Here’s a wrong-headed moment moment: the MTV advertisement you see above is a Portuguese safe-sex ad aimed at women.  It makes the unsubtle comparison that having unsafe sex is like pointing a gun at your vagina.  Powerful!

Today’s media-weary people, adolescents especially, are harder to reach with messages as advertisements saturate our visual world more and more.  Yet the clueless ladies at Jezebel.com (owned by Gawker Media) think this is a horrible message.

Megan Carpentier, under the heading “Safe Means Never Having a Gun Pointed at  Your Vagina” wrote this when posting the ad [*UPDATE: Megan's post was removed from Jezebel, she denied writing it, then she put it back up but with a different picture (see below)]:

This safe sex advertisement from Portugal reads, “Girls, protect yourself. Demand your partner wear a condom.” Sexualizing rape and domestic violence and putting the onus on women to protect themselves scream “safe” to me, too.

Please, Megan.  The message is pretty clear, and only antsy “ZOMG! Weapons and women!” types would see this advertisement as “sexualizing” rape.  When you look for a message, you get that message.  Except you get this one wrong: the message has always been that women must be responsible for their own safety when it comes to sex and not rely on the man to do it for them.  That’s been a historically pro-woman stance that you now berate.

The ads themselves aren’t meant to make you feel “safe” Megan, they are made to make you feel unsafe so that your behavior–ensuring condoms are used–will keep you safe.

Carpentier links to another “ZOMG!” site that takes these ads out of context, the ironically-named Contexts.org.  They have a running “Sociological Images” bit.  They make the point that the penis is, once again, shown as “inherently or naturally useful for enacting violence and women’s bodies inherently or naturally vulnerable to violation from men.”

Please!  A campaign designed to get women to think about their own safety and to protect themselves is now being turned around as a campaign that will hurt women and that encourages/sexualizes rape and violence against them.

I can’t explain how the left can take interpretation so bizarrely out of focus as was done here.

It looks like Gawker’s John Cook decided to pick up the gauntlet this blog first laid down (without credit) and has started his own “Ambush Jesse Watters” campaign.  What they don’t tell you was this was a campaign started here:

If we find him, we’ll post the video as soon as we can. If we don’t, we’ll keep trying, and for that we’ll need your help. What do you know about Jesse Watters? Did you go to college with him? Do you ride the train with him? Do you work at the Starbucks where he buys his coffee? Let us know. We’ll get you started:

Watters was born in July 1978. He was raised in Philadelphia, graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., in 2001, and has been a producer for the O’Reilly Factor since 2003. Before that, he spent about four months in 2002 working on federal judge Dora Irizarry’s losing campaign for New York Attorney General (making less than $12,000 per year).

He is married to Noelle Watters—maiden name Inguagiato—who works at Fox News as well, as the host of something called iMag Style on Foxnews.com. They live together in Manhasset, N.Y.

If you see him, snap a camera phone picture and send it to us. Or better yet, ask him why he stalks and ambushes people that his boss disagrees with, and tell us what he says. Two years ago, during an on-air celebration of Watters’ ambushes, O’Reilly had this to say about his young charge: “Jesse Watters, everybody. He’s becoming a big star all over the world.”

Let’s make that happen.

This blog considers imitation the highest form of flattery, and we first started the “Ambush Jesse Watters” campaign on March 31st with this post.   On April 6th, a bounty of $200 was offered for the production of an actual ambush video of Watters (Gawker is offering nothing), the same day Haikuku haiku-ed the Ambush Jesse Watters campaign (giving credit).  On April 7th Transracial also spotlighted the Shankbone ambush Watters campaign (giving credit).

Gawker came a little late to the party, joining on April 24th – but we are glad that they did.  Thanks for picking up a campaign started here, John Cook.

“Now, the far-left websites fear greatly the vicious guy Jesse Watters.”  – Bill O’Reilly, April 3, 2009.

Feeling scared?  Then relieve your anxiety by Ambush interviewing Jesse Watters wherever you see him.  If you must, wait for him outside of his home, favorite restaurants or outside of Fox News headquarters on 6th Avenue in New York.  And if you Ambush him on an Ambush, you win $100 $200.   If you are being Ambushed and Ambush Jesse Watters back, you still get the money.

