred trotted out Whitmans former maid to cry in front of cameras for money and whine about how she is illegally residing in the country, lied to the Whitmans and got fired when they found out about her illegal status.

That was a big deal for some reason, while the previous Governor hiding a love child never got uncovered?? Dude…wtf.

Meg Whitman literally did everything she was supposed to do both legally and morally and handled the release with class, saying how the maid was a member of the family and following the legal obligation to fire her was very hard and that is big news. Sitting governor hides love child and that’s only an interest tidbit mentioned after his term. this is bananas.

California would have been better off with the scandal known and Arnold only serving 1 term from the recall election and the state having Whitman win a term or two after that democrat.

Pee Wee Herman finally talks about theater arrest

Ever since I heard Nellie, the Filipino mother of my older friend JohnJohn, explain to me that Pee Wee Herman got arrested because he “got caught wiggling his weenie in public” (to which JohnJohn scolded her for using such graphic language), I was outraged not at the arrest but at the lack of defense by Pee Wee. An explanation at LEAST, please. but no. no word from the Herman camp.

Now, finally: Paul Reubens Defends His Public Masturbation Arrest to Playboy.


(PeeWee with Tim Burton)

Reubans says on his defense:
“Had we gone to trial, we had ready an expert from the Masters and Johnson Institute who was going to testify that in 30 years of research on masturbation the institute had never found one person who masturbated with his or her non-dominant hand,”… “I’m right-handed, and the police report said I was jerking off with my left hand. That would have been the end of the case right there, proof it couldn’t have been me.”

On the late night comedians making fun of his arrest:
I get that it’s their job, but I had already said the allegations weren’t true and felt I deserved the benefit of the doubt from them. Make a joke about me but also just say, ‘By the way, he’s been a friend of our show for many years.’ I was shocked people would kick me when I was down.”

And then he tells this amusing story of embarrassment:
Two years ago I was on a flight back to L.A. from the East Coast and it was one of those newer planes where every seat is equipped with its own little live satellite television screen. … I look over to the bulkhead one row in front of me, and I see a TV monitor there showing my mug shot, which then morphs into a picture of Pee-wee,” Reubens added. “And I realize, ‘Oh my God, they’re showing my E! True Hollywood Story—live!—to every seat in this airplane.’ I felt as though I was going to have to jump off the plane.”

Leave Miss California alone

About the whole Larry King weirdness: I don’t believe she just decided to take off her microphone and sit there by herself and thus I don’t think it even makes sense to call this a “meltdown”. A meltdown would be if she cracked under pressure or freaked out and couldnt take it anymore. Instead what happened was that Larry King was asked not to raise certain questions or even go near certain topics, which is why you GO on Larry King – he’s the show that does that. There aren’t a few shows left on cable news where you can just tell your side of the story without being challenged, probed or fact checked by the host and King is one of the last, if not THE last who will accept “no no areas” of questioning from his guests. There was a miscommunication somewhere and King went into that area. big deal. After that happens, Larry goes to the phones which evidently was the other thing that was agreed beforehand to not happen and Carrie appears to be told by, probably her handler/legal council, to take off her microphone. she does. It’s awkward cuz she doesn’t walk off the set, but rather waits for CNN to get their shit together and realize they made a mistake in breaking the terms and cut to commercial or something so they can hash it out and return for a normal ending. CNN didnt do that and ya, it looks weird, but what else was Carrie supposed to do, really?

SECOND: Here’s the deal on the “sex tape” that isnt a sex tape (you can’t make a solo sex tape. by definition, sex involves another person): if they were all for one guy, then it no diff than there only being one. if they were for more than one guy – even if its 2 and not 7 separate dudes – then its all out the window.

The best interview comes on Fox News’ RedEye, where host Greg Gutfeld jokingly, but not jokingly at all, lectures Carrie about sex tapes right off the bat.

Letterman affair illustrates male/female difference

Men and Women alike often have a hard time understanding that females are not visually stimulated, sexually. I blame this mostly on the brainwash of college and culture that lies to kids and tells them there are no differences between the sexes and teaches them a black-and-white idiotic philosophy against generalizations (things that are generally true).

The David Letterman “I know you had sex with employee’s” blackmail attempt illustrates this as one of the girls, a former intern named
Holly Hester comes forward about her affair with the Late Nite host.

David Letterman is hot

“I was madly in love with him at the time,” said Hester. “I would have married him. He was hilarious.” It all started in 1990 when Letterman asked her out on a date to see a movie and the secret romance (/affair? he’s been with the mother of his child since 1989. no word on if they had gone on a “break” the year of 1990), until the funnyman called it off because of their age difference (chicks half your age are only good for one thing, and that thing isn’t “long term relationship that ends in marriage”).

So she was “madly in love” with him… because “he was hilarious”… Can you imagine for a second a man saying that about a woman? of course not, Captain Rhetorical. Not in a comparable circumstance (obviously). If the woman is Sarah Silverman, then that’s not quite the same as a 62 year old David Letterman, now is it.

Hidden camera Satire vs not satire

It’s annoying when news outlets and opinion commentators falsely ascribe seriousness or comedy to something to fit their bias. If someone they like says something outrageous, then it was just a silly joke, not meant to be taken seriously and thus can’t be offensive – but if someone they don’t like makes a joke that could be taken as mean spirited, the reverse logic is applied in the reporting of the comment. The Daily Show fits this balance perfectly in that supporters who think Jon Stewart may have made a particularly devastating point are able to tout the show as truth speaking journalism, however if a detractor tries to criticize a point made on the show, its supports and in fact Stewart himself, dismiss it because after all its a “fake news” comedy show. duh.

