Patterico Confirms NYT Owes Its Readers a Correction

I wouldn’t think I’d need to explain this to a Deputy District Attorney for a major city like Patterico, but here are some of the definitions Merriam-Webster includes for the word “Bugger.”

Bugger: (Noun) A worthless person

Bugger: (Verb) Damn

Bugger: (Verb) Bungle or botch

Bugger: (Noun) A person who plants bugs

Bugger all: (Noun) Nothing

Bugger off: (Verb) Leave

Now, Patterico may not know me well enough to know that I live with an Irishman, and therefore it is not uncommon for me to hear and even use the word “bugger” as the Irish or Brits or Aussies do, as a catchall swear word generally tied to a fuck-up (though said Irishman wants it known that he says “bollocks” more than he does “bugger”). But it’s hard to know anything about me without knowing that I have a bit of a reputation for having a potty-mouth.

And so when Patterico thinks he’s caught me in a lie because I persist in describing four pathetic overgrown boys who botched their prank in Senator Landrieu’s office as TeaBuggers…

“Teabugger”? Oh, I get it. It’s like “tea bagger” — only the word “bugger” is substituted . . . a reference to O’Keefe’s “bugging,” which it’s now clear he did not do. So it’s a joke name based on a lie.

When the post in question includes all this in the first paragraph…

TeaBugger James O’Keefe had called on the FBI to release the videos he took while (according to the FBI) by false pretense, entering US government property with the intent of interfering with a phone system owned by the US government. He wanted those released because they would show he neither bugged the phones nor managed to do anything in the phone closet (largely because they were arrested before they were able to get to the phone closet).

It just shows that Patterico knows bugger all about language.

But Patterico’s post is quite amusing for the lengths he goes to to … confirm the NYT owes its readers a correction.

You see, Patterico claims that when the NYT wrote the following passage:

Mr. O’Keefe made his biggest national splash last year when he dressed up as a pimp and trained his secret camera on counselors with the liberal community group Acorn — eliciting advice on financing a brothel on videos that would threaten to become Acorn’s undoing.

He quickly became a cult hero among young conservatives who saw his work as groundbreaking and sought to emulate him.

Liberals have denounced his methods as dishonest, a form of entrapment, but national Republican leaders seized on them as revelatory, pressuring Congress into cutting Acorn’s financing.

Mr. O’Keefe produced his videos with a partner, Hannah Giles, who posed as a prostitute in them [my emphasis]

The NYT did not mean (Patterico claims) to imply that James O’Keefe was wearing his silly pimp costume when he went into ACORN offices and filmed them not breaking the law. Rather, Patterico insists, the NYT only meant that O’Keefe was posing at being a pimp, without suggesting that he was dressed up as one.

You can “pose” as a pimp without dressing like one. Look up the definition if you don’t believe me.

And therefore, Patterico seems to be saying, Bradblog was wrong to ask the NYT to correct the impression they left that O’Keefe was dressed up as a pimp when he went into the ACORN videos.

But there’s a problem with that, aside from the NYT’s use of the phrase “he dressed up as a pimp.”

The editor in question, Greg Brock, made it quite clear he understood the passage to mean that O’Keefe was wearing his pimp costume in the ACORN offices, because one of his emails said this:

As I said, we see nothing to correct. It is not merely a matter of accepting his version. He was videotaping some of the action, including when he left some of the offices. At one point, the camera was turned in such a way to catch part of the “costume” he was wearing. And ACORN employees who saw him described his costume.

And, as Eric Boehlert points out in his response to this same Patterico post, the NYT’s earlier reporting (which Brock also references for his proof that they don’t need to make a correction) clearly says that O’Keefe was dressed as a pimp, not just claiming to be a pimp while wearing his typical prep outfit.

