Life imitates art.

May 24, 2006 4:42 PM

Defend DeLay(link to embedded video). Tom DeLay needs your help to fend off the rabid liberal media. He appreciates the fact that Stephen Colbert is doing his part by taking on Robert Greenwald, maker of the upcoming "The Big Buy: Tom Delay's Stolen Congress" and previously "Outfoxed." (via)
posted by bardic (62 comments total)

DeLay Thinks Colbert Is Really A Conservative: Uses Comedian In Latest Defense Message.
posted by ericb at 4:48 PM on May 24, 2006

I can't figure out why they have that clip on there. They don't actually think Colbert is arguing DeLay's case, surely. Maybe they're saying that Greenwald didn't do a very good job making his points on the Report--but it's still weird. Super-double-ironic commentary?
posted by EarBucket at 4:55 PM on May 24, 2006

What's all that carp in the defend delay website's URL?
posted by 517 at 5:00 PM on May 24, 2006

Oh, don't mind that, it's just the /site/c.fuIWLhMTJrE/b.1084881/k.BE08/Home.htm

What, you mean your webiste doesn't have one of those?

Also, I just want to say that watching the Colbert video actually embedded on the defenddelay website was.. it was special. Someone's totally going to get sacked for that one.
posted by kbanas at 5:12 PM on May 24, 2006

This adds more weight to the theory that Colbert was invited to the White House dinner because people actually think he's a concervative. Morons.
posted by Effigy2000 at 5:17 PM on May 24, 2006

[mouth hanging agape]

Just one damn minute. These are the conservatives who have run roughshod over the Dems?

We're in way more trouble than I thought.
posted by adamrice at 5:17 PM on May 24, 2006

*conservative, even.
posted by Effigy2000 at 5:17 PM on May 24, 2006

...just before I came on they sent an e-mail were DeLay is begging for money to help fight this terrible film that is being released...

My head is going to explode.
posted by prostyle at 5:20 PM on May 24, 2006

So. Strange.
posted by mzurer at 5:22 PM on May 24, 2006

that's hilarious. incredible how satire doesn't register with some people.
(tries hard to resist posting delayclose.jpg (it did become a meme coupled to this other Tom) [/4chan])
posted by zenzizi at 5:22 PM on May 24, 2006

I am sooo emailing this link to my mom.
posted by taosbat at 5:23 PM on May 24, 2006

What kbanas said. I think that after the Bill Kristol takedown (How's that PNAC thing going?), the Press Club dinner, and now this, the Colbert trifecta is complete.
posted by localroger at 5:26 PM on May 24, 2006

This coupled with the Frist-ape-testosterone thread leave me terribly confused. Are these people slipping into the depths of deep satire or are they just that fucking stupid?
posted by puke & cry at 5:29 PM on May 24, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

This is Colbert's greatest triumph I think. They have taken the trojen satire deep into their citadel.
posted by fleetmouse at 5:40 PM on May 24, 2006

"This is the crack team that foils my every plan? I am deeply shamed."
posted by EarBucket at 5:44 PM on May 24, 2006

Wow. Just wow. So, let me get this straight: Colbert's humor is too subtle for these tools? They can't even tell when they are being mocked???
posted by mosk at 5:49 PM on May 24, 2006

wait a minute. the site has been hacked, right? please tell me the site has been hacked.
posted by 3.2.3 at 5:55 PM on May 24, 2006

Let The War on Satire begin.
posted by pmurray63 at 5:55 PM on May 24, 2006

It occurs to me that the DeLay people probably didn't just rip the video...I'll bet they signed a contract and paid TruthyMan for the usage.
posted by taosbat at 5:58 PM on May 24, 2006

Wow. Just wow. So, let me get this straight: Colbert's humor is too subtle for these tools? They can't even tell when they are being mocked???

