Journalists at the RNC Either Suck Up To Power, Or Risk Attack…

Elections Porn / Media Whores / September 7, 2012

By Yasha Levine

When billionaire brats attack!

One thing I learned from watching last week’s RNC: Being a reporter with a video camera at a GOP convention and doing anything other than sucking up to power . . . well, that just might be the most dangerous journalism job in America today. Hell, people are in danger of being lynched just for reporting while being black.

That’s what CNN’s Patricia Carroll found out on the second day of the convention. The 34-year-old African-American camerawoman came under attack from a couple of racist Republican attendees, who pelted her with peanuts and shouted racial slurs, yelling that “this is what we feed the animals!” The whole thing could have very well gotten out of hand, but security quickly grabbed the offenders and kicked them out of the convention. Carroll tried to downplay the attack, but she was clearly rattled by the experience. And why wouldn’t she be? The place was packed with with racist baggers, hicks, cowboys, larded up retirees—all of them bussed in to show the Republican base watching at home just how white and pissed off was the GOP. Malice was in the air. Old white people on Medicare and Social Security have had enough; they just ain’t gonna take it anymore!

Sadly, there’s no video footage of the incident, or at least none has been released to the public. But it still got a good amount of media coverage from the AP, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and even Slate, which produced a weirdly sleek and cheeky animated news clip, complete with a floating cutout of a bloated Chris Christie in a Superman pose.

Another incident that was caught on tape but never made it to the mainstream news involved an unidentified daughter of casino multi-billionaire Sheldon Adelson. The young oligarch-heiress went on a rampage against Democracy Now! senior producer Mike Burke as he attempted to interview her father in a crowded backstage hallway. She body-checked Burke, threatened to hit him, grabbed his partner’s video camera, threw it to the ground and then brazenly attempted to seize the evidence of her attack by hiding the camera in her billionaire father’s private RNC skybox. Realizing his camera had been knocked out of commission, Burke whipped out his Android and started recording what was going. But even then, one of Adelson’s guards tried to grab it out of his hand.

It’s not clear which one of Adelson’s daughters she is (he has at least three), but judging by the video it could be Sivan Ochshorn. Not much is known about her, other than she “studied astrophysics and business administration” and gave a cool half a mil to Newt Gingrich’s super PAC.

Adelson was America’s third-richest billionaire in 2008. . . now he’s just a weak old man

Burke had been doing an amazing journalistic job throughout the convention, trolling the RNC backstage, asking hard questions about the corrupting influence of the oligarchy and even managing to snatch a quick, uncomfortable interview with David Koch, before the libertarian billionaire scuttled into a side passage for safety. Burke was doing what real journalists are supposed to do—challenge power, make the powerful squirm, and reveal to the American public what was really happening behind the PR curtain of the RNC show. Burke was just about the only journalist of the thousands who showed up who was actually doing his job, and a great job it was—right up until the moment Adelson’s daughter psychically assaulted him and his camera operator.

Good for us, the whole episode was caught on tape. It clearly shows Adelson’s daughter assaulting Burke unprovoked. And yet despite the hard video evidence, the news majors buried it. It never made it to print, TV or cable broadcast news. The only coverage, to the extent that there’s been any, was restricted to a couple of short blog posts. New York Magazine, Politico, New York Times and a couple of other outlets blogged the incident, but their reporting was so shallow and “balanced” that it ended it up trivializing the attack and letting Adelson and his petulant oligarch heiress off the hook.

For example: New York Times’ Caucus Blog referred to the attack as a “confrontation between a television producer and Sheldon Adelson’s daughter” and said the “producer appears to collide with a dark-haired woman.” Notice the use of neutral verbs, which falsely imply there was no aggressor. The New York Times printed a statement made by an Adelson family spokesman that alleged Burke shoved Adelson’s daughter, not the other way around, and let the lie stand unchallenged.

It was a sad day for journalism.

None of Burke’s gutless colleagues had the common decency to stand up for one of their own against a billionaire brat who thinks she can act with total impunity against the press. And clearly she’s right . . . because today’s journalistic motto seems to be “The oligarch is always right!” More so if the oligarch is a vicious union buster and a warmongering Zionist-supremacist with a nasty reputation for going after critical journalists. According to Rolling Stone’s Rick Perlstein, Adelson is also paranoid billionaire freak: “His company spends more on security for him and his family than any other publicly held corporation, $2.5 million – two and a half times more than Dell, Oracle, and Amazon spend on their CEOs. He usually ambles around with an armed former agent of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency.”

