Loesch's Argumentative "Skills"

Dana Loesch "debated" Frances Martel on the Stage Right Show yesterday and called the woman she was debating, Frances Martel, a "bitch." Naturally, her obsessive fans will take this as evidence of how brilliant she is, since unoriginal name-calling is the pinnacle of tea party argumentation. She also hilariously told Martel, who grew up in a communist country, that she understands communism much better than her, and declared that women are not allowed to have a discussion about motherhood unless they're mothers. Naturally, she ended this particular part of the discussion by declaring that she "carries herself" much better than Martel.

You can listen to a snippet here:



h/t Taunia Adams

Losing Faith in the Mainstream Media

I just read Jo Mannies article about the UMSL incident that completely fails to point out that Breitbart's videos were maliciously edited and amazingly fails to even provide readers a link where they can see the fuller videos. Just like the Post-Dispatch and KMOX, she doesn't inform her readers of the relevant facts despite having every opportunity to do so.

I can't even describe how depressing it's been in this case to see how badly the St. Louis media has covered the story. Though I've always been critical of the media, I used to think that they'd get the story right if they were just given easy access to the correct information. In this case, they were given easy access to the correct information; they did not get the story right. I used to think that the media could get the story right if it was demonstrated just how systematically dishonest Andrew Breitbart is. He has been shown to intentionally distort video over and over, yet they did not get the story right. I used to think that maybe reporters could get the story right if you gave them a personal phone call and talked about the issues rather than just sending them a link to the information on a blog. I gave reporters a personal phone call on this issue; they failed to get the story right. I used to think that maybe reporters preferred Breitbart's side of the story because they were always presented with video, a more digestible medium than the written word. In this case, there was video available that clearly showed Breitbart's bloggers were lying; the media ignored it and did not get the story right.

In this case, Jo Mannies, Kevin Killeen, and Tim Barker were given every opportunity to get the story right, yet they still failed miserably, in a way that should be embarrassing for any St. Louisan who cares about having a competent mainstream media. Compare this to the Kansas City Star, who from the very beginning rhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifecognized this as a dishonest hit job from a known con man. I keep trying to make excuses to believe that maybe the state of the media in St. Louis isn't as bad as others say, but I'm not sure I have any left.

Update: Jo Mannies at the Beacon has now updated her post with a link to the Media Matters analysis and KMOX put out a new story that got it right. Now it's up to the Post-Dispatch to make it 3 for 3!

KMOX Allows False Information to Fester On Website for Over a Week

I had a nice conversation with KMOX reporter Kevin Killeen earlier this week. Unfortunately, it followed the same pattern I've experienced many other times with the CBS affiliate that hosts Rush Limbaugh in St. Louis: they're very nice and polite, they say I raise good points, and yet they fail to fix the problem.

KMOX was one of the first St. Louis media outlets to pick up the Breitbart smear story, and they reported it without noting Breitbart's extensive history of dishonesty. In the article, Killeen wrote that "Giljum appears to tell students that being a labor activist is not always calm discussion," (with an accompanying quote that's been edited to change the meaning) and that "Ancel appears to be telling students that violence is a legitimate tool of organized labor." Both of these claims and their corresponding video clips have been shown to be unambiguously false.

Keep in mind the serious consequences of this kind of dishonest attack: both Ancel and Giljim have received numerous threats based on the distorted videos. So by unquestioningly passing on videos from a source that has been shown to be dishonest on numerous occasions, KMOX is facilitating threats and intimidation against two innocent people.

