{"id":10122,"date":"2010-04-16T07:58:42","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T12:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=10122"},"modified":"2010-04-16T07:59:27","modified_gmt":"2010-04-16T12:59:27","slug":"fact-checking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=10122","title":{"rendered":"Fact Checking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, Andy Birkey at the Minnesoros “independent” <\/em>wrote about an episode<\/a> involving an angry caller leaving a profane, uncivil message at a local AFSCME office<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Birkey:<\/p>\n

[AFSCME’s flak] forwarded audio of the call along with the identity of a person she says the calls were tracked to.\u00a0 That individual, a local business owner, she says \u201cclaims to be an organizer of the Tea Party protest at the State Capitol tomorrow<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Birkey ran the “organizer” claim uncritically, without any fact-checking; apparently AFSCME flaks are considered unimpeachable sources.<\/p>\n

But since I was on the stage with every single one of the Twin Cities’ Tea Party’s “organization” last night, I asked around if anyone had heard of the alleged caller, “Ed Motch”.\u00a0 Was he an organizer?\u00a0 Was he even prominent enough among the Twin Cities’ small community of non-major-party tax activists that anyone even knew the guy’s name?<\/p>\n

Nobody had ever heard of the guy.\u00a0 A casual google<\/a> of “Ed Motch” shows that most of the references to him come from…the Mindy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To be fair to the Mindy<\/em>, the rest of the Twin Cities media – Fox9<\/a>, WCCO<\/a> and MPR<\/a> – repeated AFSCME’s claim that this…:<\/p>\n

\u201cHey you [expletive] piece of [expletive]. Your days are [expletive] numbered sucking at the public tit. This [expletive] is over. I saw that [expletive] \u2018Tax the Rich\u2019 ad again. We don\u2019t you come and visit tomorrow at the [expletive] little party we\u2019re going to have on the 15th at the capitol. Why don\u2019t you show up there with your [expletive] union signs. That\u2019d be just [expletive] wonderful. Come you you gutless [expletive] wonders, show up!\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…was a “threat”.\u00a0\u00a0 An uncivil. profane tirade, certainly, and not an invitation in good faith to the event, but “threat?<\/p>\n

Apparently it is, if AFSCME, like Steny Hoyer, Rep. Cleaver, Rep. Lewis and Nancy Pelosi, say so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, Andy Birkey at the Minnesoros “independent” wrote about an episode involving an angry caller leaving a profane, uncivil message at a local AFSCME office. Birkey: [AFSCME’s flak] forwarded audio of the call along with the identity of a person she says the calls were tracked to.\u00a0 That individual, a local business owner, she says […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-lefty-alt-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10122"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10125,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10122\/revisions\/10125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}