Christine O'Donnell's supporters and video-taker compared to a rat staring contest

A video of Christine O'Donnell's supporters and a person trying to shoot some video is played side-by-side with a video of rat staring contest.

YouTube Doubler video here (Via Dangerous Minds)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

MORE: Entertainment

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

greenchester

So for next time this guy should put his camera on a long mono pod and just hold it above annoying blue shirt guy.
412bung

I think the most appropriate action would be to have a photographers party descend on one of these meetings. In a cascade fashion, though, to get the gist of what happens to one, two, or three people being intimidated, and then to be able to witness it evaporate as more joined in.
bjacques

I watched the P.I. clip and it was pretty much as I expected. But if she mentioned Immanuel Kant, I missed it. If she did, it would probably be in a negative context and a tip-off that she reads Ayn Rand. New meme: The New Sarah Palin. Get that one out there and the current Sarah Palin will go nuts, maybe even on Ms. O’Donnell.
Mitch

I don’t appreciate seeing rats being insulted by this comparison.
Anonymous

This reminds me of the undercover Chinese police using umbrellas to interrupt journalists covering the 20th anniversary of Tienanmen Square last year.
inness

Well, it appears the new guise of the Brownshirts requires carrying a clipboard in any of various coloured polo shirts.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, say goodbye to our, . . . er, the old GOP, and hello to the New John Birch, er, . . . TEA party!”
This ‘grassroots movement’ stinks on every level: from the candidates dodging of reporters (Angle); the dissemination of scripted, ‘less radical’ views (Agua Buddha Paul, et al); and the hidden RNC/Koch funding. All of this to gather in a ‘revived’ conservative base and rebrand the fouled GOP moniker.
And people are falling for it. Is it just me, or does anyone else believe a democracy only works with the free and open dissemination of ideas, particularly in relation to officials seeking to represent the people. Since when did we have to wait, to be forced back, until candidates had been media prepped in order to ‘speak their minds’?
Shameful, and in the making since Eisenhower’s warning against corporate rule. Don’t worry about meeting the new boss, same as the old boss. If these bellicose, fear-baiting ‘conservatives’ win they will rightfully still be the old boss.
Anonymous

There are some really good responses herein. A rat staring contest does seem an appropriate comparison. This should not be happening at public political events and that it did happen; that’s not a good sign.
Noodlehead

That’s why I have a six-foot tall monopod (add to that the fact that I’m 6’3″ with freakishly long arms, and I can get some nice aerial shots. Put the camera on there, stick it up in the air, and giggle as the little blue douchebag breaks a law or his neck trying to stop me from shooting.

Personally, I’d elevate it to just barely out of jumping range for him. He looks like he needs the exercise.
kpkpkp

I wish I could that much attention while *I* was holding a camera at Best Buy!
robulus

Well there’s one blue-polo-shirt-tucked-into-chinos-wearing-dickhole who takes his volunteer gooning seriously.

Pity he didn’t posses the acute mental faculties required to work out that the video of people standing around chatting in the sun was likely far less useful than the video of him and his mate impersonating a sack of doorknobs.

Seriously, do you guys ever think about just giving up and handing the keys over to these fucktards? I mean, the system just seems hopelessy geared for them. Obama gets in, and with the best intentions can’t even govern with a good majority. Can’t even consistently take a stance on a Mosque being built in New York next to a strip club.

I don’t know, it just saps my will to… formulate strong opinions about US politics.
Stefan Jones

Christine O’Donnell supporters will always win in a battle of wills, because they’ve never polluted their souls with self-pleasuring.
Eli

In case it isn’t clear, the video taker is almost certainly employed by an O’Donnell opponent and is to get a record of any potential “Macaca” gaffes.

So, while a bit uncool, it’s at least understandable why O’Donnell’s staff would be so hostile.
- Anonymous
  
  Uh, no. First, you have no evidence that they’re anything other than regular citizens. You’re just assuming that. Second, even if that were the case it doesn’t even remotely excuse this behavior. Attempting to physically intimidate people, even political opponents, for doing something completely legal in a public space is never acceptable.
  
