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November 29, 2007
Ted Faturos responds . . .
I'd like to welcome Ted Faturso to the party. He's dropped by to respond to some (but not all) of my and others concerns about last nights CNN/YouTube debate. You can find his comment here, but I'm going to quote it in it's entirety. I'd like to also note that Ted has posted a general response via a new blogspot page, good show Ted, good show. I respect your desire to address this head on.
http://responsetoplantaccusations.blogspot.com/Regarding Chowhound, there is nothing to "cover up." It's just a great website where people like myself talk about great restaurants and whatnot. I have and will continue to post there because I find the information there invaluable.
The story behind my flickr accounts is as the following:
I have two Flickr accounts, one for my Chowhound profile and one for everything else. When I first started the Chowhound Flickr profile it was tied to my email address by having tfaturos in the URL. I guess at the time Flickr wouldn't let you change the URL address. I decided I didn't like that as I didn't want the folks at chowhond to know my last name, so I deleted it a long time ago. I then set up another Flickr profile for my Chowhound activities which you can find here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/young_chower
As you can see, the young_chower Flickr has nothing but photos of food from tasty restaurants. Not terribly scandalous stuff.
I then set up a second email address so I can have another Flickr account for non-chowhounding activities. You can find that here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tedfaturos
As you can see the photos in both accounts are months old. Now in retrospect I didn't need to delete the tfaturos account and start 2 new accounts. I could have just created a new account with young_chower in the URL for my chowhounding purposes. But that thought didn't cross my mind.
So that's the Flickr story. The first young_chower Flickr account was deleted quite while ago, not last night as you incorrectly claim.
-Ted
While I appreciate Ted coming in to address the Chow.com profile and the Flikr page issue, their inclusion by me was intended to establish that I had correctly identified Ted and therefore could confirm his internship with Democrat Congresswoman Jane Harman.
So now lets dispense with the meat of the matter. Let me quote from Ted's new blogspot page:
What bothers some people is not really my question but the fact that I, someone who is not a Republican, asked it. Yes, I was "exposed" as a former intern to my congresswoman, Jane Harman. That internship happened over 3 years ago in her El Segundo, CA office when I was still in high school, and I have not had any contact whatsoever with anyone from the Congresswoman's office since my last day there in August, 2004. I don’t see how my former internship or my political beliefs makes me unfit to ask the question.
Here Ted, you yourself touch on the issue, but a full understanding of what is going on around you and others in the debate seems to elude you.
You see Ted, what myself and others are more concerned with is not that you, admittedly not a Republican, asked the question, but rather, that CNN chose you and a number of other questions from a field of 5000, and included you in what was a Republican PRIMARY debate. If your question were to be included in a general election debate, I know that I certainly wouldn't be opposed to your question, but CNN chose you to be in the Republican PRIMARY debate, and as you have admitted, are not a Republican.
You've been made a pawn in this game CNN chose to play, and honestly, Ted, I'm sorry that this has happened to you. However, what happened last night is not something that can be left unaddressed. I'll explain why.
The purpose of Primary Election Debates is for members of a party to evaluate their candidates, to compare them to one another in a fair and relatively complete manner, so that we, the Republicans, can choose who we would like to be our candidate in the General Election of 2008. By including General Kerr (a man who has openly endorsed Hillary Clinton and who is also a member of Hillary's steering committee), by including others who have openly endorsed Democrat Candidates, by including a person who works with Democrat Senator Dick Durbin's office, by including a prominent union activist for the Edwards-endorsing United Steelworkers, by including a Democrat aspiring TV writer who has a fondness for racially insensitive "pseudo-satire", and by including you, a former intern for Democrat Congresswoman Jane Harman, CNN has deprived us, the Republicans, the opportunity to have a fair Republican Primary Debate.
You assert your right to ask questions, and as I've said, I don't have a problem with YOU as a person, I have a problem with how you were represented by CNN. We, Republicans, have a "right" (to use your terms; there really are no rights in play here, in the sense of guaranteed freedoms, but rather there is a question of what is right or wrong, but we'll stick with your term) to have a Republican Primary Debate to examine OUR candidate. It's not your place, nor is it any Democrats place, to masquerade as a Republican in order to pose lose-lose questions to OUR candidates. You admit your not a part of the Republican party, it was easy to find out that you are not a Republican, it was easy to determine that you were presented to Republicans and Republican candidates as part of a larger masquerade put on by CNN.
Simply put Ted, with all due respect to you as a person, you had no place in that forum, you didn't belong there and neither did your lose-lose, gotcha question. The right side of the aisle doesn't have a beef with you personally Ted, we have a beef with how you were used in a concerted effort on the part of CNN to deceive us. We have a problem with the interference in our primary process.
Now let me pause here and make a quick, slightly off topic statement:
IF you, or anyone else for that matter, can show that any of the questioners selected by CNN for the past Democrat CNN/YouTube Primary Debate were in fact Republicans being presented as Democrats, send me the information and I'll be the first person to say that CNN was wrong in presenting that questioner, I'll plead your case against CNN to the very best of my ability, I'll call in to my local radio talk shows, I'll put a letter in my local paper, I'll even send in a letter to the New York Times and beg them to print it. I'll go to bat for you if you can show that the Democrat Primary process was undermind by CNN the same way they used you and others to undermine our Republican Primary Process. Ok, Ted, that's an honest offer, and I'll follow through, just show me a questioner from the past CNN debate who was a Republican in Democrat's clothing and I'll be the Democrats champion on this issue to the best of my ability.
