{"id":82,"date":"2004-08-08T21:41:39","date_gmt":"2004-08-09T01:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaredpoet.com\/wordpress\/?p=82"},"modified":"2004-08-10T11:16:33","modified_gmt":"2004-08-10T15:16:33","slug":"sometimes-bad-teaste-is-just-bad-taste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/?p=82","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes, bad taste is just bad taste"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I fervently support people&#8217;s rights to free speech, even if that speech is offensive, or even ridiculous.  But it&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oaklandtribune.com\/Stories\/0,1413,82~1865~2322110,00.html\">people like this<\/a> who make that stance really, really hard to keep up sometimes:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It makes a mockery out of the pain and suffering of the families of those who were beheaded in Iraq,&#8221; said FBI Special Agent LaRae Quy, spokeswoman for the bureau&#8217;s San Francisco office.<\/p>\n<p>Benjamin Vanderford&#8217;s hoax is &#8220;no joking matter to anybody, including the U.S. government and the FBI,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;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. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>[eyelid twitch]  So, to gain a seat on some stupid county board, he <em>videotapes a faked beheading<\/em>?  How did he possibly expect that would get him a job?<\/p>\n<p>Social commentary?  About <em><strong>what<\/strong><\/em>?!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A man fakes his own beheading on tape, the media goes ape, and then the FBI gets involved when it is discovered to be a hoax.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sociopolitical-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}