Pseudonymous blogger cycle12 whines about crashing a Gilmore event, and does the usual scare tactic after he is snuffed out:
I made sure to videotape the faces of all four Gilmore Gang members before I left, but I certainly did not want to place the Orange Market’s owner in the position of having to decide whether to ask a long-time customer and friend to leave his business premises, so I left quietly of my own accord.
Of course, all of this is on tape, and I also took along a friend to serve as a witness in case that became necessary. As we left the Orange Market premises, one of the young male Gilmore Gang members followed us across the parking lot and kept watch on us as we crossed the street, talked together for a moment and then got into our cars to leave.
Tomorrow morning my video tape will be converted to several DVDs and I will also have those final 90 seconds – when the Gilmore Gang obstructed and confronted me – of filming converted to either a JPEG or an MPEG file so that it can be transmitted via e-mail to the Warner campaign, to Raising Kaine if you’d like, and perhaps to YouTube for greater potential broadcast purposes.
Here’s the problem. If you stalk a random person, that fits the definition of creepy. If you stalk a politician for the purposes of intimidation (which this was), you’ve already violated the boundaries of decorum.
Just smash the damn camera next time.
And please, don’t claim these stalkers are “journalists” or bloggers masquerading as journalists trying to get a story. Journalists don’t actively participate in the process… these ambushers record the event specifically to produce an outcome of their choosing. A bit of integrity would go a heck of a long way, fellas.
I hate to make the argument, but there have been political movements in the past who reveled in ambushing the opposing political movement… and frankly, that’s precisely what these so-called progressives are doing. The reaction is a fine line between distinguishing between protecting the integrity of free speech and free expression, or preventing disruption via security details.
Some maturity and some integrity might air on the side of the latter… but the behavior of the “splash-and-trash” progressive faction of the Democratic Party (and the MSM that feeds or blithely ignores them) gives little credence to truth, much less anything short of total victory… whatever that might be.
Sadly, wthey are doing it at Mark Warner’s (or his campaign’s) behest is the real question. I doubt this, but in an age of sponsored bloggers and astroturf online — as opposed to genuine grassroots — rarely am I surprised anymore.