  The saving grace here is that they look like such assholes that they did more harm to O’Donnell than could ever have been done by anything that these people would have videotaped. Now that this is on BoingBoing, they’re going to get a lot of publicity out of it.
mgfarrelly

I love that the tea-baggers scream endlessly about freedom and yet seem terrified of anyone but them exercising it.
Johnny Coelacanth

The rats have a lot more personality than the O’Donnell supporters.
perchecreek

What baffles me is why the videographer passively accepts the intimidation. They’re square dancing until the videographer says “Please leave me alone, please back away from me.” Then, should he fail to comply, the goon has committed assault.
Anonymous

I think the O’Donnell supporters just don’t like Red Sox fans…
MarkM

I think watching this passive violence actually gets me angrier than if i was watching a video of racist fruitloop teapartiers recorded “in the wild”. something amazingly insidious about that goon silently blocking the shot. and to the other stooge who is wearing his glenn beck/”faith hope charity”/fairey-styled T-shirt: how are you upholding your founding fathers’ first amendment when you prohibit another citizen’s photographs?

and, shouldn’t you be proud of your gathering? by blocking the shot, you show that you KNOW that your members are going to be saying stupid, inappropriate things you’d be embarrassed by, were they to be repeated outside the cult gathering. as it was, the camera documented a meta-embarrassment.
ChibiR

So wait, lemme get this straight. Those two wannabe goons act like total douches just to avoid that guy potentially catching something on camera that might make them and their candidate look bad… but the guy who films them acting like total douches is absolutely fine?
- Anonymous
  
  Just goes to show that US politicians only look for, employ and want/desire idiots in their constituency, that seem to be more and more everyday.
  
  Ignoring them won’t make them go away sadly, I wish more open minded, intelligent and educated ( as in the ways of the world not academic ) people would start political parties or at least join the ones already existing and change EVERYTHING from the bottom up.
  ( wishful thinking from me.)
Anonymous

To Eli #3: No it’s not understandable. It’s intimidation of someone recording a public event. That’s only acceptable if you believe free speech isn’t really a right but a privilege accorded only to people you find acceptable.
- mdh
  
  I don’t see any laws being enacted in this video, so what does the constitutional protection of speech from such enaction have to do with your point?
  
  Or do you maybe misunderstand the whole entire freedom thing?
Chris Owens

I continue to be concerned about the actual platform of Tea Party candidates, so I went to O’Donnell’s web site to read up.

… except there is nothing to read. There is nothing at all except for a link to donate. Whiskey tango foxtrot.
- ChibiR
  
  *googles her page* …yeah, I’ll second your reaction there, Chris.
- Brainspore
  
  Who needs a platform when you’ve already gone off the deep end?
- Stefan Jones
  
  They’re For Freedom and Against Tyranny and want to Take Their Country Back.
  
  What more do you need to know?
- Mark Frauenfelder
  
  It would be wrong to donate 0.01 at christine2010.com because the credit card transaction costs would be more than the donation. Please don’t do it.
  - JonStewartMill
    
    But would it be worth getting on their mailing list? Hmmm…
  - forgeweld
    
    What’s really great is that you still get on their list of donors, and signed up for a steady stream of wacky, kooky emails soliciting new donations that can be very entertaining.
  - siliconsunset
    
    Has anyone suggested this course of action to /b/? Guess what I’m doing when I get out of class…
    - wormbaby
      
      /b/ is not your personal army. Just saving you the time, now tits or gtfo!
      - siliconsunset
        
        of course not, but if you give them an agreeable course of action it will catch like wildfire. this is the type of person who would catch their attention. they are a strange force; ruining lives and bringing animal abusers to justice. if they see fit to ruin a random person’s life, they are certainly interested in making things difficult for a person or group to which they object. i think a woman who denounces all forms of masturbation would qualify…
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Whiskey tango foxtrot.
  