Ready for the embarrassing part where I quote the New York Times claiming O’Keefe was dressed as a pimp visiting ACORN offices?Behold:

The undercover videos showed a scantily dressed young woman, Hannah Giles, posing as a prostitute, while a young man, James O’Keefe, played her pimp. They visited Acorn offices in Baltimore, Washington, Brooklyn and San Bernardino, Calif., candidly describing their illicit business and asking the advice of Acorn workers. Among other questions, they asked how to buy a house to use as a brothel employing under-age girls from El Salvador. Mr. O’Keefe, 25, a filmmaker and conservative activist, was dressed so outlandishly that he might have been playing in a risque high school play.

And again:

But never has his work had anything like the impact of the Acorn expose, conducted by Mr. O’Keefe and a friend he met through Facebook, 20-year-old Hannah Giles. Their travels in the gaudy guise of pimp and prostitute through various offices of Acorn, the national community organizing group, caught its low-level employees in five cities sounding eager to assist with tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution.

So Patterico is insisting that O’Keefe wasn’t dressed as a pimp but was just posing as one, all the while wearing khakis. He’d better tell the NYT, then, because they have reported multiple times (and Brock continues to claim in his response to Brad) that O’Keefe was not posing-in-khaki but was in fact dressed as a pimp.

One more thing.

In response to my repeated calls for O’Keefe to release his raw video from the ACORN stunt (particularly as he calls for authorities to release his raw video from the Landrieu stunt), Patterico very generously reminds me that there are unedited audiotapes of the stunts.

Also, all three bloggers repeatedly refer to a supposedly “independent” report by a guy paid by ACORN, which makes various findings totally at odds with the unedited audio that the report (and all three bloggers) refuse to acknowledge even exists. (Did you know there is unedited audio? In all the whining about the lack of unedited video, did anyone ever bother to tell you that you can listen to the full unedited audio of these visits? It’s true! Click the link if you don’t believe me.)

That’s as clever as Patterico gets, I guess! Want proof of how O’Keefe was dressed in one or another of his stunts, given that the videotape we do have is clearly edited? I know! Check the audiotape!

Video. Audio.

Yeah.

In other words, try as hard as Patterico can, he’s got bugger all to refute that O’Keefe in both his ACORN videos and his Landrieu stunt was involved in a bolloxed attempt to deceive.

Update: Edit to bugger reference above.

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  1. WilliamOckham says:

    You didn’t really expect somebody like that to really get the joke, though. I have to admit that before David Schuster made a big deal about Dave Weigel’s famous photo, I had no idea what teabagging was. I just didn’t make a fool of myself about it.

    Also, somebody should remind this dude that what O’Keefe did in Maryland probably meets the Maryland legal definition of illegal eavesdropping which is the very definition of “bugging” that he objects to. That “unedited audio” is, in fact, the product of, uh, teabugging.

  2. freepatriot says:

    they can’t dazzle you with brilliance

    they can’t baffle you with bullshit

    why do the still bother to try ???

    it is the power of the word “Blowjob” I tell ya

    (wink)

  3. LangostinoHues says:

    Hmmm… (begin pedantic slang-usage quibble mode)

    It just shows that Patterico doesn’t know bugger all about language.

    probably should read:

    It just shows that Patterico doesn’t knows bugger all about language.

    /quibble

    Actually, not being from the U.K., I can’t swear that I am correct; however, I am a really big Monty Python fan, and so c.f.

  4. tekel says:

    Not to be pedantic about curse words from across the pond, but I’m pretty sure that you’ve left the #1 frequently understood definition for “bugger” off your list.

    Hint: it’s a verb.

    Hint #2: it’s not ‘damn.’

    Hint #3: Winston Churchill uttered a famous quote referring to the British Navy, an alcoholic beverage from puerto rico, this usage of the word, and a form of corporal punishment commonly delivered with a length of cord or a whip.

    I know, I know… just sayin’.

    • bobschacht says:

      Well, your hints suggests that you did not have this in mind– or did you?

      In American slang, I thought “bugger” as a noun referred to snot. i.e., to call someone a little bugger was to compare him to a hunk of snot.