Here are 2 examples I recently noticed involving James O’Keefe, a 25 year old activist who specializes in illustrating absurdity by being absurd, such as holding an “Affirmative Action Bake Sale” in college (an event popular among Campus Republicans nation-wide where the racial discrimination of affirmative action, which lowers standards for racial minorities, is illustrated in a bake sale by charging whites more for a cookie than a minority). His latest work released a series of 5 hidden camera videos showing corrupt employees of community activist group ACORN, a Democrat front-line group closely associated with Barack Obama, helping him cheat the tax system, hide and operate a whore house, traffic illegal aliens, and use 13 year old El Salvadorian girls as sex slaves. In fact these revelations recently led congress to cut funding to ACORN.

Right wing media has been calling O’Keefes expose a “sting” and “journalism the mainstream media used to do” while left wing media has dismissed it as “Borat style gotcha-videos”.

Steve Krakauer, a writer for Mediate.com, is clearly not a fan of O’Keefe as displayed in a recent piece investigating and mocking O’Keefe. The title, Right Wing Darling James O’Keefe: The Man Who Exposed ACORN and Lucky Charms, gives the tone of the article away, but the snarkiness is also misleading. Krakauer reports about O’Keefe on the Lucky Charms thing:

He waged a campaign against dining halls serving Lucky Charms. You see, besides being magically delicious, O’Keefe thought the cereal was offensive to Irish Americans.

That sounds… odd. And it should. because it isnt true. The Mediate columnist failed to mention that O’Keefe didn’t find the cereal offensive, but rather was satirizing the idea that anyone would find it offensive. I was fooled by Mediaites mis-reporting on this myself until I read the real background from the New York times:

In 2004, at a buddy’s suggestion, he and a few fellow Rutgers students set out to satirize what they saw as a pious sensitivity to ethnicity on campus. The result is still there to see on YouTube: Mr. O’Keefe protesting to a slightly befuddled university dining official that the leprechaun on the cereal box “appears to be an Irish-American.”

“As you can see, we’re not short and green — we have our differences of height — and we think this is stereotypical of all Irish-Americans,” Mr. O’Keefe deadpans, as the official earnestly scribbles notes.

I appreciated the Times clearing that up for me as a reader, however in that very same column the author Scott Shane says this of O’Keefe’s previous under cover endeavors:

He has lampooned liberals by inviting them to become pen pals of imprisoned terrorists, and, more darkly, recorded Planned Parenthood staff members agreeing that he can designate his donation exclusively to the abortion of black babies.

eh.. “Lampooned”?… Really? I thought “lampoon” meant comedic satire, ie: the National Lampoon Chevy Chase movies were humorous satirizations of American life, aka: actors acting out a comedy.

Before I embarrass myself by having to make a correction, I went and looked it up and “lampoon” in fact means “a harsh satire”. So… what exactly is the satire taking place here? How are you “lampooning” anything when you ask an abortion advocacy group if you can donate money to kill black babies and they say yes, or ask a government aided organization if you can get help trafficking 12-15 year old south and central american girls to be used as sex slave prostitutes and getting help?

Satire should be reported as satire. Jokes as jokes. Serious acts as serious acts.

First tell the truth. then give your opinion.

I’m sorry Teddy is dead and all. but. he DID kill that one chick

I wrote a post last night about Ted Kennedy before anyone knew he had died, saying that he seems nice enough and everything but he’s a useless hack of a politician who should have resigned awhile ago. Now, while I have the deepest sympathy for his family and am not glad he’s dead or anything – I can’t help but not be indifferent towards his passing on account of his prementioned uselessness to the public he was supposedly serving and that other thing. The “other thing” being how he killed a girl and got away with it.

Since the news media has been respectful of the murder and not dwelled on it since it happened or since news of Kennedys death was released this morning, people have been taking to teh Googlez to find out more and indeed the second and 4th most searched term on the search engine is the Chappaquiddick “incident” and the 5th highest is the girl who died there.

chapakennedy

At first I was going to just show the top 5, but then I saw 2 more in the 26-33 column to the right, so I included that also just for context.

It was a long time ago… though there isn’t really a statute of limitations on murder (or to be fair: “involuntary endangerment of life that only turned into manslaughter when the suspect leaves the victim to die a horrible death and doesn’t tell the police until the next day”).

swimmerkennedyIn 1969, on the little island of Chappaquiddick on Martha’s Vineyard, Ted Kennedy was leaving a party, driving drunk with a 28-year-old girl he was banging and probably impregnated (oops) named Mary Jo Kopechn. He drove right off a frigging bridge and into the water but was able to escape the overturned vehicle and swim to safety… and then said oh well and went home probably to do a line of coke and masturbate. Wait, what happened to Mary Jo? Ya, she friggin drowned in the car and Kennedy not only left the scene of the accident, but didn’t say nuthin to nobody until Kopechne’s body was discovered the following day. Fortunately, there’s a happy ending for everyone who didn’t die that night: Kennedy apologized and denied being drunk or banging Mary Jo, was never indicted, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court accepted the request by Kennedys lawyers for the inquest on the matter to be conducted in secret.

Even though they found that a lot of Kennedys claims were not true and that he was at fault, nothing happened and Kennedy easily sailed to re-election as senator the following year, and every year since then.

Radio host Mark Levin told the story last month:

In 2004, I posted this video from the short lived Spike TV cartoon This Just In that references the crash at the end:

Don’t drive with Ted Kennedy!!!!

UPDATE: Former editor of Newsweek and New York Times Magazine, one of Kennedy’s close friends, Ed Klein, tells something called the Diane Rehm Show that Chappaquiddick jokes were high up on the list. full audio of the show here. The line comes at 30:10, or you can just listen to this little wow-moment isolated in the clip below:

I don’t know if you know this or not, but one of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, “have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?” That is just the most amazing thing. It’s not that he didn’t feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too.