Do it the way Jesse does. Here’s a Crooks and Liars video to learn how:

O’Reilly will do anything for ratings, which is why David Letterman called him a “goon.”  It’s not just that O’Reilly blamed the rape-murder of 18 year old Jennifer Moore on the way that she dressed.   It’s that he’s a hypocrite, as Jon Stewart pointed out after Bill O’Reilly criticized the paparazzi (yes, who suck) for invading the privacy of celebrities just to get a photograph.   That’s exactly what O’Reilly and his sicko psycho stalker Jesse Watters do.  Instead of interrupting Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen’s lives, Watters and O’Reilly focus on bloggers, editors, journalists and judges who are at the grocery store or on weekend getaways. Read what others have to say about these two:

If you see Jesse Watters at an event, such as the one at Brown University above, or on an Ambush, Ambush him back relentlessly. Photograph him non-stop. Credit: Oliver Schulze

“Jesse can bring his camera crew anywhere he wants and ask tough questions too, but what’s despicable about his tactics is that he shows up on their private property unannounced or (worse yet) on the private weekend getaways, after stalking them. That’s uncool and out of line and that’s what’s objectionable.” – John Amato, Crooks and Liars

“Amanda Terkel wrote something saying Bill O’Reilly shouldn’t insinuate that girls who drink and wear halter tops had that rape coming, because they are dirty, dirty girls. Who would write such a thing except an anti-American whore? Bill O’Reilly sent his psycho stalker producer, Jesse Watters, to find out.” -Hamilton Nolan, Gawker.

“This weekend, while on vacation, I was ambushed by O’Reilly’s top hit man, producer Jesse Watters, who accosted me on the street and told me that because I highlighted O’Reilly’s comments, I was causing ‘pain and suffering’ to rape victims and their families. He of course offered no proof to back up this claim, instead choosing to shout questions at me.” Amanda Terkel, Think Progress.

What if whenever Jesse Watters ventured on the street, people were waiting to "ambush" him?

“I think my favorite part about ‘The Factor’ is that they have no trouble reconciling their defense of celebrities’ right to privacy with their intimidation of everyone else.”  Jon Stewart, The Daily Show.

“Where’s Jesse Watters?  Find him. Stalk him. Bombard him. You get what you give.” Lawchick, Haikuku.com

Ambush interview Jesse Watters.  Keep an eye out for him on the street no matter the town you live in, because he might just be on an ‘Ambush’.   If you ‘Ambush’ Watters on an ‘Ambush’, Shankblog is offering a  $100 $200 gift certificate to the store of your choosing, and we will post your video here.

Ambush him about anything.  About his stalking.  His love life.  Why he styles his hair like a seventeen year-old boy.  Anything that you want to know about Jesse Watters, grab your camera phone, walk up to him and Ambush interview him. 

UPDATE 4/6 – a loyal reader has just doubled the Ambush Jesse Watters bounty.  It is now $200.

Wikipedia “scandals” have become a staple in the news; but how about one that was completely made up by WorldNetDaily and reported on by Fox News?

I missed this story last week, but it involves a few of my favorite themes:  Israel, Wikipedia and the joke that is the right wing media.   WorldNetDaily, the “Conservapedia of News,” was recently caught with its pants down after Aaron Klein, one of its partisan hacks, fabricated a Wikipedia scandal.  I will leave it to the reader to decide what is more comical: the “scandal”, or Aaron Klein trying to thump his chest in indignation when he is caught.

Aaron Klein becomes the face of shoddy right wing reporting.

Aaron is chief of WND’s “Jerusalem bureau” and he decided to test a theory.  Aaron’s theory was that the editors of Barack Obama’s Wikipedia article will not allow criticism on the page.  So what does smarty pants Aaron do?  He tries to insert the bizarre fringe theory that Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen eligible for the Presidency.  Here’s what Aaron wrote:

There have been some doubts about whether Obama was born in the U.S. after the politician refused to release to the public a carbon copy of his birth certificate and amid claims from his relatives he may have been born in Kenya. Numerous lawsuits have been filed petitioning Obama to release his birth certificate, but most suits have been thrown out by the courts.

This is one of the more pathetic right-wing conspiracy hopes.  Even though Obama provided a certification of live birth in Hawaii, the right wing foamers-at-the-mouth do not feel that is enough.

Obama can do nothing to ever convince people like Aaron Klein and the rest of the deluded right wing (who should be more deluded with the fact that they supported a President like George W. Bush, who trounced every notion of “conservative values”).  If Obama produced whatever document they asked for, they would find some reason to doubt its authenticity.  “There’s no amount of evidence or data that will change somebody’s mind,” says Michael Shermer, who is the publisher of Skeptic magazine and a columnist for Scientific American.   ”The more data you present a person, the more they doubt it … Once you’re committed, especially behaviorally committed or financially committed, the more impossible it becomes to change your mind.”

Alex Koppelman wrote on Salon about how the vast birth certificate conspiracy knows no bounds:

For believers, it works like this: So what if Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the director of Hawaii’s Department of Health, released a statement saying she has verified that the state has the original birth certificate on record? So what if she said separately that the certification looks identical to one she was issued for her own Hawaii birth certificate? Why didn’t her statement specify Obama’s birthplace? So what if a Hawaii Health Department spokeswoman later clarified that Fukino meant that Obama was born in Hawaii? So what if researchers for FactCheck.org actually saw the physical copy of the certification and debunked much of the key “evidence” supposedly proving that the image posted online is a forgery? They’re not really independent. They’re funded by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, and Obama once (with Bill Ayers, no less) ran an entirely unrelated program that happened to be paid for with money donated by Walter Annenberg. And on and on and on.