No doubt about it, Adelson is a scary man to approach. That’s why Burke deserves praise and support for bravely going behind enemy lines and doing his job without flinching.

The question is: With the tens of thousands reporters swarming the RNC in Tampa and DNC Charlotte, why is it that no other member of the press try to ask Sheldon Adelson or David Koch or any of the other rank oligarchs something challenging, rather than slobber and grovel at Master’s feet? Or maybe that’s the real reason why the media snuffed this story—because Burke, by doing his job, made every other journalist look bad.

***

Yasha Levine is the author of The Corruption of Malcolm Gladwell.

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44 Comments

Add your own

1. Zhu Bajie | September 7th, 2012 at 8:32 pm
Hope you were able to pass some scabies on!
Cover the Libertarian Convention and the Socialist Equality Party Convention, too, please!
2. fitness water | September 7th, 2012 at 9:03 pm
Someone should help an old plute roll down one of those big hills in Macau, let him glide all the way into the Ocean. A baptism!
3. Derp | September 7th, 2012 at 11:17 pm
Ah, hell yeah! I can tell when a fineass bitch loves leather and whips and that Sheldon girl can fuck the daylights out of me 50 Shades of Derp any day of the week, derp!
4. Alex | September 7th, 2012 at 11:25 pm
I remember years ago (before he was famous for donating fortunes to conservative causes) Sheldon claimed he got a message reading “Die Jew” written in his vandalized bathroom or something.
I don’t remember what he did but I think he pissed off people by trying to kill the unions or slash wages of employees or something along those lines. So that probably started his paranoia. (not trying to union-bash, or endorse anti-Semitism, but the person who wrote that was wrote although Sheldon probably did something assinine to piss off the guy that wrote that)
5. darthfader | September 8th, 2012 at 1:15 am
She has the same vacant, haunted, cow-surprised-by-sudden-movement glare I’ve seen in Alessandra Mussolini . . . the glassy-eyed permanent frown of the smallest, weakest tantrum-thrower in a family full of professional tantrum-throwers, always fobbed off on the uniformed lackeys by parents both unable and unwilling to express love.
This . . . woman . . . whatever . . . this female human has spent every day since she was ejected from the womb screeching and clawing to get her way, to get any attention at all from her psychopath pseudo-parents. Is it any wonder that she becomes absolutely terrified when a 15-foot bubble of “personal space” is violated? She will never grow accustomed to having anyone that close to her.
It’s clear that she almost, but not quite, grasps what’s going on around her as she struggles to react . . . almost enough to make me pity her. Almost.
6. G.G. Allin | September 8th, 2012 at 5:43 am
That Burke guy must have some gigantic balls.
7. Roberto | September 8th, 2012 at 6:06 am
Astrophysics and business administration? The fuck?
Was she planning to launch a startup on the International Space Station?
8. fissile | September 8th, 2012 at 7:26 am
No one should be surprised. Psychological studies of the rich show that the rich, and wannabe rich, truly are different.
Traits common among the rich:
Excess levels of narcissism and egoism.
Limited ability to empathize with other people.
Prioritizing their own wants, needs desires above all else.
A willingness to do what it takes to get what they want: Lie, cheat, steal, etc.
At the very least these people fit the definition of “asshole” and the worst cases are outright sociopaths. Logic and reason doesn’t work with people like this, only ruthless action makes an impression on them, and there lies the dilemma. Decent people can not naturally rise to the level of ruthlessness required to deal with people for whom ruthlessness is innate.
9. Hrrrrrk | September 8th, 2012 at 9:44 am
Gloriously,being born to an obscenely rich loon can’t save you from being gorilla-faced.
10. Anarchy Pony | September 8th, 2012 at 10:21 am
Needs more guillotines, torches and pitchforks.
11. jyp | September 8th, 2012 at 12:39 pm
One day the mighty dinosaurs ruled the earth. Lasted 65 million years. Then one day.. poof! And some little rat-size mammals took over. It was ever thus.
12. Dzherzhinsky | September 8th, 2012 at 1:04 pm
“Decent people can not naturally rise to the level of ruthlessness required to deal with people for whom ruthlessness is innate.”
Then it’s time to stop being decent.
13. Anarchy Pony | September 8th, 2012 at 1:50 pm
@11, so what you’re saying is; we need a comet to strike the Earth?
14. Gar | September 8th, 2012 at 3:24 pm
