Muckraking in the 21st Century

Anyone who’s gotten politically involved to any degree will eventually run into a kook. Normally this will happen very quickly. Working gun shows in 2008, I ran into several. To some degree, since you’re not there to pick fights with people, you humor them for a bit and hope they move on. Usually it’s run of the mill conspiracy nonsense, or something that’s mostly harmless. Often time the kook wants to be heard. They’ll have their say, you can be polite, nod a lot, and they’ll move on.

When this James O’Keefe video first started, I was somewhat sympathetic to Patrick Moran, because he legitimately tried to steer the videographer’s energy back to legitimate tasks. And then he went completely off the rail. Full context is provided at the end, and I watched that too. I thought full context was worse than the editing:

I might have tried to steer this person back to legitimate tasks too, but once it became clear this character would not be dissuaded, I would have said “Well, what you’re talking about is voter fraud, and it’s illegal, and we don’t do things that way, sorry.” What I definitely would not do is offer some advise on how to pull it off.

5 thoughts on “Muckraking in the 21st Century”

  1. That’s the same thing that happened with the chick in Houston in his last video. I was initially sympathetic because she kind of laughed it off and didn’t really say anything damning at first. However, she started down that path when she encouraged the reporter to vote in Florida when she knew that she was no longer eligible to vote in Florida. But then when the reporter came back in and said she was absolutely going to do it, the OFA staffer went and printed up the documents to assist the reporter in what she knew to be illegal. That’s where my sympathy ended.

  2. No sympathy. Just like the ACORN videos. These people were willing to play ball. Thankfully, this was a sting. What if it wasn’t? I’m glad people are routing out crooks.

  3. A bit of context may be useful: don’t know about the son, but his father the Congressman is a well established literal literal thug. Ex-boxer who regularly assaults people, as least as of when I was in the D.C. area and paying attention to this loser who was my House Representative :-(. Last two cases I remember were his 2nd wife (not too much later ex-wife, don’t know about the 1st and 3rd but one can imagine) and a kid (real kid, not a big young adult “kid”) in a parking lot who wasn’t doing anything really objectionable as I recall.

    Also a matter of record that per Wikipedia “In 1995, Moran had to be restrained by the Capitol Police after a shoving match with California Republican Duke Cunningham on the house floor…”. The page also includes a couple of his classic threats to punch someone in the or break their nose.

    Was allowed to plead no contest to misdemeanor corruption when deputy mayor of Alexandra, VA. and has been quite personally corrupt in the Congress.

    He’s a strong contender for being in the set of the worst of the worst in the Congress, although he has far too much competition….

  4. Moran’s answers/plans for potential problems come so easily to hand I find it hard to buy he is making this up on the fly. Either he’s thought about it a lot of he has done it before. Too glib, too proud of himself and his cleverness.

    How many more clever little men are out there?

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