Code Pink pulls a fast one:
With all of the news about Blackwater USA’s problems, it wasn’t a surprise that a fake story about the company creating a “Department of Corporate Integrity” would make it on to several valid news sites.
CBS News and Politico.com were among the victims of the fraud, reportedly perpetuated by Code Pink, according to Politico, which posted a correction today. CBS reprinted a Politico story on its site.
“In this business, you sometimes come across news items and think, ‘You couldn’t make that stuff up.’ Well, sometimes you can,” Politico reported in its note. “Code Pink today pulled off a hoax that pulled in Politico and a number of other news outlets when it ginned up a fake release, saying that Blackwater USA was creating a new ‘Department of Corporate Integrity’ that would put the ‘mercy back in mercenary.’ That should have been a tip off.”
More of this, please.
KCinDC
Praising Code Pink now? Can embracing Cindy Sheehan be far behind?
capelza
LITBMueller
What?!?!? CBS went to air with a document before confirming it, again?!?!?!? Clearly, they are tools of Teh Left…
nightjar
And Politico merrily puts the idiot back into idiot.
Cyrus
I can just picture Blackwater refuting the story now. “No, of course we don’t have a Department of Corporate Integrity. Why would we want something like that?”
capelza
Cyrus, why that would be “silly”!
Jake
Clearly I will need to keep a tank of oxygen handy if I want to read Balloon Juice.
Quick, we need to place bets on how the humorless hordes of the right will react:
1. This is proof all people who are against the war are liars.
2. Scott Beauchamp is behind it all.
3. Launch Operation Citizen Journalism against every member of Code Pink.
4. The news outlets that ran the story are in on the plot.
5. The fact that the news outlets were so easily taken in proves that this is the dawn of the Citizen Journalist!
6. Screech “You’re going to look swell in a burqa while terrorists ass rape your husband!!!”
capelza
Waits for the photoshop picture of Code Pink carrying the banner to resurface again…you know the one that said “We support the murder of American troops”.
I do hope they know it’s fake this time.
nightjar
This I’d like to see. Them gals may wear pink but they got sharp claws and can sling the shit as well as, if not better than, Malkin and co.. .
capelza
nightjar..I’d pay good money to see a cage match with Code Pink and Malkin in her cheerleading outfit.
nightjar
Why I get overheated at just the though of such a spectacle.
I guess we’ll have to sign up Bill’O to referee. Popcorn.
J. Michael Neal
Days like the last two are why I click on my Ballon Juice bookmark at least 5-6 times a day, even during those horrible dry periods when John and Tim make us go days, nay, weeks, without a single post.
Dreggas
It’s why I hit refresh on this site and it has its own browser window.
chopper
still not as good as the fast one the yes men pulled on the whole bhopal disaster.
but bravo, code pink.
laneman
I makes me utterly nauseated.
**shudder**
Incertus (Brian)
You know, this is the kind of rhetorical protest that will get you a lot more supporters than, say, confronting Condi Rice with fake blood on your hands (though I thought the latter wasn’t half bad either). I like that it targeted a lazy media as well.
TomMil
Somewhere Abbie Hoffman is smiling.
The Other Steve
Damn you Scott Beauchamp for making this possible!
binzinerator
I’m beginning to like them Code Pinkers.
And this bit is a laff:
Politico said that??? Oh, the irony, the irony.
The wingnuts seem especially clueless about satire and irony. This explains the right’s ability of unwitting self-parody. I think its also why the right is not funny. Humor for much of the conservative movement, or what passes for humor, is limited to taunts, put-downs and potty talk. They just don’t ‘get’ anything else.
It’s not too difficult to suppose a difficulty with recognizing satire makes one very susceptible to mistaking the fake as real — especially easy when the wingnuttery has become so absurd as to be difficult to discern from parody even when you do have the ability to understand it. Or as this blog post title indicates, on a Fox-news hosted debate: “We Would Satirize Their Debate And Post-Debate Coverage, But They Are So Absurd At This Point They Are Their Own Self-Parody”
This also reminds me of some posts in the past on the phenomenon of the right’s inability to understand satire. Chandrasutura had a post in 2004 I recall reading, titled ‘The Satire Factor, or Why The American Right Isn’t Funny’. I can’t find it anymore — her blog seems to be gone. But Digby has a post on that phenomenon too. In it she links to blogger Mithras, who asked “Is there just some birth defect that prevents right-wingers from being funny?”
Digby also links to a news article which describes some research that shows a relationship between brain function and understanding sarcasm and irony.
Hmm, sounds like the ability to empathize with other people seems to have a relationship with the understanding of irony.
Hmm. What policital movement called themselves ‘compassionate’ while cheerleading for war and torture, watching poor black people drown, making a husband keep his brain-dead wife alive by tubes, calling everyone who disagrees with them traitors, and lately proclaiming the kids of people they don’t like to be ‘fair game’ for stalkers and bullying threats?
Really. You almost can’t make this shit up. And if you did, any irony would go right over their heads.
ConservativelyLiberal
Naah, Michelle “Firecracker” Malkin is a mud wrestler.
Code Pink John? Wow! ;)
Brian
Can I (cringes) admit that P. J. O’Rourke is sometimes funny, in a sorta creepy nasty way?