Sorry kanzfrafka, I should have known that wasn't where you were going with that. You're right, even if the allegations never lead anywhere, the damage to his reputation is already done. Character assassination is easy to pull off with how scandal crazed the media has become.

>> ^bobknight33:

2 1/2 minutes to get to the point.
Additionally, you couldn't wait 2.5 mins to understand the character assassination of someone who didn't deserve it? No wonder we're in this mess....

I suppose compared to the general level of ads this isn't that bad. At least it's not some scandalmongering character assassination job. But it's not much better, either. Take a soundbite, juxtapose it with some forceful yet vague points, take care to polarixe the issues as much as possible. It's the nature of the medium of course, hence my original comment.

Advertising as a means of furthering political agendas stinks. I don't really care who does it. The last thing any political system needs is more fuel for completely unreasoned bickering.

>> ^joedirt:

what kind of loser makes comments trying to blame victims and be apologist when she seems reasonable and recounting events in a non-sensational way for the media.


Yes, but who is the victim here? Is her story true, and police officers threatened, in front of witnesses, to rape and gang bang her? Or is it possible the police did not threaten to rape and gang bang her, making her arresting officer a victim of character assassination and a host of false accusations.

The obvious point is that it isn't blaming the victim to simply try to objectively assess who in fact is the victim.

Fox = Unjust Character Assassination

This was a farce.

They should have renamed this edition of Question Time "The Nick Griffin Character Assassination Hour".

>> ^gwiz665:
I think this has been a fully fledged character assassination attempt and I am disgusted by it. I am not afraid of what you'll think of me, because the truth is on my side.

<snip, gwiz665 responding to accusations>
3. You grabbed InflateableVagina's ass and boobs while staying with Bea, and generally freaked everyone out.
No and yes. I didn't grab her ass, I think I smacked it. The boob thing was just an immature prank that turned out to be way out of line. I acknowledged that above, and I have apologized to ivy about that. I can't say that I generally freaked everyone out, but I suppose I could have freaked the three out that were there, bea, ivy and their friend rick. The kids were long gone to be by that time, and they certainly liked me both.



I sort of scrolled backwards through the whole conversation, and I wanted to stay out of it, but this stuck out in my mind. I recall hearing about university girls (me obv. not being in their 'group') talking about how many of them were abused, often by those closest to them. Few reported it because of the situations they were in and all the other excuses that come up (not the least of which being the challenges they would face in the legal system).


With that in mind, do you realize that what you just described in the quoted text is sexual assault?


Perhaps there's some sort of context we're missing, but going into that would be idle speculation and I don't want to dwell on this any longer than necessary, other than to recognize what has happened here.



You are incredibly lucky that charges weren't pressed against you; you should be grateful that you were either given the benefit of the doubt over what happened (that reference to context which I alluded to), or perhaps shock delayed a more forceful response to what happened.

It's good that you apologized, but my casual observation of this entire conversation - not to mention the first quoted paragraph - makes me question whether you understood the gravity of what went on. And that's the point of this post, a cliched but very real 'after-school special with a important message' to put out there.


Thank you for at least bringing this to light. If, as I hope, things aren't as bad as I made them sound here, someone else will at least read this and realize that if they're in a worse situation they have rights and shouldn't be mistreated by anyone.

I think this has been a fully fledged character assassination attempt and I am disgusted by it. I am not afraid of what you'll think of me, because the truth is on my side.

This thread, or rather all the rumblings behind this thread, is filled with vicious lies which I can only assume stems from peggedbea. I am deeply troubled by this.

Rasch, this will be my last message directed to you, because I really don't like you and I haven't for a long time. I will make this as delicate and level-headed as I can. You have been misinformed. My messages to both AC and bea after my texas trip have been different ways of asking "What happened?" because none of them would tell me what they were upset about.

I don't know what you and the rest have been told about the trip to Texas, but I am very much not in denial. I do know what happened when I was there, and it was what I wrote in my message above.

Furthermore, where else have you read about my trip to Texas? If it's anything I've written then please present it. I know I talked to AC about it before I went over there, but I've never talked to you about anything? How can you know anything that doesn't stem from peggedbea? Is it not possible that she's the one that's either in denial or just lying for the hell of it.

I have heard a few rumors about what I allegedly did over there and elsewhere. Here's what has been relayed to me

1. You flew to Texas to visit Bea, out of the blue and without an invite.
This is false. We discussed it in the lounge and later on messenger and she invited me. I don't know anyone that currently live in Texas, why in the hell would I book a (very expensive, I might add) trip to texas out of the blue? How could I ever even expect to be allowed to stay with her then? It just doesn't make sense.

2. From the beginning you engaged in a lot of sexual talk with her, some of it around her kids- to the point of telling her 5 year old that she could legally have sex when she's 15.
The latter part is a bold-faced lie. I never, ever talked to her kids about ANYTHING sexual. I talked to bea about it, but that was certainly as much her as it was me. We talked a bit more subdued, but like we've talked in the lounge. Anyone who has ever been in the lounge knows that she talks way more shit than I do, and people who know me in real life know I'm not nearly as sordid when I'm talking face-to-face. And I would fucking never talk about sex to a child. Fucking hell, that's pure evil spreading a lie like that.