On Friday of last week, I emailed links to Killeen with video that showed, conclusively, that the Breitbart sites had taken the video out-of-context. He responded by thanking me for the links, and telling me that he'd follow up on Monday of the next week with UM officials because he "already had a full assignment sheet." I didn't understand why he would need a quote from the University of Missouri just to point out that the original video was distorted and his reporting about it was wrong, and I also didn't understand why a news organization would decide to wait three days to correct a falsehood, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

The next week rolled around and Killeen still did not write any correction. So I sent the following message to Killeen:

Last week, you published a story based on videos from professional con man Andrew Breitbart. The links I sent you included clear video evidence that Breitbart's videos were edited completely out-of-context to put words into the instructors mouths. For example, you wrote that it "appeared" that Ancel was saying violence is an appropriate tactic, when in fact she was quoting a character from a movie to promote class discussion. I'mhttphttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif curious how long you want misinformation to sit on the KMOX web site without being corrected.

I received no response from Killeen and in fact he wrote a new story that doubled down on the original dishonesty. His new story focused on the fact that UMSL claims Giljim resigned voluntarily, and Giljim said he was pressured, but it made no mention of the fact that the full videos show that the quotes were distorted. In fact, it doubled down on the original dishonesty by linking to a sound clip from Dana Loesch (BTW, a competitor to KMOX's Mark Reardon) that repeated the exact same falsehoods.

At this point, I called Killeen and asked him why he was not fixing this false information. He responded that he thought that the editor had added the links I sent him (Media Matters and Crooks and Liars), and that he would try to get them to change the story. I just checked back today and, unfortunately, the only "change" they made was to add the Media Matters and Crooks and Liars links to the "related content" section at the end.

Needless to say, these changes are virtually meaningless. As a radio station, the main audience is the people who hear the original report on the radio, who have been provided with no reason to question the original, false story. Out of the significantly smaller audience who read the stories online, very few are likely to come back to the site several days later to check to see if there are any updates. And of that small group, how many are going to notice a change in the "related content" that doesn't appear in the main story?

KMOX put out factually incorrect information. They were notified of this fact over a week ago, and still have not updated their original story nor issued a correction. They wrote a story based on Breitbart's smear video, yet have refused to write a story based on video that proves it to be false. And, in fact, they have not even adjusted the content of their claims in the new stories they've written since the longer videos came out.

I personally am not sure how KMOX expects people to regard them as a purveyor of trustworthy information when they so flippantly disregard information that shows their reporting to have been mistaken. It's one thing for a news service to make a mistake; it's quite another for them to hide this mistake even after it's been revealed. The later amounts to intentionally misleading their audience. Hopefully, they will move quickly to fix this mistake.

Update: They set the record straight with a new story.

Post-Dispatch's False Notion of "Neutrality" Contributes to Demise of Journalism

The Post-Dispatch has a full-length article today about the Breitbart smear attacks on UMSL. The author Tim Barker says that academic freedom is at the heart of the dispute, and I agree that it certainly is an important consideration here and applaud Barker for emphasizing this point. Professors at American universities have advocated for all kinds of controversial positions, pro-union and anti-union, communist and libertarian, pro-life and pro-choice. Professors at American universities have also advocated for using torture against political prisoners, for the death penalty, and have argued that we should go to war to protect our political interests even when our country is under no threat from others. So yes, academic freedom is a central part of the American higher education system, and the right-wing's attempt to single out and suppress views on the liberal side of the spectrum is disgusting and stands opposed to the idea of free speech that they pretend to care about.

However, this particular case is about more than just academic freedom. This is about Andrew Breitbart and Dana Loesch continuing their pattern of blatantly distorting video to put words into people's mouths as part of a systematic attack on all of the institutions they don't like. They lied and claimed that Judy Ancel told her class that "Violence is a tactic. It's to be used when it's the appropriate tactic." In fact, as was clearly revealed in the longer videos, Ancel was quoting a character in a movie. They chopped of a quote from Don Giljim after the word "and...." and added a completely new sentence to the end to claim that he was advocating industrial sabotage. In fact, as was clearly revealed in the longer videos, he explicitly said that such tactics are "counterproductive" in the segments chopped out by Breitbart. Yet, the Post-Dispatch fundamentally fails to point out these blatant lies and distortions, and instead settles with quoting some people who said the videos were taken out-of-context and saying, "Other sites, including Mediamatters.org, have since published their own pieces attacking Breitbart's work."