      Bob in AZ

      • dakine01 says:

        In American slang, I thought “bugger” as a noun referred to snot. i.e., to call someone a little bugger was to compare him to a hunk of snot.

        Nah that’s booger not bugger

      • Endymion says:

        “Bugger” is from the archaic French “Bouger“, which is a noun meaning a mature man who engages in intercourse with less mature men(Fr. Bougerie->En. Buggery, Bugger). Bouger and its cognates are also the root of ‘bugbear’ or ‘bugaboo’ and ‘boogie’ and ‘Boogeyman.’ Yes, originally the Boogey-man was not hiding in the kids’ closet to come out and scare the kids…but that is where the term ‘closeted’ comes from. Interestingly, when the word was first imported there was much less stigma associated with the practice(granted, rape in general was relatively acceptable back then), and in many places there’s still the sense that only the ‘catcher’ is acting ‘against nature’ or conversely that he is always a victim. But I’m getting into a lot of tangents here; basically, ‘bugger’ is like ‘punk,’ but bear on twink instead of prisoner on prisoner.

  5. stagemom says:

    tell him to bugger off.
    i hate how they grab the narrative and run tangentially away from the issue. remind him that making mischief of any kind EMBOLDENS THE TERRAISTS!!! it was a federal office, fergawdsakes…remember o-k-l-a-h-o-m-a?

    you have to reply and fight back hard, i spose, but i wish you had a staff/posse to do it for you so you wouldn’t have to sully yourself, you precious gal.
    xoxo,
    ma

  6. rosalind says:

    the comment section at the patterico post is a bucket of win. patterico himself showcases his brilliance in #19:

    That’s my claim. Read it over, as many times as you need to. There’s no shame in moving your lips if you need to. It’s the Internet; we’re not watching.

    please please please let patterico be sitting at the prosecution table at my next jury duty voire dire…

  7. JasonLeopold says:

    OT here, but the Senate Judiciary committee yet again did not take up the Dawn Johnsen vote (I think they may use the snow as an excuse) even though they said they would last week. It is not rescheduled for Feb. 25

      • bmaz says:

        Jason, I talked to Judiciary staff. It appears truly as if the weather is the culprit today. I am informed there were only ten Senators present to start with, they met for a little over ten minutes. The Judiciary business meeting was scheduled for this morning, but even staff couldn’t get there to get it going. Finally able to meet somewhere after 2 pm, but three senators had to leave at 2:30 pm to an SSCI meeting – DiFi, Whitehouse and Feingold and Franken had to leave to go preside over the full Senate. So they literally did not apparently have enough time for Johnsen, who will require more debate time than they clearly had. They did a couple they could and split. I trust this information pretty well, so I guess it is understandable.

        Will be fascinating to see whether Johnsen is recess appointed and, if so, whether Obama fights at all after that for her permanent confirmation. Not holding my breath…..

        • JasonLeopold says:

          ah thank you so much for this update, bmaz!

          Statement by Obama, btw, from about an hour ago on nominees/recess appointments:

          The statement reads:

          At the beginning of the week, a staggering 63 nominees had been stalled in the Senate because one or more senators placed a hold on their nomination. In most cases, these holds have had nothing to do with the nominee’s qualifications or even political views, and these nominees have already received broad, bipartisan support in the committee process.

          Instead, many holds were motivated by a desire to leverage projects for a Senator’s state or simply to frustrate progress. It is precisely these kinds of tactics that enrage the American people.

          And so on Tuesday, I told Senator McConnell that if Republican senators did not release these holds, I would exercise my authority to fill critically-needed positions in the federal government temporarily through the use of recess appointments. This is a rare but not unprecedented step that many other presidents have taken. Since that meeting, I am gratified that Republican senators have responded by releasing many of these holds and allowing 29 nominees to receive a vote in the Senate.

          While this is a good first step, there are still dozens of nominees on hold who deserve a similar vote, and I will be looking for action from the Senate when it returns from recess. If they do not act, I reserve the right to use my recess appointment authority in the future.