  Charlie Foxtrot.
MajorMattMason

Re: The O’Donnell goon with the personal-space issues:

Christ, what an asshole.
superface

Apparently teabaggers learned their critic-handling techniques from Scientology.
voiceinthedistance

Bainbridge wins! I was pulling for him from the beginning. What was going on on the left side, anyway?
Mark Frauenfelder

From Reason: Oâ€™Donnell lied about attending a Masterâ€™s degree program at Princeton University; claimed that her political enemies are creeping in the bushes outside her house; is opposed to the sinister habit of masturbation; is a supporter of the â€œex-gayâ€ movement, despite the inconvenient revelation that her former staffer Wade Richards â€œreturnedâ€ to homosexuality and denounced those peddling â€œcuresâ€ for his sexuality; filed a $6 million lawsuit against the conservative group ISI for â€œgender discriminationâ€; was denounced by her former campaign manager as a â€œfraudâ€ who uses campaign donations to pay rent and utility bills; and has implied that her Republican opponent is gay. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
- mgfarrelly
  
  You neglected to mention that she likes Eddie Izzard’s lipstick, and has apparently no idea who Kant was and what the “Nazis at the door” scenario means.
  
  http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/09/lipstick-donnell-hates
  
  Ain’t she adorable?
  - Gyrofrog
    
    There’s a small part of me that hopes O’Donnell, the Master’s Degree in Communications guy, et al will actually win.
    
    Like Bill & Opus: “This time, why not the worst?”
  - Deadmeat
    
    @mgfarrely #20
    
    oh wow, thanks for sharing that.
Norman

This O’Donnell sure gets people upset. She’d get my vote!
Teller

Hey, it’s a blue screen – you can put anything there!
Mark Frauenfelder

Here’s the Xtranormal version of the Reason excerpt.
KAWA

I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you! Who is Big Brother now? Where’s dad?
Eric Ragle

It just really feels like Conservatives think that women like O’Donnell and Palin are what intellectual women should be like. It’s as if they are saying, “fine, if we have to let them out of the kitchen, let’s at least make sure they are dumber than a bag of hammers.”
Anonymous

http://www.youtubedoubler.com/?video1=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DzO4E1SDY3-g&start1=0&video2=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DnA0Z795mkMk&start2=20&authorName=cmac
Eric Ragle

If anyone has seen The Cove (which is a fantastic documentary btw), Annoying Blue Shirt Guy reminds me of Private Space.
- knoxblox
  
  It does, but didn’t Private Space at least say something once in a while?
SlashMatrix

Ya know, we could avoid behavior like this if more cameras came equipped with bayonets.

Actually, come to think of itâ€¦ a small rod set low enough to stay out of frame might actually work. He could still stand in front of the camera, but it would force him to back up enough to keep him from blocking the entire frame. I thought of it first!
Stefan Jones

“American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains. So they’re already into this experiment.”
– Christine O’Donnell, in an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor

. . . one is a genius, the other insane . . .
- jtiii
  
  . . . one is a genius, the other insane . . .
  Pinky and the Brain FTW!!
  
  On another note, I have never liked the pejorative “douche” but for the 1st time ever I can think of no better word to describe those two, well, douches.
archanoid

The O’Donnell people remind me of Scientologists in some of the videos I’ve seen of folks being harrassed by them.
Anonymous

This video is WAAAY scarier than the tower climbing video. Blue Shirt and people like him give me the creeps!
Anonymous

Let me tell you all about Delaware politics…

I have lived here all my life. I have served as a Republican election official. I have met and spoken with Joe Biden, the late Senator Bill Roth, former governor Pete DuPont, Representative Mike Castle, and Senator Tom Carper on multiple occasions.

I voted in the Republican primary, and although I could not bring myself to vote for O’Donnelly, I did not vote for Castle either. In Delaware you can refuse to cast your vote in any or all individual races, effectively voting “none of the above”.

I am glad O’Donnelly won (although she is a complete raving loon) because this means Castle is out and (hopefully) Coons is in. Whatever else he may be, Chris Coons is a proven fiscal conservative; and like most Delawareans I am both socially liberal and fiscally conservative.

When the TARP bailouts happened, 80% of the calls to Mike Castle’s office were from his constituents directing him not to vote in favor. I was personally told this by a worker in Castle’s office who counted the calls. Despite this, Representative Castle repeatedly voted for TARP – and not just for the final bill, which Obama has so successfully poisoned since his election. Castle even voted for the totally insane first version, with the blank check and no oversight whatsoever.

Delaware is home to most of the nation’s major banks, and most of the world’s corporations. A great many people here work in the finance industry and understand banking and what it means to have a well-managed capitalism. As Castle repeatedly voted in favor of various versions of TARP, his constituency repeatedly and increasingly called his office and directed him (as their Representative in offce) to represent their views. He flatly refused, and voted as the party machine directed.

Later, when Obama’s ARRA “stimulus” package was put to the vote, Delawareans generally supported it, although certainly not to the overwhelming degree that they opposed TARP. Again, calls to “Representative” Castle’s office ran heavily in favor of the bill, but Castle chose to vote as directed by party leadership in Washington, against the expressed wishes of his constituency.

The primary was less a win for Christine O’Donnelly than a landslide rejection of Mike Castle, a representative who disgraced himself by failing to do his job. His unethical behaviour got his ass booted out of office.

If (god forbid!) O’Donnelly beats Chris Coons in the general election, then she will have won something, and the people of Delaware will have something to be ashamed of.

But even if she wins, eliminating Mike Castle was almost certainly worth it. At some point, representatives who refuse to represent must pay a price for their treachery.
- skeletoncityrepeater
  
  Why did you post anonymously? That comment was more interesting than anything above it, including the original post..
Antinous / Moderator

She’s HuffPo’s new poster girl for batshit crazy. I wonder if Sarah Palin will try to slap her down for stealing the spotlight. There’s gold in them thar talk show appearances.
knoxblox

Wow. O’Donnell supporter seems like he’s had some practice at doing this. He must have been a real dick as a child.
inness

Posting again because this asinine behavior has really gotten under my skin. For anyone who thinks this is an isolated incident, it’s not. I was blocked during coverage of a TEA party rally last year in New Iberia, Louisiana, after one of the bus ‘riders’ let slip that they were exhausted from their VA to Baton Rouge overnight flight so they could catch the bus in time to make their folksy whistle-stops. I was lucky to hear that, and only because the majority of the ‘riders’ were made up of recent PR graduates hired by the RNC to man the ‘cross-country bus tour’ in shifts.
But I digress in showing the endemic, clearly-formulated astroturf TEA party movement. Here’s another link to what is apparently the expected behavior of O’Donnell’s political handlers. Sadly, it’s no different than any of the other ‘new’ conservative candidates.
http://blogs.delawareonline.com/dialoguedelaware/2010/08/31/gop-staffer-odonnell-supporter-scuffle-at-candidate-forum/
grimc

Oh man, here’s what she said in 2007:

American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains.

If that’s the kind of thing she says on camera, no wonder her supporters go the extra distance to keep her off them.
Anonymous

Someone should 4chan that guy.
Cowicide

Ok, that’s it. Boing Boing please set up a way to raise money so we can send Tom Green to one of these Tea Bagger events and film it.

Example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IjT5Q12lvc#t=2m40s
senorglory

at least one of the those two wankers needs to be socked on the nose.
mellowknees

From Wikipedia:

“After graduating in 1987 from Moorestown High School in Moorestown, New Jersey, O’Donnell attended Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she did course work toward a B.A. in English and Communication.[10][11][12] She did not grow up as a strict Catholic, but rather came to a turning point in college after, “drinking too much and having sex with guys with whom there wasn’t a strong emotional connection”.[4] She became increasingly interested in both politics and religion.[8] She became an evangelical Christian, began preaching sexual abstinence and joined the College Republicans.[4][10]”

Is it just me, or do a lot of folks who convert to evangelical Christianity tend to do so only after getting a lifetime of drinking and/or drugs and fucking out of their systems? Like, “well, I’ve done all of that I can do, so I guess the next step is to make sure no one else does it!”
- mausium
  
  “Is it just me, or do a lot of folks who convert to evangelical Christianity tend to do so only after getting a lifetime of drinking and/or drugs and fucking out of their systems? Like, “well, I’ve done all of that I can do, so I guess the next step is to make sure no one else does it!”
  
  I’d say the born-again fervor comes from an addictive personality
  
  and extensive brain damage.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Is it just me, or do a lot of folks who convert to evangelical Christianity tend to do so only after getting a lifetime of drinking and/or drugs and fucking out of their systems?
  
  “After” might be too strong a word.
- kpkpkp
  
  paging Dr. Laura Schlessinger….
- Gyrofrog
  
  I checked that newspaper article, just to see if Wikipedia was for real. It goes on to say “‘[O'Donnell's friend] asked me if I knew how an abortion was performed … She showed me the medical journals, and it was frightening….’”
  