I wonder what rich, spoiled Daddy’s Girls are like in bed?
Unfortunately, I can’t answer that from experience. 🙁
(don’t get me wrong, she’s a total mega-bitch but she is hot! Her old man obviously must have married a young hottie with all his money. Tons of ugly celebs do that)
15. jonnym | September 8th, 2012 at 4:49 pm
@14: They kind of just lay there in the missionary position. Getting them to try multiple positions takes convincing. Some get annoyed when you bring it up; I guess they feel the privilege of boning them should be enough, how dare you actually make them do work that might make it more enjoyable.
They only give blowjobs when they’ve taken pills. Anal takes a *LOT* of pills, plus convincing. Their butts are really small & soft since they never actually use those glute muscles, so there’s no cushion for the pushin’. Still, it isn’t bad and has a kind of novelty value.
16. the dude | September 8th, 2012 at 7:06 pm
@14, I know her dad married a methadone clinic doctor from Israel after his son OD’d, probably just paying for the fathers sins
17. darthfader | September 9th, 2012 at 1:27 am
@7
Purchased degrees can be anything you like, especially when your dad has enough cash to buy a top school a few new buildings.
Or, maybe George W. Bush really was a promising, brilliant young historian in his younger days, a real David Blight in the making, who knows, right? The paper on his wall says so.
18. DtD | September 9th, 2012 at 1:52 am
@14 You really wanna know? Just watch any of the Paris Hilton sex tapes.
From personal experience, the pleasure of knowing that you’re shoving your unwashed middle-lower class cock inside some rich cunt’s uh, cunt, wears off pretty fast.
Then it’s just bad drunk sex.
The morning makes it worth it though. Oh god bless that disgusted look on her face. And spending a night in Vegas with daddy’s black amex card the night before ain’t too bad either.
19. Trevor | September 9th, 2012 at 7:07 am
Ya nailed it in the last sentence. The majority of journos are just cranky at Burke for having balls when they don’t. And that’s an issue across every profession because Americans are cowards at heart.
20. Anarchy Pony | September 9th, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Hey Exholes, props on linking to the documentary Psywar, that, Human Resources, and The Power Principle are excellent films.
21. TStockmann | September 9th, 2012 at 3:09 pm
I’d note that Florida has been in the news recently for its Stand Your Ground law. If Burke had packed heat in attention to the balls, he could shot anyone trying to divest him or his partner of their equipment.
22. Dimitri Ratz | September 9th, 2012 at 4:57 pm
Yasha might not get out of Libertarian Convention alive. They respect the press as much as the Nazi Party, and Buchanan (their member) at one of them publicly stated how they as Americans should of supported Hitler’s Germany against the Russians. Yasha, do it for the team, the suspense of you surviving or learning about your injuries will make it entertaining.
23. Dimitri Ratz | September 9th, 2012 at 5:07 pm
@11, Those are good thoughts. The seeds from my tomatoes will grow on this earth when the evil of the Clintons will be no more.
24. Dimitri Ratz | September 9th, 2012 at 5:15 pm
@12, if we loose what makes us different than we loose, because we become like them……. Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. ~ Nietzsche
25. Dimitri Ratz | September 9th, 2012 at 5:19 pm
Anarchy Pony, what would be the main creature that would take our place?
26. Anarchy Pony | September 9th, 2012 at 8:31 pm
@Ratz. Why do you assume anything would take our place? 3.5 billion years of life on Earth passed with no “intelligent” species. There’s no reason to think that another one would arise on Earth, should humanity go extinct. But, gun to my head, I’d put my money on Octopi or squid.
27. Mike C. | September 10th, 2012 at 4:55 am
Anyone else wishing that mic were some kind of… “delivery system?”
28. John Figler | September 10th, 2012 at 7:32 am
What did you expect? They’re not afraid anymore…
29. Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. | September 10th, 2012 at 9:53 am
The Nosey Adelsons are following my plan to the T: Giving the White Supremacists Enough Money to Hang Their Zionist Asses!!! Bwaa Ha Ha!!!
30. David Brooks | September 10th, 2012 at 10:00 am
You disgusting anti-Semitic Exiles are so disgusting I’m going to hide my money but write a column that will inspire Serious Jews like Sheldon Adelson and Charles Krauthammer and Andrew Dice Clay and Kinky Friedman to give tons of money to Mittens to bomb Iran. And then you!!!
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
