My headline basically says it all. Posing as the billionaire businessman and conservative-cause-funding David Koch (you may know him from that New Yorker piece), an editor at the Buffalo Beast, an online alt-bi-weekly, yesterday called Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and the two had a long talk (the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel got a confirmation from Walker’s office) about the collective bargaining demonstrations in Wisconsin. A conversation that included, among other things: Fake Koch’s suggestion of “planting some troublemakers” in the crowd, which Gov. Walker acknowledged having “thought about;” Fake Koch’s suggestion of bringing a baseball bat to meet with Wisconsin Senate Democrats, to which Gov. Walker replied that he actually has a bat in his office; and, Fake Koch’s invitation to “fly you out to Cali and show you a good time” after Walker has “crushed these bastards,” which Walker said “would be outstanding.”
What inspired the Beast editor, Ian Murphy, to crank call as Koch? Murphy writes that after Wisconsin Democratic Senator Tim Carpenter complained that Gov. Walker wouldn’t return any of the Democrats’ calls, Murphy pondered who perhaps could get through to Gov. Walker and decided that “the obvious candidate was David Koch.” (For more on why Murphy made this conclusion, read this recent Mother Jones report on how Gov. Walker “might not be where he is today without the Koch brothers.”)
This prank is like a gift to the Rachel Maddow Show, which has closely covered the Koch brothers’ growing political influence, as well as recent developments in Wisconsin. Also? During the crank call, Walker says that “sooner or later the media stops finding [the protests] interesting,” to which Fake Koch replies, “not the liberal bastards on MSNBC.”
I guess the Buffalo Beast hasn’t heard: you don’t joke with the Kochs.
OH MY GOD. I GOT HOME FROM SCHOOL & MY DAD TOLD ME ABOUT THIS & I SAW IT. OMG HOW STUPID, AND CORRUPT IS WALKER?????
#1 Posted by Connor, CJR on Wed 23 Feb 2011 at 04:26 PM
How exactly does this phone call make him corrupt?
#2 Posted by Scam, CJR on Wed 23 Feb 2011 at 06:44 PM
He considered plants in the union crowd, he praised "Koch" bringing in Breitbart while complaining about the out of state protestors, he tried to pull a scam to get the democrats back in state so they could pass the offending bill in some undercover session, and the fact that "Mr. Koch" can get some time to talk about democrat baseball while others can't get the time of day because Walker is never going to negotiate with the riff raff...
It's a fun read and listen if you have the time:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/23/948732/-Busted:-Scott-Walker-fell-for-Prankster-posing-as-David-Koch-
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 23 Feb 2011 at 07:55 PM
And this is good, ethical journalism?
Well at least CJR isn't overtly promoting journalistic fraud.
Oh, wait a minute...
#4 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Wed 23 Feb 2011 at 09:40 PM
It might not be ethical journalism, but it sure is funny to our "watchdogs"... When it works against a Republican, that is.
Now let it happen to ACORN... And suddenly this kind of thing isn't funny at all
#5 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Wed 23 Feb 2011 at 09:49 PM
Oh you mean like the East Anglia emails, in which private communications were broken into, stolen, and edited by right wing blogs to spread debunked lies about nature tricks? Or do you mean when when a Breitbart flunky walked into Acorn offices dressed as a college student, talked about getting his girlfriend away from a pimp, shot video of himself walking around in a superfly pimp costume, spliced phony dialog and the pimp footage with the actual ACORN footage, and then used the doctored videos to lie that ACORN was a child prostitution outfit and was getting billions of dollars from the Obama administration?
Because the way I see it, once you celebrate bare knuckle sucker punches like that, you don't get to stand on the morality high chair after.
Did the beast release the full, doctored tape? According to the governor... Are people using segments of this tape to spread debunkable lies? No, not really.
Hell, they're not getting that much airplay yet:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/are-msnbc-and-cnn-afraid-of-koch.html
Therefore, paddy, shhhhhhhhh. You got not one leg to stand on here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIoZ1bsILF8
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 23 Feb 2011 at 11:44 PM
What the beast did was very Ken Silverstein:
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/6/28/in_new_expose_ken_silverstein_of
And journalists were upset by his ruse even though it revealed the scummy honest truth.
That's in contrast to what Breitbart and co. do day by day.
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/the_ethics_of_undercover_journalism.php
And we can see in the comment thread of that story and others how paddy reacted.
#7 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 23 Feb 2011 at 11:59 PM
Walker's responses don't prove anything other than that he doesn't choose to give his biggest donors impromptu ethics lessons over the phone. The comments were so off the cuff that he mostly just glosses over them and spells out what he actually PLANS on doing.
The tactics of the caller are slimeball--Nixonian dirty tricks. I'm a Dem and an Obama supporter, but I hope this punk is prosecuted for illegally recording a phone conversation without consent. His ilk is part of the problem with politics today in this country. And yeah, you can put Breitbart in that same category.
#8 Posted by Uncle_Putin, CJR on Thu 24 Feb 2011 at 12:11 AM
They prove that he's completely unwilling to negotiate, or or off the record; that he's going to use extreme and scummy tactics until he gets his way; and the democrats have no interest in talking with him or giving up their stand because he's not someone you can work with in good faith.
In other words, he's like 80% of the other elected republicans, only this time we can actually get a glimpse at what the reporters and beltway press don't usually show us.
#9 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 24 Feb 2011 at 03:55 AM
A rortybomb on what exactly Walker, and the rest of the republicans, are trying to pull:
http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/walkers-budget-plan-is-a-three-part-roadmap-for-conservative-state-governance/
It's full on shock doctrine.
#10 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 24 Feb 2011 at 12:33 PM
These kind of tricks won't advance the dying liberal agenda,
The hit job didn't work - Walker did nothing wrong and the only people who wold conclude otherwise are the leftist kooks who hate him anyway.
There is a big difference is posing as a "man on the street" in an ACORN hit job and posing as a GOP activist in a Walker hit job is abusing the trust of the intended victim.
Breitbart and his minions didn't pretend to be supporters and friends of ACORN to get inside and expose the pervasive malfeasance that took the organization down... The Beast did pretend to be an influential supporter.
This is just scummy yellow journalism that backfired, because Walker didn't bite.
Imagine the howls of the leftists were this kind of thing to happen to one of their own.
#11 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Thu 24 Feb 2011 at 08:01 PM
Uncle_Putin's right. Walker talks to the voice on the phone gingerly, trying not to say anything to jeopardize the money pipeline from the Kochs. It seems obvious if you listen to the 20 min. that they've never spoken.
But the details don't matter much because it illustrates that money talks in politics. The problem is that we knew that in general. The prank -- or trick -- or maneuver makes it dramatic that some get through the velvet rope and others don't. And as i say here http://whitherthenytimes.blogspot.com/2011/02/red-alert-in-wisconsin-by-wednesday.html it gets readers -- including all of us.
#12 Posted by culturecritic, CJR on Fri 25 Feb 2011 at 03:54 PM
Shock Doctrine class warfare is going national!:
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/22/gop-governors-misplaced-priorities/
#13 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 25 Feb 2011 at 06:42 PM
NEWSFLASH - Money talks in politics...
Stop the presses!
And stop the money now!... (Except union and liberal PAC money, that is)
#14 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Fri 25 Feb 2011 at 10:27 PM
Even Naomi Klein "Shock Doctrine" skeptics like krugman are picking up on it
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/opinion/25krugman.html
I guess that's the penalty for being blatant, you lose the benefit of the skeptic's doubt.
#15 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 26 Feb 2011 at 11:27 AM
The "Fleebagger" Democrats in Wisconsin just learned the hard way that you can run, but you can't hide, from the will of the people.
Thank goodness Wisconsin has taken a huge step towards revoking collective bargaining in government jobs. Even FDR knew that collective bargaining has no place in government.
This a crucial step toward getting this country back on track, in my opinion.
#16 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Thu 10 Mar 2011 at 12:50 AM