  8. AZ Matt says:

    It does refer to sodomize also. If you were refered to as a bugger 200 years ago in say, the Royal Navy, it meant you were a homosexual. It was a big no-no in the Royal Navy.

    • emptywheel says:

      Yeah, that was the discussion tekel and I were having upthread.

      And that is, presumably, the means by which “bugger” became derogatory in the way one might confuse with booger.

      That said, that meaning is somewhat dated as “bugger” becomes a catchall in other English usages like “fuck” is in our language.

  9. Teddy Partridge says:

    I always thought teabugger referred to Breitbart’s unstated desire for the unstated definition with young jamesokeefeiii

    • emptywheel says:

      I can’t speak to that. As close as I’d come would be to play on the fact that the entire TeaBagging movement claims they didn’t know what that term meant, when they adopted it happily.

      • Teddy Partridge says:

        It’s very hard for me to believe that the intersection of Tea Partiers and “Pecker” viewers is zero. They knew what it meant. They used it on purpose, or some of them did. I mean, what does “Tea Bag the Liberals Before They Tea Bag You” mean if not, you know, teabagging?

    • emptywheel says:

      That’s actually really interesting. It suggests that Flanagan, who says he didn’t know what they planned before it began, and says O’Keefe misled him as to the plan, is dealing. Remember, he’s the son of the AUSA, so Daddy is going to be pushing him to make a deal. (I suspect that Daddy the AUSA arranged for the lawyer inquestion, which suggests that he picked a guy who treats the law as the law and not some big fucking joke.)

      But that also means that Flanagan may flip on the others.

      • MadDog says:

        I’d agree with your take.

        Flanagan is in tough spot since he and Basel were the ones who tried to gain access to the wiring/phone closet.

        In my mind, this means these 2 are closer to the edge of the felony cliff than O’Keefe and Dai.

        And yes, Daddy Flanagan is likely to know and recommend a top-notch effective criminal defense lawyer in NOLA, rather than some political hack based in DC.

        • emptywheel says:

          It was once you realized that Flanagan wasn’t a close buddy of the other TeaBuggers. There was a time when I wondered whether he knew something from his dad–because LA is like that, Republicans are like that, and there are others involved in tihs saga who have violated prosecutorial rules on information.

          But once the other TeaBuggers started claiming they had “no” representation during that day (rather than “no Watergate” representation), it became clear these boys didn’t want to go quietly to accept their punishment for being buggers.

    • JasonLeopold says:

      From that story:

      A lawyer for suspect James O’Keefe, a videographer famous for wearing a pimp costume for a stunt that embarrassed the community organizing group ACORN, said he never discusses any conversations he may have with prosecutors.

      • LiberalHeart says:

        Right. And also from that story:
        Attorney J. Garrison Jordan wouldn’t discuss any details of his meeting Wednesday with prosecutors. Jordan said he was trying to quickly resolve his client’s case, but he wouldn’t say whether the talks involve a possible plea agreement.

        “We’re in discussions with the government, trying to resolve this matter as expeditiously as possible in a fair and just manner,” Jordan said.

        (I doubt they’re talking about the weather.)

  10. orionATL says:

    i seem to recall flannigan being quoted as telling another that he and o’keefe were planning something neat.

  11. MadDog says:

    And more on topic to EW’s previous post of EU Parliament Rejects Interim SWIFT Deal, this from today’s WaPo:

    Intelligence ties between UK and US in jeopardy

    Intelligence ties between London and Washington have been jeopardized by a British court’s disclosure that a terrorism suspect was beaten and shackled in U.S. custody, diplomats and security officials said Wednesday.

    Fears in the United States that Britain can no longer be trusted with secrets is prompting an urgent assessment of relations between the allies and – according to some sources – has already slowed the flow of sensitive information from the U.S…

    …Experts say allies may no longer trust British assurances that intelligence information will be kept secret.

    “I suspect that for some while at least, the U.S. authorities are going to be much less generous with the material they share and much more calculating about protecting their own interests,” said Nigel Inkster, a former assistant chief of Britain’s MI6 overseas spy agency.