The problem is that Media Matters didn't just "attack" Breitbart's work; they released video that showed it to be completely false. And it is not a matter of subjective interpretation whether the videos were edited out-of-context; if you chop off a person's sentence to say something different than what it actually said, you have thereby falsely presented their views. These are not matters of interpretation where you can settle for getting quotes.

I understand the notion of "neutrality" at work in the Post-Dispatch's article. They don't want to be accused of "bias," so instead of showing the longer videos or simply saying that Breitbart's videos were distorted, they'd rather get quotes from both sides. Such is the idea of "neutrality" that is one of the central flaws of modern journalism; they divorce themselves from an objective reality where there are these strange things called "facts," and instead settle for a world in which neutrality always means halfway between two positions, no matter how closely those positions align with the real world. Thus if Breitbart claims that Giljim is secretly a member of Al Qaeda who's been training in Yemen for the past 50 years, and Giljim releases video documenting his time in the St. Louis region for the past 50 years, the modern "neutral" reporter just gets quotes from both sides and calls it a day.

But not only is this notion of neutrality fundamentally flawed as it denies the existence of facts about the world, it also is inherently contradictory. As Barker (the author of this piece) decides to write a story, he has to commit to standards of journalism and reporting that guide his work. He knows that he can't simply chop up people's quotes and rearrange their words to make it appear that they said something that they really didn't. His commitment to standards of journalism makes him fundamentally not neutral when it comes to the practice of reporting. Barker cannot be "neutral" as to whether it's OK to distort quotes or not, because being neutral on that question would mean that he's a terrible reporter, which he's not.


So once he's staked out a position on the practices of honest journalism, he also can no longer be neutral on what it is that Breitbart's minions do. They engage in the very practices that Barker has to reject in order to be a good reporter. They violate the trust of the people who listen to them and willfully manipulate their beliefs to push a particular political agenda. Barker, as someone who cares about the practice of journalism, can not coherently apply the false notion of "neutrality" to what Breitbart does because, by doing so, he would be rejecting his own standards.

Furthermore, Breitbartism is a competitor to the kind of journalism that Barker and the Post-Dispatch practice. Breitbart makes no bones about the fact that he's trying to make his style of journalism the norm for the right. So he has declared war on legitimate reporters like those who work at the Post-Dispatch, and would be happy to destroy them. And as long as the Post-Dispatch fails to stand up for their standards of journalism by (legitimately) criticizing liars and smear-merchants, they are allowing dishonest characters to continue to erode the idea of "journalism."

Like the USDA during the Sherrod scandal, like NPR, and now like UMSL, the Post-Dispatch is trying to remain neutral with people who have ultimately declared war on them. The continue to try to avoid short-term controversy by failing to call out liars. But these minor short-term reprieves are ultimately meaningless, because the longer they continue to empower people who are fundamentally opposed to the type of honest reporting the Post practices, the more they are ensuring their own demise.

Quick Rebuttal of "Insurgent Visuals"

Insurgent Visuals has another lazy, ridiculous post up at Big Journalism that tries to pretend that when they claimed that Ancel said that "violence is a tactic. It's to be used when it's the appropriate tactic," while deliberately editing out the fact that she was quoting a character in the movie At the River I Stand, they somehow were not being dishonest. Their latest claims are desperate and absent of substance, but here are a few quick points.

First, they said that the video was in relation to the idea that no tactics should be off the table:

It lacks the notice that but a few minutes before, it was made clear that the discussion was about tactics. It lacks the context to know that the statement was made “nothing is off the table

But that was a quote from students. There certainly were students in the class who advocated for "leaving violence on the table" as a tactic, but Insurgent Videos falsely claimed that the professors were advocating for that claim, which they weren't. In fact, the professors repeatedly emphasized that such tactics were counterproductive.