I have been wondering if the 'Defend Delay' website is fake. The more I read about it here and elsewhere it appears to be real. Whether real or fake, will those who are behind it -- and who now realize they've misunderstood Colbert -- next try to spin the inclusion of his videoclip as a ruse to get "libruls," progressives and Democrats all riled up?
posted by ericb at 6:11 PM on May 24, 2006

Bloody hell, this is like the Tories running a clip from Spitting Image as a party political broadcast.

Though, to be fair, the first time I saw a clip of Rush Limbaugh, I honestly thought he was a particularly clumsy satire of a right wing American talkshow host, so I can almost see how these people might mistake Colbert for the genuine article. You know, if he wasn't a famous comedian recently in the news for slagging off the President to his face.
posted by jack_mo at 6:13 PM on May 24, 2006

I have been wondering if the 'Defend Delay' website is fake. The more I read about it here and elsewhere it appears to be real.

Surely it is--they've got a page to accept donations via credit card. If it's a parody site, that'd get them in all kinds of legal trouble.

It is getting harder and harder to distinguish between satire and reality these days, though. I keep expecting the Onion to announce they're no longer needed and shut down operations.
posted by EarBucket at 6:17 PM on May 24, 2006

I keep expecting the Onion to announce they're no longer needed and shut down operations.

Or that the New York Times Company has acquired them.
posted by ericb at 6:19 PM on May 24, 2006

What's all that carp in the defend delay website's URL?

Well, if you type in "www.defendelay.com" it automatically redirects you to "http://www.defenddelay.com/site/c.fuIWLhMTJrE/b.1084881/k.BE08/Home.htm". No idea why.
posted by delmoi at 6:20 PM on May 24, 2006

Not that I would defend delay, but let's think about this for a moment. How many people out there are still going to be on delay's side here? Not too many, and the ones that are not going to be too dense.

I'm sure the person who put that up knew that the Colbert Report was satire, but if you take that clip out of context, Colbert actually is asking "tough" questions, and mentioning DeLay's talking points (Earle is just out to get DeLay, etc)

Colbert, Greenwald and the audience don't take Colbert's position seriously, and so don't try to push back very hard. But if you were approaching this from the (insane) position that DeLay Is just getting fucked, then it's reasonable to say that Greenwald got "nailed".

More importantly this is probably the only professionally done TV interview that actually took the pro-DeLay position on the air. That's important too.
posted by delmoi at 6:28 PM on May 24, 2006

ericb: I have been wondering if the 'Defend Delay' website is fake.

Taken from the disclaimer at the bottom of the page:
Paid for by the Tom DeLay Legal Expense Trust
The Trust cannot accept contributions from a registered lobbyist or a registered agent of a foreign principal.

I was close to calling a Jake on this one from that alone. The registration info is private, but this Brent Perry fellow is the trustee of DeLay's legal defense fund, apparently. At least according to what Google is telling me, and we all know that Google is seldom mistaken.

I don't know anymore. I'm now more confused than when I started reading this post.
posted by crataegus at 6:31 PM on May 24, 2006

delmoi -- hmmm...you make some very good points.
posted by ericb at 6:35 PM on May 24, 2006

517 writes "What's all that carp in the defend delay website's URL?"

It's a fist full of server-side cruft to identify a particular site from amongst several being hosted by a clearing house of sorts. I was poking around the source for www.defenddelay.com and came across something odd. There is a script element declaring the language as "JavaScript" but gives a relative src of "badreference.gif". That's kind of odd so I tried to see what this gif/js file looked like and if you modify the URL of the page to point to it, the server spits out text "http://www.defenddely.com/badreference.gif".

Weird. So I tried some random phrase, like poopstain and you get redirected to the front page of Kintera—a legitimate business that deals in the intersection of non-profit and technology. So I'm guessing it could be legimate. Muddying the waters a bit, the top five hits for "kintera delay" on google are

1. A deleted True Majority page railing against Delay's corruption.
2. A news story about job cuts at Kintera. It also refers to the company as a "[...] San Diego-based company, which specializes in providing "software as a service" to no-profit and government sector[...]"
3. Yahoo! Financial's profile page for the company
4. and a blog entry from this progressive Christian blog/portal.