Aaron Klein has now made himself part of that conspiracy by trying to insert this fringe theory on to Obama’s Wikipedia article, and then acting shocked that it was removed.   When Aaron was called out on this, he tried to deny that he was the one who did it.  Wired magazine demonstrated how people like Aaron often don’t use intelligence when they try to game Wikipedia, which is why they are caught engaging in unethical behavior:

Curiously, it turns out that Jerusalem21, whoever he or she might be, has only worked on one other Wikipedia entry since the account was created, notes ConWebWatch. That’s Aaron Klein’s entry, which Jerusalem21 created in 2006, and has edited 37 times.

When Gawker exposed Klein’s fabrication of a scandal, he demanded a retraction:

First, I am not “Jerusalem21,” but I do know the Wikipedia user (he works with me and does research for me), and I worked with him on this story, which focused on investigating allegations I had received from others of Wikipedia scrubbing Obama’s page. I wanted to personally oversee whether indeed criticism of Obama was being deleted. For your information, often investigative journalists engage in exactly this kind of testing – like seeing if they can bypass mandatory disclosures while donating to a candidate (several newspapers did this prior to the November election), or if they can register a dog to vote in Illinois. Thus, even if I had personally edited Obama’s page as a test to investigate allegations of scrubbing, this is entirely legitimate journalistic practice.

Gawker refused to retract the story, stating, “In other words, Klein masterminded the creation of the supposed scandal he wrote about.”   Klein’s crap defense is the same one he gave Wired, which like Gawker, called him out on his BS:

What’s missing from [Aaron Klein's] treatise on investigative journalism is the reporter’s obligation to disclose when he’s engineered events on which he’s reporting. In a follow-up e-mail, Klein acknowledges that he should have made that disclosure, but suggests he’s guilty of nothing more than an accidental omission in a hastily written story.

“It just slipped my mind,” he writes.

Interesting. Let’s look at some of the original text [DS: the following is text from the WND story]:

Indeed, multiple times, Wikipedia users who wrote about the eligibility issues had their entries deleted almost immediately and were banned from re-posting any material on the website for three days.

In one example, Wikipedia user “Jerusalem21″ added the following to Obama’s page:

“There have been some doubts about whether Obama was born in the U.S. after the politician refused to release to the public a carbon copy of his birth certificate and amid claims from his relatives he may have been born in Kenya. Numerous lawsuits have been filed petitioning Obama to release his birth certificate, but most suits have been thrown out by the courts.”

As is required on the online encyclopedia, that entry was backed up by third-party media articles, citing the Chicago Tribune and WorldNetDaily.com

The entry was posted on Feb. 24, at 6:16 p.m. EST. Just three minutes later, the entry was removed by a Wikipedia administrator, claiming the posting violated the websites rules against “fringe” material.

[...]

When the user “Jerusalem21″ tried to repost the entry about Obama’s eligibility a second time, another administrator removed the material within two minutes and then banned the Wikipedia user from posting anything on the website for three days.

That’s a lot of mind-slippage. You’d think at some point in the writing, Klein would have a revelation, slap his head and say, “Silly me! Here I am writing about my researcher following my instructions, and I’m making it sound like I don’t even know the guy! Glad I caught that.”

The only other example in Klein’s article of a user being suspended from Wikipedia also traces back to a Jerusalem21 edit — this time about William Ayers. That example found its way into the Fox News report. But, similarly, Klein forgot to mention that it was the same user — his unnamed researcher — and the same ban: i.e., the one that followed two successive edits accusing Obama of falsifying his birth.

After this was reported by Gawker and Wired, WorldNetDaily removed all references to “Jerusalem21″ and instead put in “one Wikipedia user” as the victim of not having this lunatic theory inserted.

Aaron: you’re a partisan hack who clearly knows very little about journalistic integrity, which is why you work for WorldNetDaily and not a mainstream publication.  You’ll say anything and do anything to cover up your shoddy reporting.   That is clear.   So Aaron, when the Israeli Foreign Ministry brings me out to Israel next week to photograph for Wikipedia, I’ll be sure to do a better job of constructing reality than you appear able to do.

Freelance writing can be a harrowing income to depend upon for writers, because there can be a flux of work and, worse, in the time it takes to be paid for published work.  Amongst freelancers it is no small secret that the big media outlets are also the biggest laggards in timely payment of compensation.

Worse, freelancers are now facing not getting paid at all.  Recently making headlines at Transracial and Gawker is that the beloved New York Observer is incredibly late paying writer Glenna Goldis for a few fashion pieces (there is a Freelancers Union petition here).

From the career freelance writers I’ve spoken to, the time lag before payment from the major publications has grown exponentially as the economy has worsened.