3. You grabbed InflateableVagina's ass and boobs while staying with Bea, and generally freaked everyone out.
No and yes. I didn't grab her ass, I think I smacked it. The boob thing was just an immature prank that turned out to be way out of line. I acknowledged that above, and I have apologized to ivy about that. I can't say that I generally freaked everyone out, but I suppose I could have freaked the three out that were there, bea, ivy and their friend rick. The kids were long gone to be by that time, and they certainly liked me both.

A little context as well, this was the second day I was there (tuesday). I was there from monday till thursday morning. I do remember that after it happened ivy or bea said that it was inappropriate, but ivy seemed to laugh it off and I did the same. I shrugged it off as an immature prank gone a little overboard. We were all a bit drunk and I acted like a high-schooler, that was it. I've apologized for this on many occasions now to ivy.

The next whole day, we went to Six Flags and not a word was mentioned about it, so I thought, that I stepped over the line, but it looked like they forgave me, so let's just move on. We were still having fun and bea and I were still talking fine together, so I assumed everything was alright.

The next morning at 4 or 5 in the morning, she knocked on my door and woke me up and explained that someone in her family had died and she had to go away to another part of the state to deal with it. She was very distraught and I've not brought it up before because I don't think it's nice to share such things here, but that's what it's come to. I'm sorry in advance to bea for this, but she's made it abundantly clear that she has no trouble lying to people about what happened, so I have lost all esteem for her and can't be concerned with it anymore.

We drove to the airport in the morning with the kids half-awake on the backseat, she dropped me off and drove on to what she had to deal with.

I wrote Ivy a text message later in the morning asking if she had heard anything from bea and if she was alright, so she can attest to that as well. After that bea blocked me on facebook and ignored all PMs on videosift (and promptly deleted them) and AC wrote me that she didn't want to speak anymore out of the blue. What am I to believe here? I mean, can't you see a possible connection? If bea spread a lie to AC about me that was a terrible as the one above, I could understand that AC reacted the way she did. If only she had told me that, if that's the case.

4. You have been communicating with Alien Concept - planning a visit, and claim to have pictures of her that you found somewhere.

I have indeed been communicating with alien_concept. We've been communicating a great deal since the lounge started, I think. We had a good talk in the lounge, and I'm pretty sure there were other people in there as well. I can't remember which of us asked for a messenger address, but in any case we started talking on messenger as well, because I thought she was fun and I can only assume she did the same to me (well, she said as much at least). I've never been planning any visit to her. I've talked to her about it; that it could be cool to meet up at some point; but she's always wanted her boyfriend to come over before any other sifters. And I can respect that. I did some friendly jabs at her about how cheap it was to go to London, but there were never any plans to go anywhere. We had talked about me coming by after new years, or maybe make the siftup then, when her boyfriend was there as well, but it never panned out to anything concrete. I certainly don't have any pictures of her that I've "found somewhere". She has sent me exactly 5 pictures over messenger herself, nothing sordid or anything. At some point, I think during this winter, I sent her some videos of myself playing guitar like the blog posts, which she at the time thought was fun.

When she all of a sudden wrote her "I don't want to talk anymore" I was completely baffled and saddened. Mostly because I didn't understand why she did it. She said that I "didn't respect her and her boyfriend's relationship", but I never saw it as me trying to horn in on her, we were just talking and having fun. We were both in our talks, I didn't just yap at her leg all the time at all. So I pestered her a bit after she wrote it, because I wanted her to reconsider and at least explain to me why the sudden change of heart and because I considered us friends, and friends do have at least a little lee-way to deserve an answer.

I still very much like the rae that I've talked to and I like ivy still too. I'm completely disillusioned about peggedbea. I liked her, but I don't anymore - this is just vicious and she should be stopped. Rasch, you and some others in here are so quick to judge me and deem me guilty, when it's just not true. This is not denial talking, this is reason talking. If you have heard any other rumors about me, bring them out! We're already doing the laundry in public, we might as well do it proper.

I'm am still not the crook in this and by now I've laid myself bare and exposed more about people I liked that I would have wanted to. This disturbs me, it really does.

I am glad that there are some sifters who still have my back and support me, because the truth is still on my side.

I like how BillO thinks it's 'Character Assassination' and 'Slanted' if something or someone does not agree with him!

I find it curious that so many people read this as a confession of bias.

I wanted Bush to be a success too -- but he was a screaming roaring failure, and no amount of criticism ever seemed to get him to realize that, nor the people who kept supporting him even after he drove the country off a cliff, then set the country on fire.

Part of helping a President succeed is a critical press that honestly tries to shine light on the potential benefits and pitfalls of their policy. What doesn't help is an uncritical press (e.g. Fox News), or a press determined to create or accelerate a downfall of the other party (Everyone on Fox and to some degree, Olbermann).

