Turning Of The Worms

The Press Poodles have been feeling their oats lately. There's still plenty of reflexive Both Sides nonsense, but it seems like the editors and producers are showing signs of reading their Driftglass ('bout fuckin' time), and are starting to accelerate their organizations' movement in a much better direction.

(Along those lines, I need to make a sincere plea to the bosses at NPR: Please, guys, fire Mara Liason at your earliest opportunity. She's just fucking awful.)

Anyway, Cult45 put on a little circus the other day, which turned into quite the spectacle.

Vox:

Press secretary Sarah Sanders shared an altered video on Wednesday evening that appears to have originated with far-right conspiracy site Infowars to justify banning CNN reporter Jim Acosta from the White House after a tense exchange with President Donald Trump.

- and -

But Trump’s attacks on Acosta during the news conference weren’t enough for the White House. Later in the day, Sanders posted a string of tweets in which she accused Acosta of “placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern.”

When Trump insulted Acosta at the press conference, a White House intern approached him and tried to physically remove a microphone from his hands. Their arms touched as the woman reached across Acosta’s body to grab the microphone he was holding in his hand.

Looking back at the video, it does not in fact show Acosta “placing his hands” on the woman. But about 90 minutes after she posted her string of tweets, Infowars editor Paul Joseph Watson tweeted out a video of the incident that was doctored to make it look like Acosta chopped the woman’s arm with his hand.

1) Took @PressSec Sarah Sanders' video of briefing
2) Tinted red and made transparent over CSPAN video
3) Red motion is when they doctored video speed
4) Sped up to make Jim Acosta's motion look like a chop
5) I've edited video for 15+ years
6) The White House doctored it pic.twitter.com/q6arkYSx0V

— Rafael Shimunov 🔥 (@rafaelshimunov) November 8, 2018

There's a long tradition of government skullduggery when it comes to the "optics" of their operations.

Here are a few examples from a book called "The Commissar Vanishes":

The Daddy State is always with us. Even in times we consider some kind of "golden age of democracy", there are people who feel the need to dictate instead of compromise - who insist on manipulating our belief instead of showing us what's real.