Monday, February 25, 2008

Big Babies Say Waaa: Channel 7 Broadcasts It As News

The shower-nuts are starting to realize their petitions won't hold up, so they're preparing a way to blame somebody -- they want to say that they were forced to collect invalid signatures because they were being terrorized by transgender gangs. And they have proof! Somebody took about three seconds of video on their cell phone, showing Dana Beyer telling petition-pushers, "An email went out; you're going to be asked to leave. Any petitions gathered today are illegal."

Then the Citizens for a Responsible Whatever put the video on YouTube -- see it HERE -- and sent out a press release, titled, COUNCILWOMAN’S AIDE ON TAPE INTIMIDATING VOLUNTEERS DURING PETITION DRIVE. (Dana works for council member Duchy Trachtenberg.)

Wouldn't you know Channel 7's Greta Kreuz would pick this press release up and broadcast it? Here's Channel Seven:
A new law designed to protect transgendered people is still raising a ruckus in Montgomery County as opponents to the law say it's not what it appears to be.

A youtube post shows a transgendered woman confronting opponents of a new law, not yet in effect, outside a Bethesda Giant. "We were systematically being harassed and people were coming to our stations both at the polls and at the Giant, despite the fact that we had permission to be there," said Dr. Ruth Jacobs with Citizens for Responsible Government.

The woman in the video was Dana Beyer, senor aide to Montgomery County councilwoman Duchy Trachenburg, who authored a new law adding "transgender" to the categories protected from discrimination.

The incident underscores just how ugly and confusing the battle continues to be, especially over how to decide which bathroom transgender people should use.

Proponents insist businesses and health clubs may decide for themselves which bathrooms and dressing rooms transgenders can use, but opponents say the law is vague and poorly worded.

There is no religious exemption in the law, so church-affiliated schools, for example, could be used [sic, apparently means "sued"] for not hiring transgender teachers. So many potential problems, opponents say, they hope to take the issue directly to the people before the law goes into effect.

According to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 13 states, Washington, D.C., Baltimore and 90 other local jurisdictions have banned discrimination against transgender people. Transgender Law Faces Stiff Opposition

Greta just can't do enough to carry water for these nuts. Channel 7 is the only local media outlet that has taken stenography from the shower-nuts. This is their second time.

First of all, the law is exactly what it appears to be. The idea that you can hide something in a county law is absurd. Anybody can read it. If there's something there we'll see it: there isn't. This kind of conspiracy theory about invisible things is not hard to investigate or refute. Download the bill, read it.

Further, the new law doesn't add "transgender," it adds "gender identity." While she was saying "transgender," viewers actually saw a copy of the bill with the words "gender identity" underlined.

Go ahead and watch that YouTube video, just to see what they consider "harassment." It may be that Dana was incorrect, and that that Giant did not get an email, but she had been told by Giant management that an email was being sent. Hey, she may have even been incorrect about the legality of petition signatures that are gathered while trespassing, maybe they're okay. "Being incorrect" is not a crime or a violation of anybody's civil rights. The Citizens for a Responsible Whatever act like they want to sue over this, calling it a civil rights violation blah blah blah. As I have said, we have numerous reports of petition-pushers harassing and assaulting passersby, I don't think that's a road they want to go down. This press release is a desperate face-saving move.

I am sad to see that this really is Channel 7's kind of "news," where all you have to do is re-write it. It's not that anything happened -- our telling of the engagements with the petition-pushers certainly had a lot more information in it, but it didn't come right to their fax machine, so they didn't bother with it. These encounters, which happened more than a week ago, weren't "Channel 7 news" until the CRW sent the station a press release. And that is just sad. A whole week of "Yay" press coverage, and then these same guys blow it again.

The "news story" is that somebody posted a three-second video on YouTube, showing Dana Beyer talking to their petition peddlers.

To Channel 7, if the CRW says it's news, it's news.

23 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

We can see who's being "used." Is Greta Kreuz a reporter or a parrot?