Now back to you and what happened. Firstly, let me point out that you admit freely that you're not a Republican, and you have all the trappings and history of a Democrat partisan. You think that your question was "fair" and what Republicans want answers too, but Ted, you're dreaming a bit there. There is no great concern in the Republican ranks about corn subsidies. Yes, there are some who are concerned, but on our side of the aisle, we're more concerned with keeping our farmers in business and allowing them to compete in the world marketplace (which unfortunately, in this day and age, requires subsidies, to offset subsidies offered in other nations), we are also more concerned, as a Party, with the safety and abundance of our food supply, so that we can always have a surplus available for our needs, so that we can have the means to send food aid where it's needed and so that we can support the development of alternative energy for bio-fuels and alternative energy sources.
Your question was not presented honestly on the part of CNN, and I'll also suggest that your question was not presented honestly by yourself. How do I justify saying that? Well, Ted, it's obvious that you don't understand the U.S. subsidy system for corn, it's also evident that you don't understand corn's role in our food supply, nor corn's role in food aid to those in need, and you obviously don't understand corn's role in the development of effective bio-fuel alternatives to hydrocarbons. Your question wasn't phrased in a manner that would allow our candidates (remember, they are our candidates, and you admit they aren't yours) to present a vision of the role corn and corn subsidies play in the larger picture. Instead you demagogued the corn subsidy and presented the question in a lose-lose fashion; you posed a leading unfair question and presented it in a manner where on one hand the candidates would have to insult our nations independent corn farmers (as they prepared to go into Iowa (again, you admit that this was part of your thinking) or make a simplistic statement dismissing the value and dynamic role corn plays in global food-related commerce. Fortunately for our candidates, they were able to dodge your simple ambush and give a somewhat complete explanation for corn subsidies, unfortunately, by having to dance around the lose-lose scenario you presented (which I'll state again was either uninfomed on your part, or intended create a gotcha lose-lose scenario on the eve of Iowa caucuses), our candidates were maligned by pundits and operatives as being evasive. This whole dance played out because first, you presented a biased scenario (and biased to the Democrat side of the aisle - in what was supposed to be a Republican debate) and second (and more importantly) you became a willing pawn of CNN in their attempt to hijack the Republican Primary Debate on behalf of a Democrat driven agenda.
I hope that you're respectful enough of the Democratic process we have in this country that you will admit freely that you were in a position and place you did not belong. I hope that you're respectful enough of this entire process to admit that we, the Republicans, deserve to have our Primary debates play out according to our rules and not yours. I can assure you from my position and in my opinion you, as a presumed Democrat (or at least "not Republican") deserve to have the Democrat Primary Debates free form Republicans masquerading as Democrats (or at the very least you deserve to have CNN present a fair Democrat debate among Democrats).
WE don't want to choose your candidate. We have our opinions about who we'd like to see you nominate, but we do not have the right (again your term) to interfere with your parties debate, and you as an admitted "not Republican" should respect our right to have our Republican Debate free from interference from Democrats.
So Ted, there are number of questions I would like to ask, such as:
What is your political party affiliation, and in the off chance that you respond that you're also not a Democrat, could you please tell us how you came to part with the Democrat party you once associated yourself with?
Do you agree or disagree that we, the Republican Party, deserve to have our primary debates free from Democrat interference, just as Democrats deserve to have their primary debates free from Republicans posing as Dems?
Since you now state that you aren't affiliated with Jane Harman's office (which for the record, I never suggested that you were currently actively involved with the Congresswoman, but rather that you were a former intern and therefore most likely somewhat a partisan); Will you condemn the actions of CNN in misrepresenting you and others in last night's debate, specifically the inclusion of a Hillary Clinton steering committee member as a questioner in our Republican Primary Debate, the inclusion of Democrat labor union activists, the inclusion of admitted supporters of Democrat candidates, and the inclusion of Dick Durbin associates all as questioners in what was intended to be a Republican Primary Debate?
Do you know either David McMillan or James Kotecki?
and finally
I would respectfully ask that you apologize to the members of the Republican party for insinuating yourself into the Republican Primary Process, specifically by presenting an unfair lose-lose scenario to our candidates and therefore wasting the time of millions of Republican voters and interfering with the free exercise of our political process.
Again, I pledge to you and others that should evidence be presented of a Republican operative, campaign staffer/committee member or Republican activist in the past Democrat CNN/YouTube debate, I will soundly denounce such activity and the person involved therein.
Ted, I'll admit that I have nothing against you personally, but politically, you and CNN have actively and with intent misrepresented yourself and other questioners, and for that, I'm afraid I had to call you out.
I respect greatly that you came here to address my statements, and I hope we can emerge from this not as political or personal enemies, but rather as two individuals agreeing to support a fair and robust Primary Process for both Republicans and Democrats. I hope that we can put behind us this sordid business of misrepresentation and focus instead on the more pressing problem of the media's lack of objectivity and impartiality in this political climate. I hope that we both can take a strong stand together against the agenda driven hijacking of what was supposed to be a debate among Republicans for Republicans and that we both can do our part to advocate for a objective unbiased mass media as this election season moves forward.
I hope that we can become friendly adversaries and put the nastier parts of this episode behind us. I hope that we both, in our own way, can work within our respective political processes to select two candidates for the general election who are each the best choice to represent our respective parties, so that Americans have two solid, quality candidates compete for the leadership of our great nation.
Respectfully,
--Jason
Posted by JasonColeman at November 29, 2007 9:42 PM
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