Exclusive Interview: Breitbart's Provocateurs Trespass at UMSL To Harass and Intimidate Students(AUDIO)

Early last week, Dana Loesch and Andrew Breitbart's websites started pushing a story claiming that professors at UMKC and UMSL were encouraging their students to use violence and industrial sabotage to further political ends. The videos immediately looked sketchy, with strangely edited clips cobbled together. Though the bureaucracies of the universities and the unions slowed down a response to the attacks from well-known con artist Andrew Breitbart, UMKC professor Judy Ancel released a statement documenting that the videos were maliciously edited to put words into the mouths of the professors. On Friday, Crooks and Liars and Media Matters both released video that clearly demonstrated that the story being pushed by Loesch and Breitbart was completely fabricated via creative chop-shop editing.

In order to distract people from the fact that they were busted lying, St. Louis tea party provocateur Adam Sharp, who's blogged on Breitbart's sites before, apparently trespassed on the UMSL campus on Saturday to harass students and instructor Don Giljim. Sharp attempted to film students in their classroom, pestered them as they walked out of class with questions like "do you condone violence," and was arrested and charged with trespassing. Don Gilgim was also taken to the police station because there was an altercation, and as students waited outside of the police station, another tea partier approached them and began taunting them and daring them to "take a swing" at him. This is after a week where the tea party violated students' privacy by putting videos on YouTube showing comments made for the purpose of classroom discussion.

Needless to say, the students felt victimized by this assault on their ability to learn in a safe environment without being harassed by extremists. We were able to get two exclusive interviews with students from the UMSL class who witnessed Adam Sharp's attempts to barge into their classroom. I think both of them do an excellent job laying out just how disturbing it is that the tea party is now trying to harass students and professors on college campuses and interfere with people's ability to learn and speak freely. Though the students chose to remain anonymous for this interview, one (Kevin) will be available for media requests, as well as other students from that class. The first student we interviewed is studying for finals and trying to recover from the major disruption in her life caused by the tea party invasion of her classroom, and she prefers to remain off-the-radar for the next several days.

Please check out these interviews which (1) further debunk the lie that the course taught students to use violence as a tactic or engage in industrial sabotage, (2) detail Sharp's incredibly creepy behavior of trespassing and trying to barge into a college classroom, and (3) document the tea party blatantly trying to provoke attacks from college students who were just trying to learn:

First Interview


Second Interview (Kevin)


I should note that I heard that instructor Don Giljim was charged with damaging Sharp's camera. I certainly do not condone violence, even against people who are doing everything in their power to provoke it. Sharp invaded the sanctity of their classroom in order to create a story that distracts from the fact that Breitbart and Loesch were caught lying, and he just might be successful.

Don't Say You Weren't Warned: More Gotcha Schmournalism

A couple days ago, I posted a video that demonstrated the fundamentally dishonest style of "journalism" practiced by Adam Sharp of Sharp Elbows and many others in the new "conservative citizen journalist" movement:



Sharp is back today with a similar tactic, editing some select clips of Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky:



Of course, it's not exactly clear why Sharp thinks this is an interesting question, considering that a federal judge ruled just last week that the health care bill *is* constitutional.

But this reflects a larger issue that Democrats and progressives have still not dealt with. This trend of completely dishonest "conservative journalists" is not going away. Democratic politicians need to be prepared for angry conservatives asking gotcha questions, and they need to have their own cameras rolling at all times. And this goes for activists as well: if you are attending an event, take some kind of video recording device with you, or else eventually one of the folks like Sharp will be all-too-happy to try to misrepresent reality.

The Tea Party Guide to Thoughtful Political Discussion

Dana Loesch had a post up yesterday bragging about how the tea party "polices" their rallies because they asked a guy to remove a Hitler picture from his sign:


It's pretty funny that Loesch would brag about that, considering that she defended a billboard comparing Obama to Hitler back in July:


It's actually not the first time she forgot her previous ridiculous comments, claiming in August that all Hitler comparisons were from left wing plants.

Still, maybe you could see this as progress. But before the tea party pats themselves on the back too much, it might be worth taking a look at what was on the other side of the sign. Sharp seems to deliberately avoid showing that in his video. Fortunately, I happened to snap a photo of the other side of the sign after the tea party's "policing."



So remember to follow the rules of thoughtful political discourse. Obama can be compared to Hitler on billboards, but not on signs, because doing so on signs is "not helpful." Also, it's totally cool to set fire to pictures of your political opponents and carry coffins to their houses. And finally, making signs that suggest that Obama is secretly a Muslim...highly encouraged!