February 25, 2008 8:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dana is an senior advisor to the author of this bill. An influential governmental employee. When Dana went and lied to petitioners telling them their petitions were illegal, this went way over the line. This combined with the table-blocking strategy should be enough for a judge to order the referendum on the ballot without any further validation. Dana should probably resign. Government employees should not be harassing citizens and interferring with their exercise of their voting rights.

Imagine if an anti-war protester was collecting petitions to ban nuclear weapons. Then, imagine top White House aides came out and surrounded the table, arguing with the protester and blocking anyone from seeing the protester. Then they starting telling the protester his actions were "illegal".

Can you imagine the uproar in the radical community?

This is the same thing.

BTW, do you all see what scares Jim about the ABC coverage. They don't just the bathroom topic that TTF would like this to revolve around. They add that a religious exemption was not added.

Most voters will find this offensive.

February 25, 2008 9:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OO, the video does not show Dana surrounding anybody.

February 25, 2008 9:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

No, that's documented in Jim's Leisure World pictures.

February 25, 2008 9:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OO- so why did you change your name from AnonFreak?

February 25, 2008 9:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, and another thing OO--
maybe if you were fighting for your civil and human rights you would be out there doing whatever you could to secure them. Nobody deserves to be treated as less-than-equal-- and that is EXACTLY what CRC/CRG/PFOX, etc, etc stand for: PRO-discrimination tactics made legal. SHAME!!!!

I am sure Mo. Co. citizens would be quite "up-in-arms" knowing that you are using our county for your theocratic agenda principles. SHAME!!

February 25, 2008 9:30 PM  
Blogger JimK said...

that's documented in Jim's Leisure World pictures.

No, those pictures show some people talking, and then smiling and hugging.

JimK

February 25, 2008 9:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jim, I'm not saying that there was physical coercion. But you do admit that you were purposely taking up the guy's time and preventing him from being seen by other passersby, right? Was the photographed scene an isolated moment or did the four stand in front of his table the whole time until he left? We know you all stayed until he left but did you all stand in front of his table the whole time?

The guy was pleasant and knew when he was defeated. Not surprisingly, you all wanted to hug him for leaving. The final proof of interference with voting rights is that, the next day, he came back and received many more signatures when you weren't there. That's documented.

Regardless of which side you're on, you must be realizing how inappropriate it was for Dana to even be there. You probably didn't see that in the heat of the moment but don't you understand, at this point, how this kind of behavior by an individual in Dana's position threatens our democracy?

February 25, 2008 10:06 PM  
Blogger Tish said...

I phoned the managers of several Giant grocery stores in Montgomery County. They all said the same thing - the company has a policy that allows groups to use the public space on their property only on Saturdays and Sundays on no more than one weekend per month with no more than two people and one table. The store managers I spoke with told me that if the CRG showed up at their stores on Monday they would be asked to leave.

I didn't see Dana saying anything that is not established policy of the Giant grocery chain.

February 25, 2008 10:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I called Giant HQ as well that was their policy (as per Tish's blog roll response).

CRW was trespassing.

February 25, 2008 10:11 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I phoned the managers of several Giant grocery stores in Montgomery County. They all said the same thing - the company has a policy that allows groups to use the public space on their property only on Saturdays and Sundays on no more than one weekend per month with no more than two people and one table. The store managers I spoke with told me that if the CRG showed up at their stores on Monday they would be asked to leave.

I didn't see Dana saying anything that is not established policy of the Giant grocery chain.

I called Giant HQ as well that was their policy (as per Tish's blog roll response).

CRW was trespassing."

Did Dana make any of these calls to pressure Giant into excluding the petitioners? Did Giant of their own intitiative ever ask Dana to enforce their policy? Did they ask her at all?

I've seen people show up at Giant for the same purpose repeatedly. Isn't this one of those policies that are rarely enforced and only there in case something gets out of hand? Wasn't TTF trying to provoke the petitioners into getting out of hand?

Few people are going to sympathize with why TTF would even be out there, trying to stir up trouble.

