I fervently support people’s rights to free speech, even if that speech is offensive, or even ridiculous. But it’s people like this who make that stance really, really hard to keep up sometimes:
A Bay Area man who made a phony video depicting his own beheading by Islamic extremists touched off a media maelstrom and an FBI investigation Saturday.
“It makes a mockery out of the pain and suffering of the families of those who were beheaded in Iraq,” said FBI Special Agent LaRae Quy, spokeswoman for the bureau’s San Francisco office.
Benjamin Vanderford’s hoax is “no joking matter to anybody, including the U.S. government and the FBI,” she said.
Vanderford, 22, an East Bay native living in San Francisco, told the Associated Press he had videotaped the bogus beheading months ago at a friend’s house in Pleasanton using fake blood. He distributed the 55-second video on the Internet in hopes of drawing attention to his campaign for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; when his political aspirations waned, he thought the video would serve as social commentary.
[eyelid twitch] So, to gain a seat on some stupid county board, he videotapes a faked beheading? How did he possibly expect that would get him a job?
Social commentary? About what?!