“TV news crew” asked victims for an “interview” before tasering them with stun gun and filming it for “fun”

James P. writes:

According to the Daily Mail, “A gang of sadistic thugs in Cleveland, Ohio terrorized local people by approaching unfortunate victims claiming to be a local TV news crew and then zapping them with a taser while filming the incidents crime with a video camera.”

One would have to be unusually oblivious to mistake either of the two men pictured for a journalist.

LA replies:

Either the victims were black, and they were too dense to realize that these thugs were not journalists; or else the victims were white, in which case they were too PC to allow themselves to realize that these thugs were not journalists.

- end of initial entry -

January 20

Robert Spencer writes:

This is Ali Gharib, a far-left “journalist” I had the misfortune of meeting a few years ago:

He is just one of many scruffy, homeless-looking hard-left journalists I’ve encountered over the years.

If I saw the two thugs pictured at your site and they said they were journalists, I’d only know they weren’t by the lack of equipment, credentials hanging from their neck, notepads, etc. Not from their appearance. In “their America,” as you call it, lots of “journalists” look like that, and actual journalists are quite thin on the ground.

January 21

Robert Spencer continues:

I should add that Gharib looked considerably more scruffy and disreputable when I met him than he does in the picture I sent, for which he clearly cleaned up considerably.

Ed H. writes:

I cannot say that “scruffy and disreputable” or “homeless” are the impressions I get from the Gharib photo. The impressions I get are “menacing,” “fanatical,” “alien” and “deadly.” The same sensations I get when I look at, say, this man.

Isnt it time we stop thinking that leftist/liberal journalists can be reached by some sort of rational argument? Isn’t it time to end the delusional belief that we are dealing with well-meaning men looking for the truth?

LA replies:

I agree with you that that Gharib is of a different type from the two thugs: he’s hostile and alien rather than a simple hoodlum. At the same time, I take Mr. Spencer’s point (though I was doubtful of it at first) that in his experience of “journalists,” those two scruffy thugs could in fact be “journalists.”

Daniel S. writes:

The two thugs in question could indeed fool someone who had no understanding of the protocols of (and I use the next term loosely) professional journalism: press passes, notepads, etc. Your average person, white or black, might not be informed enough to seek out such things. On the other hand, there are numerous of these scruffy, leftist bloggers that fancy themselves “citizen journalists” and go out with cameras so they can post their stuff on Youtube. In that same vein, both the pair of hoodlums and Ali Gharib remind me of the sort of bums I witnessed at the Occupy Boston camp over a year ago.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 18, 2013 07:59 PM | Send