31. DtD | September 10th, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Psywar is one hell of a Doc. I remember the run up to the Iraq war in high school. I think i protested by throwing a rocks at cops. Pussied out like a bitch when they saw me with em though. My buddy Ben made it on the cover of the Chronicle though. Now he works for the fuckin Coast Guard. What the fuck?
32. Anarchy Pony | September 10th, 2012 at 1:47 pm
@DtD what’s wrong with the Coast Guard? Someone has to save those booze addled fishermen and dumbass tourists.
33. rick | September 10th, 2012 at 7:03 pm
Like this coverage, which I say since I was giving you shit for “going after” Gladwell. “Exile” was always about the “Beethoven” to me, not the “Marx.” The cosmic music (to me) is overprivileged, bloated, oligarchic monsters driven to crude, awkward violence from imagined “disrespect” from journalists. Very “Hannibal Lecter.” You only eat the cosmically rude.
http://bit.ly/fsiWrl
34. Gar | September 11th, 2012 at 12:37 am
Okay, thanks for the info on laying daddy’s girls.
However, she’s no Paris Hilton. PH just wants to smile, get hammered and fuck and spend like crazy. Lil’ Sheldon’s very mean, aggressive and arrogant. I don’t know if all daddy’s girls are like that? (are they?)
How does her mean, violent demeanor translate into the bedroom?
35. Silva | September 11th, 2012 at 7:54 am
darthfader: can’t provide a source, but I once read (not that I’m immediately taking it as true, but may merit checking, and an exhole might actually know the source) that, in an election that Bush II lost, we actually spoke like a well-read person (at least), and *that* was deemed to be the problem – the voters were retarded and demanded one of them. IF he’s actually retarded now (which may well not be the case – failing to stop the WTC attack and to catch Bin Laden are easily explainable as corruption), that may just be a bad case of cocaine, I guess.
Dimitri: Yasha may have huge balls, but I’d still suggest sending someone less obviously Jewish there …
On rich girls, and ass: Kardashian’s seems well-exercised (implants aside) – but the sex was still awful.
36. Gar | September 11th, 2012 at 1:20 pm
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/zq0ow/i_am_gov_gary_johnson_the_libertarian_candidate/
Btw, OT, but it’d be interesting to see a takedown of GJ by Ames.
37. Derek | September 11th, 2012 at 1:37 pm
Mike Burke is the producer, as anyone familiar with the Micro-Machines Man way that Amy reads off the credits at the end of the show will know, so he is rarely doing interviews or pursuing scoops. Looking back pretty much as far as you can, you never see Mike anywhere with a mic in someone’s face before the 2008 conventions, but he was putting it in everyone’s face at this convention. And maybe that’s the key. He is not someone who does this every day. He was simply there to put microphones in peoples faces and force them to answer, or not answer, just say anything, and be willing to piss off the right people and get a great moment of truth from one of these psychotic oligarchs, and by god that’s exactly what he did, with the fearlessness of the person who doesn’t quite realize how dangerous of a situation he’s in.
Incidentally, he gave the Minneapolis sheriff the same treatment in 2008 when Amy Goodman, Nicole Salazar, and Sharif Abdel Kouddous got arrested in the massive police assault on protestors at the RNC. Mike Burke may be the honey badger of political reporting.
38. mookid | September 11th, 2012 at 2:37 pm
This cavewoman needs more horsecum-pie.
39. Mr. Bad | September 11th, 2012 at 6:32 pm
@ mah niggas
ride of die, checkout a real journalist up in this piece…
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101757044
40. super390 | September 11th, 2012 at 9:12 pm
Assault us, oligarchs, but keep the $10/hour jobs and home equity loans coming!
Or not. I can still grovel.
41. shadata | September 12th, 2012 at 1:58 am
You guys gotta be like ninjas from now on. Hide your cameras and play the part. Let them mock themselves.
42. David Brooks | September 12th, 2012 at 8:42 am
Investigative journalism from my new BFF, Pam “AynZion” Gellar, say that the Adelson daughter (name TK) was the TRUE bankroller of the $5M anti-Islamic film. Some say she is currently at work on a pro-Israeli book called “My Struggle.”
43. ||lll|| | December 13th, 2012 at 12:40 am
One of these days I’ll do what god intended me to and drink a bottle of antifreeze
44. Natalia Gold | April 16th, 2013 at 8:27 am
Her mom is the Israeli Doctor who treat drug addict but she seem weird with her attitude. She has an older sister Yasmin and 2 younger brothers…