    Some British diplomats say restrictions on the information shared with London by Washington are already in place. The officials, who demanded anonymity to discuss intelligence issues, said the U.S. would never withhold details on threats to life, but American officials probably are already withholding some information they would have shared before.

    “This is more serious than the Cambridge spy ring, this is more serious than Robert Hanssen,” said Bob Ayers, a London-based former U.S. intelligence officer. “This has the potential to be far more damaging…”

    • MadDog says:

      And 2 related articles in the UK’s Daily Telegraph:

      Jonathan Evans: conspiracy theories aid Britain’s enemies

      MI5 was not involved in any torture ‘cover-up’, says its director general, Jonathan Evans.

      …One shortfall it highlighted in 2005 and again in 2007 was that the British intelligence community was slow to detect the emerging pattern of US mistreatment of detainees after September 11, a criticism that I accept…

      MI5 chief defends agency over torture cover-up claims

      …Scotland Yard has consulted senior prosecutors about the possibility of bringing criminal charges against an MI5 officer who questioned Mr Mohamed in Pakistan, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.

      A police inquiry into the officer, which began last July at the request of Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General, is understood to be at an advanced stage, and lawyers have discussed whether the officer could be charged under the Human Rights Act, which prohibits torture…

      • MadDog says:

        And 2 other related articles from the UK’s Guardian:

        Top judge: Binyam Mohamed case shows MI5 to be devious, dishonest and complicit in torture

        Legal defeat plunges Security Service into crisis over torture evidence, and it is revealed that judge removed damning verdict after Foreign Office QC’s plea

        MI5 faced an unprecedented and damaging crisis tonight after one of the country’s most senior judges found that the Security Service had failed to respect human rights, deliberately misled parliament, and had a “culture of suppression” that undermined government assurances about its conduct…

        Binyam Mohamed: the government lawyer’s letter to the court of appeal, annotated by Ian Cobain

        The government’s lawyer, Jonathan Sumption QC, wrote a letter to the court of appeal on Monday in which he protested about the withering criticism of MI5 in the draft copy of the Binyam Mohamed judgment.

        The appeal judges, led by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, agreed to redact one paragraph, number 168, which was particularly critical of the security service. A decision will be made on Friday about whether this paragraph, or part of it, will be published…

        …Here the Guardian’s Ian Cobain annotates the key points in Sumption’s letter. Click on the yellow highlighted text to read Cobain’s analysis…

        • MadDog says:

          And if EW should happen to write a post about these 5 articles, might I humbly suggest the following for a title:

          Brits Shitting Bricks!

          • emptywheel says:

            See, I think there’s a bit of kabuki going on. The US is not going to stop sharing, not after the Undie Bomber. The Brits might ask a higher price (particularly with the SWIFT thing in the background). But they’ll keep sharing. It’s what htey do.

            • MadDog says:

              I’d buy the idea that kabuki is at play here in some degree, but I also think there’s some truth to the notion that the Brits’ undies are in a bunch too.

              • MadDog says:

                And now that I think about it more, your kabuki point would also make a good post such as:

                Brits Shitting Bricks! or Intelligence Community Kabuki?

                Are these recent articles about the Brits’ undies being in a bunch regarding US intelligence sharing following the British High Court’s ruling in the Binyam Mohamed case the real story, or is this Intelligence Community Kabuki meant to send pointed messages to various and sundry parties?

                Parties such as the Judiciary in both countries who would release more information in defiance of the governments’ insistence on State Secret Privilege?

                Parties such as the Congress and Parliment in both countries who would push for release of more information in defiance of the governments’ insistence on secrecy regardless of lawless behavior?

                Parties such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, Reprieve, in both countries who would push for release of more information and accountability in defiance of the governments’ insistence on secrecy regardless of lawless behavior?

                In this post, I explore these Kabuki possibilities; who might be behind it, why they’re saying what they’re saying, and how they expect to benefit…

    • skdadl says:

      Purest trash. What did they do — advertise for pompous twits to quote? “More serious than the Cambridge spy ring” … I mean, really.