The press should be there to keep people honest, but they should have the aim of helping the country's leadership lead well. Bush was resistant to the process, and while it remains to be seen how Obama responds to it, I think he will listen to well-reasoned criticism.

BTW, talking about how tax cuts for the middle class are <scary voice>SOCIALISM</scary voice>, that ends your "well-reasoned" tag. So does talking about suspicion of him being Muslim (hint: he's not), a secret terrorist (he's not), or suspecting he was really born in Kenya (he wasn't).

If you want to raise questions about whether we should bail out GM or not, go to town -- I'm still up in the air on that one myself -- but let's not be part of the lunatic fringe that wants to just character assassinate him, or anyone who supports him.

Holy shit.
I saw his vid on Meet the Press, and dont get me wrong, it was a biggun...but this just raises the discourse to a whole new level.

Hes cut right to the bone.

The issues are what matter, how the country is going to be run over the next 4-8 years, how they are going to be seriously looked at and handled is priority number one, not some petty character assassination in a vein attempt to avoid dealing with the mess that his own party created.

I have a ton of respect for Colin Powell, the minute he resigned his office you just knew its because he thought that the party had lost its way, and he was pressured into going into Iraq.

Ive read his auto-bio, and one thing that stood out to me when he resigned, was a section that read that he would never even consider going into battle, be it a small skirmish, or an entire invasion force, without plans to get the troops out.

You could see it all over his face, he did not want to be a part of Iraq, but was dragged along for the ride by the politicians.

>> ^DavidRaine:
It looks like you missed Rachel's point (or perhaps you just disagree)...

>> ^Payback:
Oh no, I completely agree the "liberal" media is no where near the "conservative" media when it comes to the type and depth of "guilt" in this arguement. I'm just saying that the kettle, while being horrifically black in this case, doesn't give the pot a right to not be as white as possible.
Just take the two campaigns as example. McCain's campaign is far dirtier than Obama's. Although the Dems have been "dragged" down into the muck occasionally by McCain's omnipresent attack ads, Obama's campaign has been at it's most effective when it sticks to the issues and avoids character assassination attempts.


It sounds like we're largely on the same page here and I just needed an excuse to rant for three paragraphs in my previous comment. *smile* While I agree that Obama's best ads are those that stick to the issues and his plans, I also think these attacks and the false equivalencies have to be addressed lest they gain traction (as they have over the last few years). After all, Kerry tried the "nothing but respectful" card in 2004 and he was decimated by Republican attacks.

>> ^DavidRaine:
It looks like you missed Rachel's point (or perhaps you just disagree)...

Oh no, I completely agree the "liberal" media is no where near the "conservative" media when it comes to the type and depth of "guilt" in this arguement. I'm just saying that the kettle, while being horrifically black in this case, doesn't give the pot a right to not be as white as possible.

Just take the two campaigns as example. McCain's campaign is far dirtier than Obama's. Although the Dems have been "dragged" down into the muck occasionally by McCain's omnipresent attack ads, Obama's campaign has been at it's most effective when it sticks to the issues and avoids character assassination attempts.

Some folks wouldn't know racism, if it strung em' to a rail, and ran their sorry ass outta Dodge.

Hey nock, a heads-up....I have a real hard-on for the types of folks who will scream "racist", yet act as if a single word uttered, no matter the context is somehow, an all-telling indicator of the character of that person-I am also a lover of semantics and linguistics, and all those subjects entail.....When ever someone gets too, politically correct, the hackles are raised, and I get all excited.....Raised in Houston Tx, by hippy parents, and went to college as a minority student, at an historically Black university.....the word nigger, has become something else since I have been alive, and I am quick to remind folks, of their own bullshit, and am often reminded of my own.....The real dilemma, is how to manage to turn this word into simply a word, and not a connotation.....I still have not figured this one out.....I consider anyone who acts like a stereotypical racist's view of a black man, regardless of melanin content, a nigger, because as it has evolved, in its usage- the word refers to anyone who is all the things that historically, only blacks in the US prior to the civil rights era, were accused of. Low moral character, lazy, without a sense of taste or culture, beyond their own myopic view of the world, uneducated, etc etc etc .....You don't have to be any particular shade of any color, to be a nigger nowadays. I would call a member of the KKK one, inna heartbeat....just as I would, if in the company of black folks I knew would not pull the racist card, like our would-be character assassin, imaylifffe here.....carry on, grenade tossers

Yeah, the host is daft and fawning but that doesn't make it not worth watching. Israel's policy is incendiary and unfortunate but understandably provoked the endless stream of suicide bombings. Both sides are wrong and both sides have done evil. Can Israel really dismantle all the checkpoints without causing an upsurge in terrorism? The conflict has to be won in the hearts and minds of people on both sides, and that is what Wafa Sultan is attempting to do. She is advocating nothing but peace, rationality, secularism, and nonviolence. She has been the subject of character assassination by a few Muslim zealots.