All of this to say, probably legitimate because a prankster would be unlikely to pay some tech company for the privilege of hosting a joke site. So I feel safe in mocking the Defend DeLay crowd for having a broken satire meter.
posted by Fezboy! at 7:04 PM on May 24, 2006

and I've just proven I can't count.

Idiot!
posted by Fezboy! at 7:06 PM on May 24, 2006

I am in awe of Fezboy!'s sleuthiness.
posted by hangashore at 7:09 PM on May 24, 2006

So, essentially what you're telling me, fezboy, is that not only are they so rock-solid stupid that they don't know colbert is satire, but that they also use a hosting company that relies on url obfuscation for identifying individual hosted websites?

wow.

I am ashamed that the republicans have won any elections. It's like being beaten in trivial pursuit by kindergartners. Drunk kindergartners.
posted by Freen at 7:15 PM on May 24, 2006

Somebody sent this around at work today. I still don't quite understand. No one could be that stupid. I tend to agree somewhat with delmoi (for once ;)).
posted by mrgrimm at 7:22 PM on May 24, 2006

Yeah, it looks like a poorly layered virtual hosting scheme on the part of Kintera. OTOH given the pages are written in ASP, odds are it's being served via IIS. I have successfully avoided working with Microsoft's allegedly crapular server software to this point so I don't know how virtual hosting works in that arena. Maybe this is the best you can expect.

I do know that it can be done a lot cleaner using Apache/httpd. I imagine Kintera hosts like a bazillion of these sites and probably can't be arsed to try to clean things up. Since I'm already speculating, I'd bet their target clients are the totally clueless who would not know URLs shouldn't look like this or would be easily snowed if they did raise the issue.
posted by Fezboy! at 7:30 PM on May 24, 2006

Thanks Fezboy!.
posted by 517 at 7:31 PM on May 24, 2006

why no "batshitinsane" tag?
posted by pruner at 7:49 PM on May 24, 2006

This coupled with the Frist-ape-testosterone thread leave me terribly confused.

I'm right there with you. I still haven't made up my mind whether to laugh or cry.
posted by moira at 7:49 PM on May 24, 2006

mrgrimm, you claim that no one can be that stupid. But this is the country that elected George W. Bush. Twice.

This is the country with 29% of it's population who think W is still doing a good job. That's about thirty six million people in this country. If these people were to disappear, the whole left side of the IQ bell curve would flat line.
posted by parallax7d at 7:54 PM on May 24, 2006

I always wondered if there was some Republican out there naive enough to belive that Cobert was actually on their side.

I cant believe I was right.
posted by SirOmega at 7:59 PM on May 24, 2006

hee hee
posted by caddis at 7:59 PM on May 24, 2006

Backwash indeed.
posted by Talanvor at 8:03 PM on May 24, 2006

Perhaps Colbert should run as both a Democrat and Republican in '08.
posted by b1tr0t at 8:11 PM on May 24, 2006

What, you mean like every other candidate in the last twenty years?




ZIIIING
posted by stenseng at 8:28 PM on May 24, 2006

Surely it is--they've got a page to accept donations via credit card. If it's a parody site, that'd get them in all kinds of legal trouble.

Ah, but the only way to know whether or not they're really taking donations is to make a donation. Don't you see? It's really reverse-reverse psychology! Or something. They make you think they're dumb, but you have to give them support to make sure they're really as dumb as they appear to be, because no one could really be that dumb, right? Only one way to find out. It's classic neocon political strategy.
posted by scottreynen at 8:32 PM on May 24, 2006

Fezboy: no, IIS is just as capable as other servers with regard to redirecting virtual hosts to specific sub-sites transparently.

The same may or may not be be said of IIS admins, however...
posted by abulafa at 8:41 PM on May 24, 2006

This coupled with the Frist-ape-testosterone thread leave me terribly confused.

