My guess is something along the lines of #2, although not for merely space-filling reasons. They searched public records for information on this woman, found this information, and reported it. It doesn’t necessarily infer anything or go to prove anything – it merely is information. It is up to the reader to infer what he/she will, if anything at all.
– Ellen, who comes from the dim dark history of journalism when we did actually strive to be fair and unbiased
They’re basically just tossing information out there. But it does somewhat fit with the thrust of the article, which is that she didn’t give any hint of her activities.
I don’t know. I see what the OP is saying, and certainly using this woman’s actions to imply anything about the candidate she supports is slimy, at best.
But, as Marley23 mentions, it is proof that she had been involved with people, and capable of presenting herself well. Beyond that, I tend to think that if one gets involved in the political process to the extent that you’ve run for something, even as a delegate for the Conventions, it’s expected that will become part of the news should any kind of story be run on one. It’s one of the ways in which the newsmaker’s actions can be shown to be noteworthy.
Would the OP have objected to, say, an accidental death news story that mentioned that the deceased had been scheduled to be a delegate to the Convention? Or mentioning it if the woman had won the Lottery? Neither of those stories would have had anything to do with her duties at the Convention, but it would still have been a detail that would seem to be automatically included, simply because it’s part of her public persona.
If no interviews have yet to be conducted with a “newsworthy” subject, ANYTHING that can be publicly found on the subject usually makes it into early news stories.
Hence, we know many assassins by their “full” names… Lee (?) Oswald, Mark (?) Chapman, John (?) Booth, etc.
But she wasn’t a politician, merely a regular registered voter. Do every person who makes the news get their political affiliation investigated? That’s my point.
If a politician goes to jail, his political affiliation will be noteworthy, otherwise few cases would merit a note.
Now that you put it this way my point no. 1 could go like this:
1-a. She supports Obama, as would be expected from any dumb criminal, or
1-b. She supported Obama, which is why we are surprised she turned out to be a dumb criminal.
What’s next?: “Mr. Simpson, who was killed in a freak accident while masturbating with his vacuum cleaner was a registered Republican who supported George Bush in both his elections. Make of that what you will”
By the way. The above mistake betrays my profound ignorance of the US electoral system. Which I find quite bizarre, the more I know about it. So yes, I now see it was newsworthy.
I suppose Mr. Obama will now lament the loss of support from Dumb Criminals for a Better of America. I don’t see how he’ll defeat Reagan.
In journalism school, I was taught that that’s done so the accused isn’t confused with other people with the same name.
MightyGirl: it fits with the idea that the woman presented herself as a normal member of the community, not somebody in the habit of placing fake calls to police (who, even more weidly, got tied up with this polygamy thing somehow). There’s no particular implication about Obama one way or the other - it’s just one of those "the neighbors are surprised to find they were next door to a serial killer, ‘he kept to himself mostly’ kind of stories.
And if she had placed the call and gotten a bunch of innocents in trouble I could see persecuting her. But as it turned out that her actions sparked a raid on what is essentially an illegal society on US soil that has institutionalized CHILD RAPE and BIGAMY, I really don’t see what she did that was any more wrong than giving the proper authorities an “anonymous tip.”
What troubles me is that she must have known something unsavory was going on, why not just play a straight hand as opposed to the lie? My guess is that an anonymous tip (with no specific example to back it up) would trigger a slower, more public investigation whereas cries of “ABUSE AND BABY RAPE” trigger more of an “emergency” response where the perps are more likely to be caught with their hands down their daughters’ pants.
But what any of that has to do with Obama I have no idea. Apparent coffee-aversion aside, he’s not even LDS is he?
The problem I have with this attitude is that it seems perilously close to, “If you’re innocent why are you worried?”
As someone who has been slandered in court records as being a child molester, I then start to worry what standard you’d accept for being morally right for someone to make such fake calls.
If it comes out that this woman had tried to make above-board allegations of the abuses going on the FLDS compound, I will probably change my mind. But until that is proven, I’m going to assume that from several states away she was going with her prejudices of what FLDS societies must be.
OtakuLoki, fair enough. I wouldn’t support the idea of “if you’re innocent then don’t worry about it,” because nobody deserves that kind of invasion just for drill.
But I’m giving the benefit of the doubt that she’d tried playing straight with no great amount of success before resorting to the prank phone call. I have nothing to support that assumption apart from wanting to believe the best of people, and the result that, however motivated, she bullseyed that particular womp rat with her eyes closed.
Gee, my take on the passage and the whole tone of the middle of the article seems to be:
“She presented herself as a normal, upright citizen who no one would suspect would be involved in an illegal act.” Essentially a slightly more detailed “He seemed like such a normal guy” statement. In context:
-She never spoke to her roommate about the issue.
-SHe held down a respectable job.
-Her friends had no idea she was interested in the issue
-She was politically active
If anything, the mention of her (loose) affiliation with the Obama Campaign speaks on how normal she is. I may be naive, but I don’t think the mention reflects, or is intended to reflect, badly on Obama in any way.
Inigo, I agree she certainly exposed something that needed to be brought to light. And perhaps at sentencing that should be considered. I’ve got more than a little sympathy for the view you put forth, honestly.
And, like I said, if there is evidence that she had tried more above-board efforts to get the situation dealt with, my opinion of whether she should be prosecuted would change.
Not to worry. Mrs. Bricker spent a solid hour explaining to me why “E.E.” wasn’t really about “para continuar la obra de Balaguer” in the last D.R. election.
