More Underhanded Moves?: The Obamabots May Have Faked the "Burn the Books" Participant in YouTube Video
ByIt was bound to happen. The organized Left has discovered a video posted at YouTube of participants at a 9-12 “tea party” meeting in which real people try to communicate openly about their concerns and fears and end up sounding like kooks, crazies, or fascists. One speaker, discusses his conspiracy theories about brainwashing devices in digital television tuners while another participant shouts, “Burn the Books!”
We’re a little surprised that this hasn’t happened before now. After all, top public-relations professionals and commentators wouldn’t be earning six-figure salaries if the untrained executive or Average Joe could perform just as well for mass media consumption. And even public-relations professionals and professional commentators have a bad day or let down their guard when speaking amongst a relatively small group of compatriots. This is why, when covering events, most media professionals do not search for clips or quotes from unrepresentative crazies or take the opportunity to directly quote individuals who misspeak or embarrass themselves. Journalists view such behavior as unethical or as bad reporting because focusing on the flaw in presentation or the unrepresentative quirk fails to objectively portray an event or a person’s thoughts or positions. Besides that, it’s underhanded and mean-spirited.
That’s why we were a little surprised to read that the source of the push on this is the Huffington Post and even more surprised when we received a tip last night from Steve D. revealing that a little net research should have prompted any fair-minded journalist to question whether the “Burn the Books” woman was actually a real participant at the meeting. Steve D. noted:
“The person who posted that video labeled it as “Project 912 Glenn Beck Tea Party” and described it as “A Really Good Meeting.” The YouTube account name is cookiecache. If you go to cookiecache’s profile, you’ll see a bunch of videos that don’t really look like something a “tea party”-goer would post, and then you’ll see a bunch of Glenn Beck videos in her “favorites.” Well, if you check out the Google cache of her profile page ( http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:DsZBSINqFhEJ:www.youtube.com/user/cookiecache+cookiecache+youtube&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us ), you’ll notice that her favorites did not include any Glenn Beck videos, but instead included things that are decidedly not “conservative.” You can also use the Internet Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.youtube.com/user/cookiecache .
The woman apparently wasn’t even TRYING to really disguise herself as a conservative. She was simply mocking them, but when her video is “discovered” by the Lefty blogs, she (or whoever it is she was working with here) jumps on the chance to spread the deceit by sanitizing her (incredibly vulgar) favorites list, inserting Glenn Beck videos instead. HuffPo obviously didn’t do any research whatsoever, yet droves liberals just believe it without thinking, as evidenced by the many comments they’ve made on HuffPo and other blogs, cookiecache’s profile page, and the YouTube video’s page itself.
A witness at the event has publicly come forward pointing out that the “Burn the Books” lady was exhibiting behavior all night indicating that she was not a real participant in the event. The Huffington Post and the organized Left should have done their research before using this to smear the event. Shame on all of those who have made “Burn the Books!” a key part of their characterization of tea parties and grassroots conservative meetings throughout the country. That’s unfair even if some unrepresentative nut job at a meeting did say something like that, but it’s totally underhanded if the book burner was actually a fake.
(Note: We are glad that the people we meet at tea parties are not necessarily 100% camera-ready. The tea party movement is inspiring because it involves real people in a genuine grassroots effort. Their concern and language rings true to us in a way that sanitized Beltway-speak usually does not. It seems that the organized Left wants to have it both ways by claiming that the tea parties are astro-turf and then promoting video showing real people making real missteps. It’s hard to imagine wanting to trick these people or publicly embarrass them even if you disagree with them. As unbelievable as it sounds, we suspect that we may be seeing more of these unfair hit pieces on the movement; we don’t think it should be necessary, but we think it’ll be up to people like our tipster, Steve D., to set the record straight.)
