SUNDAY MORNING ROUNDUP - DC NONSENSE

Exhausted after a very long week of work, and planned to take some time Saturday just to rest. Didn't happen - and it didn't happen on the national news scene.



In DC, thousands of right-wing and liberatarian (increasingly right wing) protestors lead by the pied-piper Dick Armey descended on the downtown to show the rest of America just how angry, and how ugly they really are. Expect to see several days worth of insulting, racist and misleading signs featured in slide shows around the internet, including this dilly of a pic. Yes, all the threats about Marxists, socialists, guns and the like were present, and the rube-circus also enjoyed getting on-air at CNN to deride a reporter trying to do her job.




They also managed to let the rest of the country know how potty they are by chanting "Glenn Beck, Glenn Beck" the final sign that the end-times have arrived at least for political discourse in America. This is the revenge of the Birch Society against Goldwater and William F. Buckley, Jr. in full swing - the dream of Timothy McVeighs everywhere in fruition. Looks like we'll all have to buy guns now to keep ourselves safe from the raving tea-bagger lynch mobs roaming the street. As more than one writer and member of Congress recalled, this is very much like the mobs protesting the civil rights act and integration. A certain breed of people just don't like the change that happened in November, and can't bring themselves to live with it. Here's the CNN reporter feeling the wrath of the baggers...







Fox did its part too, just with it's usual supportive slant toward crazy. Crooks and Liars has that video, which we won't post here, but you should give it a look. They write...

Marsha Blackburn who never had a problem with George Bush's wars and spending at the Tea Bag 9/12 protest in Washington D.C. saying the protesters want some fiscal responsibility. That's rich. And they want their "country back". From who exactly Marsha? Their elected representatives, or from the black man they think was born in Kenya?



Gotta' love Fox for staying classy with the "Don't Barney Frank Me" signs they were showing while they were interviewing her.

An added thought, very entertaining stuff. The folks who put on today's Ringling Brothers show of stupidity also got the attendance numbers wrong. Seems they were quoting ABC News as having said there were 1.5 million people in DC. ABC took pains to correct that to say instead the numbers were between 60 and 70 thousand. Again, no mean feat there, and a good number of people, but nowhere near the million-plus the baggers claimed to have put into the streets. One or two people in the twittersphere were also trying to float pics of a street cam of downtown, but we've seen it, and it looks like 60 to 70 grand to us as well.

Alao, seems like at least one local bagger-blog got the numbers wrong as well, but again, exposure to Bernie Skoch may cause some lingering nerve damage. Oh, yes, a friendly blogger took pains to share the photo to your left of what 2 million people really look like - that wasn't what we saw today.











Elsewhere, in Hollywoodland, an Emmy award for ex-SNLer Tina Fey for her mimickry of Sarah Palin.


Sinners!

Not much more to say about that except she did a bangup job bringing whacky Sarah to her knees on national television and turned someone who was becoming a nightmare into more of an American joke. So, to think of happier times, we thought we' share this little "photo-comic" with you, viz the Biden-Palin debate last year. We still get a laugh out of this one.







Finally, something that's rankeled us this week - attention to full disclosure in journalistic effort. We've all seen the story about the "independent journalist-slash-filmmaker" who shot a piece of video in Baltimore (and in DC) at the ACORN office. A man and woman masquerading as a pimp and prostitute wanted advice on how to declare her income on tax forms, and how to start a business trafficking in underage girls from El Salvador. Seems the volunteers at the desk were only too happy to suggest the lady-of-the-night declare her career as one of "performance artist."



We also noticed the duo appearing on Fox's Hannity for an interview, but oddly enough didn't notice them making appearances in many other venues.



Some would argue that's because the big-bad-uber-liberal media doesn't like the story, and didn't cover it enough. OK, we saw this everywhere in every outlet, and ACORN consquently lost it's contract with the Census Bureau. We also noticed ACORN promptly fired the individuals in question (if you can "fire" a volunteer) and then said this "sting operation" had happened at other offices and also called it a "smear."



We wondered - was that sour grapes? Or did they have something? The thing about unbiased journalism is that you have to listen to both sides in a story and do some research. Without excusing what happened in the videos or questioning its veracity, we also wondered if ACORN wasn't telling the truth.



We discovered something that didn't surprise us at all.



Seems the "pimp" - so-called independent filmmaker James O'Keefe - is a UCLA student making a name for himself in the pro-life movement. He belongs to a group based in San Jose, California founded by a 15 year old girl who's father works as an engineer at Sun Microsystems. She - and he - have done this before. They started by esentially recording prank calls to Planned Parenthood, and then asking to make donations to Planned Parenthood if the organization would spend the money only to abort black babies - which the woman on the phone assured O'Keefe the group would do.



We learned this is an old maneuver used by pro-lifers first in Texas, and now the youngsters in Orange County and elsewhere have decided to integrate Youtube into the action. Needless to say, the conservative establishment, think-tanks and organizations have all hailed those actions.



As for the "prositute" - her name is Hannah Giles, and budding columnist on the conservative website Townhall.com. Her father, Doug, is also a writer there - sort of runs in the family. Hannah is also proud to part of a conservative college organization, sort of a budding Ann Coulter, something she is no doubt proud of - and something she must hope gets her a job with Bill O'Reilly. Here you can see her interview with Hannity (also included is Mr. O'Keefe.)









So, while we appreciate the enterprising young conservatives attempts at journalism, we also don't think those attempts were unbiased, and we think they're being used as propaganda against liberal groups and positions, which we believe was the original intent. So, results? Sure, we'll take those. Intent? Not so much in this case. And just watch out - it's been done on the other side too by people like Michael Moore, and we never heard much applause about his efforts at "journalism." While we hate to act all Glenn Beck v. Van Jones about it, we still believe complete disclosure is an important principle for journalists to value, and we don't feel like we got the complete story from the cable nets and especially not from Hannity.



The problem is this - when you (or we) read or see something, that means someone has to start asking questions about who's behind it, and what are their motivations. That's journalism - it may not change the story, but it will shed more light behind what's happening. For our half-dozen conservative readers, you should be familiar with that if you happen to be Bernard Goldberg fans, because he's made a post-CBS News career out of making that argument, though he himself hasn't always been honest about where he's getting his support and money and what agenda those individuals have.


UPDATE: Seems the two "independent journalists" could face felony charges for violating Maryland laws on recording conversations without permission, something former ABC Reporter John "stuttering" Stossel faced in the 90s for doing the same thing. This is from a Baltimore area blogger/journalist (a real one)...

So, unless the law has changed (and I have found no evidence of that), there is clear precedent for the Baltimore State's Attorney's office in charging these two filmmakers with a felony that carries a maximum sentence of five years.



And this time, Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia A. Jessamy's office won't have a case based on at least one journalist who won't testify and a network that says videotaping never took place. From what I've seen online, O'Keefe and Giles are saying openly that they secretly taped the ACORN employees in Baltimore with hidden cameras.

This could get fun.