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.)
You know, something didn’t ring true the first time I looked at that video. And naturally, the far left kooks that post at such places as Digg, where I came across it, pack together to give it greater audience.
You exhibit much more confidence in HuffPo than I can muster. While they have a thin facade of respectability, they are little better than dKos with a language filter.
The garbage people go through for damage control. Your “journalism” is just as bad. You’re going completely off of opinion about what constitutes whether somebody is “really” a conservative, saying that our “burn the books” lady isn’t really a conservative because she doesn’t seem like it based off of her web page. Well instead of going off of your impressions(which then makes you a hypocrite) you could, you know, go about figuring out what this lady really is about beyond just looking at a website and saying she doesn’t seem conservative.
But the odd thing is, if she can get away with mocking conservatives, and really passes off as a conservative to people, maybe conservatives have a bit of a larger problem. You can’t deny that her behavior is tame to some of the things we saw en masse during the 08 campaign.
But back to your hypocrisy, you’ve gone as far as the liberals have in proving it, and no further. “A witness” is about as credible as a talking dog. Until you can come up with some real convincing information, you’ve merely put yourself in the position you accuse others of taking. Of course they were quick to jump on it, but don’t come back with this pathetic observation and say, “See, it’s questionable she was a conservative, therefor, she’s not a conservative. Shame on liberals.” Well if you want to prove their conclusions were falsely assumed, prove it, instead of assuming for yourself.
Also, your title is incredibly misleading. Did the Obamabots organize this? It doesn’t sound like it. It just sounds like one lady who acted on her own. And you’ve got a longer distance to go to prove it was an intentional plant than Obamabots have to proving she was a conservative. Underhanded indeed.
I suppose all the people who cheered loudly at her statements (as well as the John Birch conspiracy theorist) were also plants? Ridiculous but nice try at spin wing-nut!
Drs,
Thanks for the comment. This site is all about commentary — both yours and ours. We do like to break “news” every once in awhile and we always strive to be truthful, but we don’t claim to be objective journalists. Unlike the Huffington Post, we’re open and direct about our slant. Just for the record to all who may read this but fail to acknowledge the obvious: When a site’s tagline reads, “Join the Conservative Counter-Revolution,” there’s a pretty good chance Barney Frank isn’t going to get equal time and that journalistic objectivity isn’t the goal.
We do try to be fair though. Our headline stated that the Obamabots *may* have faked the participant and our post presented a theory from a site visitor and stated that a witness had come forward indicating that she was really a 9-12 antagonist. It’s true that we don’t have evidence that Obama’s organized movement put the woman up to her stunt, but we’ve seen more than enough evidence to indicate that the organized Left has jumped on the opportunity to take advantage of her prank if they didn’t — check out the play on Digg where the Lefty Diggers are screaming “Burn the Books” to mock normal people every opportunity they get.
Finally, let me just add that a number of left-wing sites have in fact called on people to manipulate and embarras tea partiers on video, so it wouldn’t surprise our viewers if this was just an example of this call to underhandedness answered. For further information see: http://michellemalkin.com/2009/04/14/tracking-the-tea-party-crashers/. These are some of the top sites on the Left. Hopefully, you’ll agree that this is underhanded.
It’s worth saying, though, that we appreciate your commenting and appealing to the other side’s reason. That’s rare these days, and we respect it.