  12. JasonLeopold says:

    If I may go OT again, the SF Chronicle has this story:

    …Several prominent lawyers are urging a federal appeals court in San Francisco to hold Yoo accountable.

    They have submitted arguments opposing dismissal of a prisoner’s lawsuit that accuses the former Justice Department attorney of providing a legal cover for torture. The suit covers much of the same ground as the department’s ethics investigation of Yoo…

    in filings over the last 10 days, groups of constitutional law professors, legal ethics scholars and former government attorneys urged the court to keep Padilla’s suit alive…

    They include Erwin Chemerinsky, law school dean at UC Irvine; Alan Morrison, an assistant law dean at George Washington and former director of Public Citizen Litigation Group; and Norman Dorsen of New York University, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union…The legal ethics professors include Stanford’s Deborah Rhode and former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, now at UC Davis.

    The third filing came from three former government lawyers, including Bruce Fein, special assistant to the director of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in President Ronald Reagan’s administration, the same office where Yoo worked under President George W. Bush.

    They argued that the office has built its credibility by candidly telling the chief executive when his proposed actions overstepped constitutional boundaries. If Padilla can prove his allegations, Yoo “must be held to account,” they said.

  13. rdwdkw says:

    You know Marcy if you would have said ” Clinton’s hummer” instead of “blowjob” they would thought you meant his car, Ha!

  14. JTMinIA says:

    If it bothers this guy that you’ve been running around claiming that O’Keefe has been bugging offices, he must be totally livid that you’ve been claiming that a certain Pennsylvanian is really a sheep’s stomach stuffed with barley.

  15. JohnLopresti says:

    Somewhat old news, date February 1 Picayune Jan Mann AUSA, worthwhile thread in places, re Why she is designated prosecutor in O*Keefe matter. See her attached photo in the article, as well.

    The slang I learned was as if a stranger in a strange community as a teen. I went to a distant campus for highschool in another city, but local young adults in the hometown where I actually lived told me the students who went to the Park Tearoom after school were some kind of clique, known as teabaggers. The tone was deprecatory but the terminology seemed too understated.

    I had a grandfather who as he aged preferred tea; a favorite and ludicrous question he often asked as mealtime waned was something about looking for the teaball, which was a screwtop metal container the shape of an egg into which one placed tealeaves to seep. The extended family had fun echoing variants on his teaball quest.

  16. ShotoJamf says:

    Anyone know what’s going on with the teabuggers these days? They seem to have fallen off the radar. More importantly, assuming they’re ultimately sentenced to a Federal slam for spell (we can hope), do you suppose they’ll be able to get used to their regular in-slam bugger(ings)?

    • ShotoJamf says:

      Never mind. Picked up on Liberal Heart’s comment comment at #22. Guess I should read all the way through the thread first, eh?

  17. purplefishies says:

    A bit of a fail on your part my friend.

    You are worried about what someone thinks about your writing and use of a word that is uncommonly, at best, used in this country.

    Your strong writing ability should be put to use researching arguments worth fighting for.

  18. acerigger says:

    would still like to know,will un-edited copies of “acorn” videos be made available in lawsuit?????????

  19. buckinnm says:

    It was my belief that “bugger”, “buggering” and “buggered” meant fucker, fucking and fucked?

  20. nellieh says:

    O’Keefe and his “A TEAM” could screw up a wet dream! About as stealthy as the Watergate “Plumbers”! And just as bright.

  21. wagonjak says:

    BREAKING NEWS!…it looks like one of the four TeaBuggers has cut a deal with authorities for a plea bargain…I hope he’s telling the truth about this O’Keefe criminal operation…this could spell big trouble for the remaining three, especially O’Keefe…

    One can only hope….

  22. AlanDownunder says:

    A major New Zealand daily once ran BUGGER as a 1-word full width headline. Any ex-13 can guess what the story below it was.