A guy named Todd Kincannon did some leg work and crowd sourcing to show that the picture featured in the Buzzfeed article titled “Man At Romney Rally Wears Mindblowingly Offensive Shirt” does not seem to be what it was reported to be.
The Buzzfeed reporter, Andrew Kaczynski, also recently published a headline claiming that Paul Ryan stormed out of an interview with ABC. That’s not how the interview played out, and Commentary’s John Podhoretz took Kaczynski to task, calling him a “little boy” and schooling him on the way journalism is supposed to work e.g., when your reporting is wrong you correct the story.
Here’s how Kaczynski’s latest shenanigans played out – I’ll try to be succinct in re-reporting what Kincannon uncovered. Here is the photo in question, taken in Lancaster, Ohio by a freelance sports photographer named Jamie Sabau.
Source: Getty Images
Kincannon points to the full series of Sabau’s photos and notes the timeline. This particular picture was situated between two pictures in which crowds were gathered outside of the Romney rally, thus dispelling the Buzzfeed headline that the guy made it into the rally. As Kincannon points out in his Twitter stream, campaign staffers screen rally attendees for offensive shirts and other signals which might reflect poorly on the politician holding the rally. If this guy merely stood in line all day and never made it into the rally, his wearing a racist t-shirt there has about the same newsworthiness as if he was wearing a racist t-shirt while sitting on his living room couch. Kincannon also came across another picture of the t-shirt guy taken by another photographer named Joe Todd Fraker:
The two known pictures of the guy wearing this shirt place him in line outside of the rally instead of inside the rally. Despite having no confirmation that he was at the rally itself, @BuzzFeedAndrew went ahead and misreported the facts as he knew them.
This won’t satisfy anyone who goes on tilt at the fact that some conservatives are racist. There are plenty of BuzzFeed readers and other liberals who dabble in faux-outrage who tsk at the mere existence of such t-shirts. But they’re also trying to make the Romney-Ryan campaign culpable in this by speculating that the campaign didn’t really mind all that much that a guy was walking around with that shirt on within the area they had control over.
The first thought in this day-and-age is that such overt expressions of so-called bigotry have to be scrutinized. So much can be gained at such low cost. A false-flagger only has to wear a t-shirt and he generates all sorts of negative publicity for his target. We’ve also seen too many hate crime hoaxes to just blindly believe that people do crazy anti-social things like this. Also, it reminds me of the RNC peanut throwing incident which seemed really callous and bizarre, but which faded within a day or two. My thought there is that liberal members of the media pursued the story and saw something shady and just gave up on it.
Like this:
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It might be a liberal trying to start trouble, only because most Republicans I know would never wear a shirt like this. However, there is always someone who acts this way, and it’s possible he really is a Romney supporter. I think the shirt is dumb and unnecessarily confrontational. The Republican Party needs to stop trying so hard to win over minorities, in my opinion, but they don’t need to antagonize them either. There are always going to be some non-white people who identify as Republicans.
That t-shirt could also be a “Biden-Boehner 2012″ campaign slogan.
This is just as pathetic as the Brain Ross bullshit about tea partiers and the movie theater shooting. These liberal fucks are getting desperate. And I can’t wait for the riots.
Ethnic pride for me, but not for thee. I’m sure everyone can remember all the blacks who were elated that one of their own got in the Oval Office for no reason other than his skin color. This shirt is whites advocating on the basis of ethnicity but whoops, DAS RACISS when evil privileged cavemen do it.
Yes, be proud, White Man! Because putting a white man in the White House will be historic! Those people whose ancestors got a free ride here (admittedly, not a lot of headroom, but hey) always go for Their Own, so why shouldn’t you? Just ask Alan Keyes and Harold Ford how much they can count on the black vote.
“Bonobo Jackson” and “Nick Digger” are wonderfully clever nyms. Why ever would a liberal come to the conclusion that conservatism harbors a lot of racists?
“Why ever would a liberal come to the conclusion that conservatism harbors a lot of racists?”
We may never know.
Wake up and smell the Bonobo, Sidwell.
“Wake up and smell the Bonobo, Sidwell.”
I never have to. Neither do any of my “liberal” friends.
“his wearing a racist t-shirt there has about the same newsworthiness as if he was wearing a racist t-shirt while sitting on his living room couch”
Nope. It puts him somewhere between the living room couch and the rally.
Whenever a black person tells me that I shouldn’t judge them by the color of their skin, my simple retort is, “So I shouldn’t care what you think?”
monolithic black voter : Um… um… Yes, you should care what I think.
me: Okay… That’s why I judge you by the color of your skin because it tells me almost exactly how you think.
So the t-shirt isn’t “racist.” It was an unspoken assumption that only now needs to be openly articulated because we have gone so far down the radically liberated rabbit hole.
How does the radical liberationist “read” a shirt like this?
He understands that the “capital” gained by the instant accusation of “racism” is in a certain state of diminishing return and so he must do something else. But he IS a radical liberationist and so he is woefully confined to only doing more radically liberal things. Where does this lead him?
Now, the radical liberationist CAN’T BELIEVE IT.
He can’t believe that “racists” ACTUALLY STILL EXIST. Or ever did, for that matter.
He cannot believe that there are white men that prefer to be led by other white men ESPECIALLY when the alternative is to be led by a black man with extensive PERSONAL identity issues.
He seems to fear nothing but the idea that “racists” still exist. So great is this fear that what was once so instinctively normal as to be unspoken (white men with no desire to be led by black men) is now understood by the radical liberationist as to be so abnormal that it couldn’t possibly be any white man’s way of thinking.
The radical becomes even more radical and it is something to get a taste of.
… And then spit out like spoilt milk.