February 25, 2008 10:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The store managers I spoke with told me that if the CRG showed up at their stores on Monday they would be asked to leave."

And yet they didn't unless goaded by TTFers.

That tells you something right there.

February 25, 2008 10:26 PM  
Blogger JimK said...

OO said, Few people are going to sympathize with why TTF would even be out there ...

It's not hard, OO. We had some flyers giving the facts about the bill, which we wanted to hand out to people. The petition-pushers were lying about what's in the bill, and so we went out to present another perspective. There is nothing illegal or undemocratic about that. There is also nothing illegal or undemocratic about asking store managers to enforce their own policies. Sorry, but if your argument is that we're supposed to sit around passively letting these radicals have their way in our community, the response is: no, we're not going to do that. They have a right to their opinion, we have a right to ours, and we're going to take it. As much as they feel they can fight to re-legalize discrimination, we feel we can fight for fairness and equality. That is democracy in action.

JimK

February 25, 2008 10:32 PM  
Blogger JimK said...

And yet they didn't unless goaded by TTFers.

No, OO, most places kicked them out without us saying anything.

JimK

February 25, 2008 10:34 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Utterly and completely false statement Jim.

February 25, 2008 11:39 PM  
Blogger Dana Beyer, M.D. said...

Thank you for calling me "influential."

February 25, 2008 11:39 PM  
Blogger Tish said...

The Giant grocery chain has a policy that applies to every community group that wants access to the public space in front of their stores. The policy applies to the Girl Scouts and Boys Scouts when they sell their cookies and popcorn, it applies to the CRW, and it would apply to us if we wanted to set up tables supplying information about what the anti-discrimination code really does. The policy is that a group may have access to the space for one weekend, consisting of one Saturday and one Sunday, per month. The policy does not extend to Monday, even on holiday weekends. I was told told by the store managers that the CRW petitioners had had their days at the stores and that if they came back they would be asked to leave.

The CRW crews who set up at Giant grocery stores more than one weekend in a month and the crews who returned to some Giant stores on Monday were not abiding by the permission granted them. The CRW leadership seems to have failed to tell their volunteers that the permission they received had certain limits which they were obliged to respect.

I'm not sure why that is hard for some CRW supporters to understand.

February 26, 2008 8:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

CRW(hatever) and respect?

That does not compute.

Ted

February 26, 2008 9:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

PFOX in an email today vilified Dana as a "Clinton advisor".

I have to say, I am filled with admiration and respect for all the transgender people who have gone on public record, and especially went out last week to confront the petitioners, risking shockingly rude and bigoted behavior, public vilification, and threats to their employment. PFOX and CRC have a long-established record of attacking individuals where they think it will hurt them most (again, I suppose, on the theory that whatever it takes to keep the sinful queers down is justified in the eyes of god).

It takes a lot of courage, and that has been demonstrated again and again.

Robert

February 26, 2008 11:49 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Red Baron, if anyone's threatening democracy its the CRW. They're the ones trying to interfere with people's right to free speech, threatening them with lawsuits and job loss merely for speaking out for what is right. Dana and the TTF people have every bit as much right to be there correcting the CRW thugs as the CRW thugs had to be there in the first place.

February 26, 2008 1:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anti-democracy= CRW(eirdos).

February 26, 2008 4:04 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Andrea-not anon
So when does Channel 7 play my story???

OK, once again- does Moron anon live here? What about the elections in the past few years doesn't it get? Most voters are not the few showernuts or even the people they tricked into signing.

Moron Anon is full of crap about who is at Giant. I participated in a legally arranged non-harassing honest activity at Giant. We were only allowed to be at each Giant one Saturday each month. We were at some Giants in January and again in February. I had to travel all over MC to go to 5 different Giants.

And Greta K- How about asking the showernuts if telling me I am a facist and telling me I should have been aborted in loud voices outside the Giant is a-ok with you?

February 26, 2008 5:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

March 07, 2008 10:43 PM  

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