Has duplicitous conservatism in the US has just jumped the shark?

or, what delmoi said...
posted by mmrtnt at 8:44 PM on May 24, 2006

I always wondered if there was some Republican out there naive enough to belive that Cobert was actually on their side.

Bush was laughing at him in the beginning of his speech too. Had no idea we was carrying a hatchet. But then again Bush also thinks Putin is on his side...
posted by any major dude at 8:53 PM on May 24, 2006

I'd like to think that the bandwidth bill this month is going to put the defense fund in the red.
posted by 2sheets at 9:14 PM on May 24, 2006

Robert Greenwald comments --

Tom Delay Gave My Appearance on the Colbert Report a Bad Review

"Life as I have known it is coming to an end.

How will I ever recover from the harsh sting of a bad review from Tommy boy? According to a recent fundraising effort by Delayites, I ''crashed and burned' on Colbert. Clearly, this is tragedy -- Shakespearean in its implications and Chekhovian in its impact.

AND -- now the money addict is using my appearance on Colbert to fundraise. That is either the highest compliment possible, or the lowest blow."

[more]

posted by ericb at 9:23 PM on May 24, 2006

They don't actually think Colbert is arguing DeLay's case, surely.

No. They're just betting that their supporters won't know the difference.
posted by rougy at 9:28 PM on May 24, 2006

But then again Bush also thinks Putin is on his side...

Putin, the authoritarian? Yeah, definitely not on Bush's side....
posted by MikeKD at 9:38 PM on May 24, 2006

Wow. Just. Wow.
posted by dejah420 at 9:39 PM on May 24, 2006

Putin, the authoritarian? Yeah, definitely not on Bush's side....

The badly formed ellipsis indicates you believe authoritarianism is a club or some international political party where all the delegates back each other up. However, they usually reserve their greatest hatred for the other authoritarians actually. So yes, he isn't on Bush's side in even the smallest way.

The problem is that Bush doesn't accept he's authoritarian and believes Putin is a valuable partner.
posted by Jenga at 10:19 PM on May 24, 2006

Thanks, ericb, I was cruising my RSS reader looking for stories on this -- I still have a hard time believing DeLay paid TruthyMan for this coup -- and I found a Firedoglake post with this quote I hadn't noticed before, "crashed and burned."

I thought I'd check the DeLay site for it and soon found this NYT reprint, which distracted me.

I looked it up and it's real enough (without paying $3.95). That's my tiny addition to the evidence that this isn't a hoax nor hack.

When I checked back here, there you were with the solution to my "crashed and burned" curiosity...Yay!

How wierd is it that a comedian is the firebrand of our times?
posted by taosbat at 10:29 PM on May 24, 2006

Indeed, this would seem to be authentic, in addition to being the brainchild of the usual GOP thinktanks:

1.) The domains defenddelay.com and defenddelay.org were registered on September 28, 2005 -- roughly 12 hours after the the judge stamped the felony indictment.

2.) The registrants were careful not to enter personal information on their whois records, instead deferring to use the default contact information for Network Solutions:

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Defend Tom DeLay [e-mail]
ATTN: DEFENDDELAY.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA 20172-0447
570-708-8780

3.) The flash video in question is hosted at what seems to be an annoying (albeit innocuously) small web design shop in Arlington owned by a guy named Matthew Dybwad (heh). The video itself was apparently uploaded last Friday.

4.) The only part of defenddelay.com linking the site to the authors is the mail exchange:

harold:~ hamfist$ host -t MX defenddelay.com
defenddelay.com mail is handled by 10 mail.emotivellc.com.

5.) Ah, now this is interesting. Emotive is an Arlington based company whose partners include *gasp* Kintera:

"Together, Kintera and emotive team up to offer the most powerful suite of tools coupled with direct response expertise available in the political/nonprofit arena."

6.) Also interesting:

Matthew Dybwad, Director of Creative Strategy

7.) We find that according to the whois records for paragraph of emotive, the company is actually owned by none other than Response Consulting. From the first paragraph on their homepage:

Response Consulting provides clients with the most personal, creative and effective appeals that maximize response. We specialize in fund raising and voter contact direct mail for Republican candidates and right-of-center, non-profit organizations. We invite you to browse our website and learn more about us our services.

