‘Iron My Shirt’: Media Fooled By Radio Stunters at Hillary Stop

January 8, 2008 | Filed Under Democrats/Leftists, Elections, Media Bias, News, Publius Contributor, Society/Culture, Warner Todd Huston |

-By Warner Todd Huston

Isn’t the Internet wonderful? It wasn’t long before folks in the conservative blogosphere uncovered the fact that the “Iron my Shirt” guys that disrupted yesterday’s Hillary campaign stop in Salem, New Hampshire are radio geeks trying to create a radio stunt. Just about every major news outlet reported the stunt as a real political protest. Only one of them bothered to look into the thing to try and track down the real motivation of the disrupters.

The AP reported it straight and their report was typical of most other MSM outlets.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign stop was interrupted Monday when two men stood in the crowd and began screaming, “Iron my shirt!” during one of her final appearances before the New Hampshire primary.

Clinton, a former first lady running to become the nation’s first female president, laughed at the seemingly sexist protest that suggested a woman’s place is doing the laundry and not running the country.

“Ah, the remnants of sexism — alive and well,” Clinton said to applause in a school auditorium.

More are like the Houston Chronicle who proclaims that “Clinton brushes off sexist taunts” as if she did something wonderful.

The New York Daily News actually did some old fashioned reporting and tracked down the two disrupter’s names, though. On their news blog called Mouth of the Potomac, Michael McAuliff gives us the scoop.

We followed.to ask what the heck they were thinking.

Nick Gemelli, who is 21, and born at least a decade after “iron my shirts” was an anti-women’s rights slogan, didn’t have much of a rationale. “I just don’t think a woman should be President,” he said.

At least he got some attention. His friend — a la Bart Simpson — said his name was Hugh Jas, but The Mouth later learned that his real name is Adolfo Gonzalez Jr.

So far, the Daily News is the only one that I have seen go farther than just reporting the incident.

Then from the folks over at HotAir.com, we get some further sleuthing. After some speculating that it might have been a Hillary plant, the tipseters at HotAir tracked down the truth. It’s a simple radio stunt.

It turns out the guys who the Daily News named work for Boston station WBCN 104.1 FM, and are members of the Toucher and Rich Show.

So much for real political protesting, eh? But it amuses me that few news outlets bothered to do the leg work to find all this out and went ahead to report this incident like it was legitimate. It did give the MSM a chance to show Hillary looking PC by claiming she was being confronted by examples of “sexism” run wild, though. So, maybe that is why they didn’t want to look into it too hard. It would destroy the illusion of Hillary’s “strength” and place the focus on a radio stunt.

And now we must chastise too many on the right who imagined right away that this was a Hillary plant. It appears it was not. But I suppose one can be excused for thinking so at first for all Hillary’s own exposed past stunts! It has become so expected of her, she has lied so very often after all.

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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston