We haven't been talking much about Cliven Bundy around here (I may have another post this weekend), but you all know the basic story, right? Right-wing cattle rancher who wanted to start another shooting range war over not wanting to pay to graze his cattle on land that you and I own? That's the guy.
Ol' Cliven was living a charmed life, the darling of the extreme right for standing up to the jackbooted thugs in the Bureau of Land Management.
Things took a fairly negative turn for Cliven yesterday when he decided to share some of his insights with us. His topic, in his own words: “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro.”
It turns out that most of what he knows about “the Negro” is that the Negro is a parasite who would probably be better off still being a slave, and the Negro would do better if someone taught him how to pick cotton.
Oh, don't worry, you bet there's video.
Believe it or not he's even lost the support of Sean Hannity.
Naturally, he's not happy with this situation. The way ol' Cliven sees it, he's a victim of the left-wing media, who are taking words out of context, twisting meanings, and the rest of the devilish tricks the media use when they want to destroy a true American patriot. But he has a solution. Because the news coverage–remember, there's video!–doesn't show the truth, which is that he is no racist, he
“would appreciate it if The New York Times retracted their story.
“I would appreciate that. I think they should do that,” Bundy said. “They're making it a racist-type thing. I'm not racist.”
So Bundy goes and shoots his mouth off in public, even makes sure there is a video camera capturing exactly what he says, but it's not his fault, it's the media's fault for portraying him falsely.
It's a lot like Charles Barkley, the basketball player who provided us with an endless supply of memorable quotes.
Nevertheless, most authorities in the art of the stupid agree that Barkley's crowning achievement was when he claimed that he was misquoted. In his autobiography.
The next time Cliven Bundy plans to claim he was misquoted maybe he shouldn't be standing in front of a video camera.
Sure there’s video, sure it’s Bundy, sure it’s Bundy’s voice. But since when does proof mean anything to True Believers?
AmericaBlog had a series of tweets yesterday showing True Beleivers declaring that the video is not evidence because it is so heavily compressed that it’s hard to see the lip synch. Bundy himself says being depicted in his own words, in full with no editing, is ‘taken out of context’.