8.) Fun Facts:

* Response HQ and Emotive, LLC. are neighboring offices (suites 900 and 901, respectively)
* Both offices are 2.7 miles away from the Pentagon and Matthew Dybwad lives 0.8 Miles from the Pentagon!

Ta-da!
posted by HAMFIST at 11:55 PM on May 24, 2006 [2 favorites has favorites]

Bravo, HAMFIST!
posted by maryh at 12:14 AM on May 25, 2006

.
posted by taosbat at 12:16 AM on May 25, 2006

more sluething:
google search for "defenddelay.com" turns up:

1. A an article from citizensforethics(?):
"DeLay’s legal defense fund — which launched the Web site defenddelay.com"

2. A CNN transcript from November coroborates this:
"ABBI TATTON, CNN INTERNET REPORTER: Wolf, Tom DeLay's legal defense fund has stepped up its online efforts in the last month. Just last month in October, DefendDeLay.com was launched. Here you can sign an online petition to stop the "partisan witch hunt," in their words. They're also asking for contributions at this site."

I vote real. some people are that obtuse.
posted by Merik at 12:21 AM on May 25, 2006

Ah. I just watched it. I can see why they are confused (or don't care). Colbert is pretty subtle in that in terms of parodying a right-wing shill. These guys' schtick is to say extreme things as part of their entertainment—Limbaugh was the begining of this but now there's quite a few of these people. I mean, c'mon, things like Treason are over-the-top but come from "serious" pundits.

I think that conservatives only half-believe these more extreme things. They like the provocation, it's part of their testosterone view of contemporary politics. They're trying to be bullies, that's the persona.

So in that context, Colbert didn't say anything in that interview that was clearly satire the way he did at the roast. He was pretty much playing the conservative entertainment pundit quite straight.

And it seems to me that this illustrates quite well the cultural difference between red and blue in the US. We on the left almost never engage in intentional bullying hyperbole. As it happens, I think Moore comes the closest and yet he doesn't really come close to the conservative pundits. Moore exagerates and distorts, but these conservative pundits will say things they know are literally untrue but which they tell themselves are "true in spirit". I can't think of any liberal pundits which do that.

I know a lot of people on my side of the fence believe that the way to beat these guys is to adopt their tactics. I just can't support that. Whether the conservatives intend this or not, adopting their tactics would put us squarely inside their moral territority and essentially their allies. I believe there's ways in which we can fight back hard which don't require us to make deals with the devil.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 1:42 AM on May 25, 2006

Perhaps Colbert should run as both a Democrat and Republican in '08.
posted by b1tr0t at 11:11 PM EST on May 24 [+fave] [!]

No, he should run as a Republican. They are dopey enough to buy it so he will get the Republican vote and the Democrats get the joke so he will get the Democrat vote too.
posted by caddis at 5:45 AM on May 25, 2006

HAMFIST: < grovel>We're not worthy, we're not worthy! < / grovel>

Whoa. I bow before your awesome 'net search skills.

It just goes to show you that the Repubs are not connected to the "reality based community" -- they just make shit up, and remove context in order to match their own desire.

Fair and balanced indeedy.
posted by mooncrow at 7:13 AM on May 25, 2006

abulafa writes "Fezboy: no, IIS is just as capable as other servers with regard to redirecting virtual hosts to specific sub-sites transparently.

"The same may or may not be be said of IIS admins, however..."

I figured as much but my zealotry demands I make stabbing motions at Microsoft whenever possible. My shrink and I are working on this....

Also, my hat is doffed to those who did some real research on the question. I am naught but a dilettante in your presence.
posted by Fezboy! at 7:27 AM on May 25, 2006

War is Peace
4 is 5
Colbert is .....
posted by hank at 4:15 PM on May 25, 2006