  “Frightening” compared to what, first aid for a compound fracture? Open-heart surgery? Or, for that matter, a vaginal delivery?
  
  I am, evidently, pretty weak-kneed when it comes to the sight of blood, innards, etc. I once fainted when someone described her gynecological appointment (I had innocently asked, “how did it go?”). One of the reasons I quit watching E.R. is because I would get queasy watching the depiction of medical procedures. Somehow I was able to suspend this phobia(?), barely, for the birth of my own children. In spite of all that, I don’t believe any medical procedure should be avoided on the grounds that it is gruesome, because to me, they’re all gruesome.
  
  Sometimes these procedures are used for other reasons, e.g. following a miscarriage, but presumably that’s OK although it is no less “frightening.” I realize, of course, that there’s a difference between not taking precautions and getting one’s self into this situation, and having to face the procedure for non-elective, medical reasons. But saying it’s frightening, or gruesome, or driving a panel van around displaying an (ostensible) aborted fetus is like convincing someone not to have surgery because it’s frightening and gruesome.
  
  And I say this as someone who, the older he gets (perhaps parenthood is a factor), the more strongly he feels against elective abortion (not that I’m anti-choice).
Snig

Caught the NPR teaser this morning saying “there was a surprising link to oil company interest mony and the tea party”

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2010/09/17/129928863/tea-party-s-grassroots-watered-by-deep-pockets?ft=1&f=1001

Which I dound infuriating, as it should have read “blatantly obvious link that fools no one with any sense” instead of “surprising”.
Enormo

I don’t care who the guy in the blue was voting for, if he tried to intimidate me in that way I would put him in a nice rear naked choke so fast that… well… it would make his head spin… before he passed out, that is.
- soap
  
  And then you would have lost.
  
  The game is played by being the one who gets closest to the line (w/o crossing it) and provokes the other to cross. If you put him in a choke hold he has won.
bassplayinben

The doofus who accuses these people of “Stalking” is actually guilty of “Menacing”.
Anonymous

So the Tea Party is a party of petty bullies who are basically fat nerds who crawl out of their mom’s basement to attend these rallies and harrass people? Wow, they really are for freedom!
voiceinthedistance

Is it too early to start wishing for a Palin/O’Donnell presidential ticket to really polarize the political scene?

Why do I also get a feeling that she is the type of idiot that would let the boys have their way with her as a teenager, as long as they kept their penis out of her vagina. After all, anal intercourse isn’t really sex, right?

Somehow I bet she also has some sort of wild card to get around her view that masturbation is a form of adultery. “I didn’t pleasure myself, the device did it to me. I had my mind on god and country the whole time until it was finally over”.
Uncle Geo

Why do Teabaggers hate First Amendment freedoms?
- AirPillo
  
  All authoritarians hate unrestricted free speech.
- arkham deadfly
  
  They don’t hate the First Amendment, they hate the entire Constitution whenever it benefits anyone whom they don’t agree with.
TheNipponese

To dubstep, no less.
ScottTFrazer

Camera dude missed an awesome opportunity to just spin in place and see if Blueshirt would try to get in front of him again.

THAT could have been fun.

Also, I think I learned something about this movement pattern by playing Daleks back in the day.
knoxblox

I predict that O’Donnell is one of those unique people who will get pretty far before some event will make her black/white worldview implode and she has a nervous breakdown.
Anonymous

Please get New Left Media to an O’Donnell even as soon as possible.
kip w

It’s slightly amusing how Red Shirt sees Blue Shirt being a douche, and thinks, “I’d better go help him be a douche.”

They also serve who stand around and breathe hard.
Uncle Geo

And why didn’t the blocking guy say something. Is Teabonics now a dead language?

Here in MN, trackers are everywhere. We let ‘em into our events which are virtually all public events because we have nothing to hide. Our guys, however, get bodily thrown out of Republican events, a good number of which are not often public.
knoxblox

I think an equally clever move might be for camera guy to drop to his knees, and then see how close O’Donnell supporter wants to stand to him.

Politics aside, it’s crazy to see grown adults acting this way.