Jun 16 2010

Bob Etheridge Was Setup And Is A Schmuck [Politics]

The Bob Etheridge video was a setup. He’s still a schmuck.

As Mayor Quimby once said, it can be two things.

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, here is a reasonably good account of the story at Huffington Post.

And here are the two videos.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZKie0Z4kaw]

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1BC34jBVo0]

Now:

The reality is that the Etheridge video was clearly a setup. This is the GOP Conservative Hive Mind version of TMZ. They create a situation and hope that someone (usually a member of the Democratic party, whom the GOP Conservative Hive Mind believes is the greatest threat to life as they know it) falls for it.

Etheridge fell for it big time. That makes him a schmuck. He might even have anger management issues. Hell, he might even be a violent maniac. But that doesn’t change the fact that this was clearly an ambush.

Gotcha journalism, if you will.

If it’s not a setup, why does the YouTube account hosting the videos have only two clips, both of the Etheridge incident? Why is it so well edited? Why was there someone else present with a high quality camera ready to document the whole thing? And if it wasn’t a setup, what was it? A “school project”? Give me a break. We’re stupid, but we’re not THAT stupid.

This doesn’t let Etheridge off the hook. He acted like a schmuck. But the situation was fabricated.

Also interesting is that this tactic is what Andrew Breitbart, the neocon nitwit who promoted the Etheridge video, accused the black senators of doing when they walked by Tea Party protesters. He said that by walking by them, they were attempting to provoke a response. Or as he put it on Twitter, which is where everyone knows the most trenchant political debate occurs: “Dem strategy: Coordinated bloc walks in front of ‘tea partiers’ hoping to get youtube provocation to turn tables“. (The implication that a black person walking by a Tea Party protest is something that is likely to provoke a negative response is a curious side note to Breitbart’s reasoning.)

Breitbart, of course, says that was wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. So what about the Etheridge video? Which is more likely – that a Senator would be going to work and happen to walk by protesters? Or that two kids in suits with cameras happened to be waiting for a Senator?

They’re all assholes. Pick the asshole you agree with the most and vote that way, I suppose. But don’t buy into the notion that this is real. Because in all likelihood, it isn’t.