Second, they claim that Ancel is endorsing "militancy:"

These inflammatory and incendiary statements were made to set a certain tone: militancy in achieving union objectives.

This makes it sound like she endorses violence, and indeed use this as evidence that she supports violence. However, the class discussion actually clearly distinguished between "militancy" and "violence," as was clear in a quote they previously used from Ancel:

true militancy means high levels of participation and willingness to undertake creative and in-your-face tactics, I think. And the American labor movement never would have had the successes it had without that kind of militancy. There isn’t any major labor battle in this country, clearly, before the era of the 1950s that did not, in fact, break the law. And–but they didn’t do it by destroying property and smashing windows. They did it tactically, by violating the laws they had to violate if they were going to be able to continue their movement

What Ancel was talking about, as was made clear in the class discussion, was civil disobedience.

They also claim that Ancel was saying her quote in response to a student advocating for non-violence. Actually, even according to their own quote, the previous comment was a student discussing violence:

STUDENT 4: When they’re willing to give up violence, then I will too.

Ancel was jumping off that idea to get more discussion from the class. She was not "endorsing the idea." In fact, the movie she showed to the class, At the River I Stand, was extremely critical of people who used violence and clearly advocated for nonviolence as a strategy.

If Insurgent Visuals actually believed their claims that Ancel's quotes called for violence, they would have included the full quotes. However, they deliberately edited her quotes and, in fact, chopped Don Gilgim's quotes off at the word "and.." and then added a different quote to completely change the sentence. They have no defense for their smear, which is why they're already changing their story.

Republican Operative Chip Gerdes Threatens to "Slash My Tires"

Quincy, Illinois Republican operative Chip Gerdes, previously known for making over-the-top personal attacks from behind his (formerly) anonymous account and tweeting about activists' homes, tweeted the following last week:
Now, I'm not saying this because I think anyone should be worried. However, if you haven't noticed, I am a firm believer in documenting this kind of obnoxious behavior.

Supreme Court to Cheerleader: You Should Have Cheered for Your Rapist

 Trigger Warning:  This post discusses rape and rape culture.


I just read about a horrible decision* by the U.S. Supreme Court, and I’m infuriated. Do you remember the Texas high school cheerleader who was kicked off the squad for refusing to cheer for her rapist? She just lost her court case against the school.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

A federal appeals court ruled in September that the cheerleader was speaking for the school, not herself, and had no right to remain silent when called on to cheer the athlete by name.

The Supreme Court denied review of the case Monday without comment.

I am incredibly tired of a culture and legal system that blame and punish victims. Too many people in the legal system have very little understanding of trauma and how it affects the brain. Short statutes of limitation are one indication of this lack of understanding. The nature of trauma—especially human-induced trauma—makes it difficult, if not impossible, in many cases to pursue justice against a perpetrator in a timely fashion. But even when statutes can be tolled, they generally begin to run as soon as the victim realizes or “should have” realized that she has been harmed—not when she is psychologically capable of taking legal action.

This case is just another example of the iniquities that victims of violent crimes must face in a country that claims to be the land of the free, and the home of the brave. “Cowardly” does not begin to describe the officials at this young woman’s school and a Supreme Court that would not even hear her appeal. And she is hardly free when her First Amendment rights have been obstructed by a school that wanted to force her to cheer for her rapist.

High school graduates are not prepared to participate in a democracy when their rights have been trampled upon during an autocratic high school experience. Women and others who have been victimized are being sent a terrible message by the failure of the legal system to provide justice for this young rape victim. There needs to be a national protest of this reprehensible court decision.

“My Short Skirt” may in fact be part of a cheerleading uniform.


* Clarification 5/6/11:  It has been brought to my attention that my use of the word "decision" here may be misleading.  I am referring to the Supreme Court's decision to deny review of the case, not a decision to uphold the ruling of the federal appeals court.  I realize that the word "decision" in a legal context usually refers to the latter, and I apologize for any confusion.