It was a dark horse, out of nowhere, out of the blue, slamming into a cushy John McCain/John Hagee embrace and knocking both into a big vat of stinking manure called "God sent Hitler."
MSNBC's "The Verdict" went so far, in discussing my video and its "shocking"audio that the show used a graphic of John Hagee's grinning face next to an image of Der Fuehrer...
As far as I'm aware it was, dollar for dollar, one of the most successful campaigns in history: it was free.
UPDATE: at the end of this post I've tacked on the dKos post I did ther day after the viral video breakout, when my jaw was still on the floor. It was a weird amalgam of a post : both a speech of sorts and it also had, at the end, a lot of dues-paying, my credit to all those who truly made splitting McCain from Hagee possible - friends, colleagues and mentors who helped me most crucially.
Point being : My 'lone blogger' claim isn't really true though I didn't have direct help in making the video or the dozens of videos that preceded it. But, I wouldn't haven't been able to do it without the support, encouragement, knowledge and kindness of the various people listed at the end of this post
The viral video I posted may 16, 2008 has by now reached tens of millions, at least, in America and hundreds of millions around the world. Wolf Blitzer credited my website (because I put my website URL at the end of the viral video). My mother in law saw the video on TV and figured out I'd done it because the TV clip show the bit of the video with my website address, the URL of Talk2action
A few days later, Mike Stark announced I'd gotten a BlogPac "Hero" award. But, by and large the Internet has been oddly silent on this, and it's a shame because the moment was one of the net's biggest triumph so far, in history. As far as I am aware.
you can vote both of those stories up on Digg #1, #2
hint: this is secret number one : I'm promoting two different versions of the story which are hosted on Micah Sifry's Personal Democracy Forum and on Evan Derkacz's Religion Disptaches. Thus Both Micah's and Evan's sites will benefit but, needless to say, I will benefit too.
Now, correcting the public reocrd on this matters to me but it's also important, for the collective good, for everyone to know what went down May 21, 2008, and here's the nub of it :
One single blogger - me - armed with a tremendous knowledge of an area that is rarely credited, here or elsewhere, with having much relevance to immediate electoral politics shifted the dynamics of an entire presidential election with a single, radically minimalist four minute YouTube video.
Boy, oh boy, the conventional wisdom of the progressive blogging elite (and, I'll not name names) sure was thumpingly wrong. Religion, and the intersection of religion and politics DOES matter, very much sometimes, to electoral politics.
The inner story has yet to be told, and here it is. It concerns us all because the inner secret to success, the inner magic, the secret sauce that made the McCain-Hagee breakout happen was this : manners, and cooperation.
The truth of what happened between May 15, 2008 and May 23rd, 2008 concerns us all because it demonstrated this:
wealth is NOT a zero sum equation; If Sam Stein had not given me credit, in his May 21st Huffington post piece I would not have promoted it here, in all likelihood, here on dKos, from a dKos recommended diary spot, to send people over to vote Stein's story up on Digg. Maybe, but probably not. I would have been annoyed. But, Stein DID mention I'd created the original story and video, and so I was more than happy to promote his story - I would benefit too. I was cut in, we both were, and by doing the right thing, Stein ensured that he and I would be eating from a pie exponentially bigger than it otherwise might have been.
Thus, Internet history was born.
Here's my account of it at Religion Dispatches:
[from How a Lone Blogger Brought Down the McCain-Hagee Alliance] On may 15, 2008 I posted a short video on Youtube of Pastor John Hagee, assembled with the free iMovie software that came with my three-year-old MacBook. In just a few days Americans began to absorb the reality that Republican presidential candidate John McCain had sought and accepted an endorsement from a religious leader who'd asserted a divine mandate for the Holocaust and claimed that Jews themselves were responsible for the tragedy, cursed by God for the ancient Hebrew worship of idols. I hardly expected the product to go "viral" and so to possibly alter the dynamics of an American presidential election.
What I inadvertently touched on with my 4-minute, no-budget video, was the growing divide in American culture, religion and politics that, according to some well-respected observers, threatens the viability of American Democracy.... [read more
Here's my writeup, at TechPresident:
The breakout could have been bigger, too, if people had been listening to me at the time: I conservatively dated the audio, from the crazy Hagee sermon, to "the late 1990's", and the media enshrined my judgment call--which was very conservative--as "fact". Actually, John Hagee Ministries still sells the "God Sent Hitler" video. To this day.
***
The viral breakout was far from accidental. I've been researching Hagee quite heavily for roughly a year and a half. That's why I was able to find the appropriate rich media (an audio clip) that forced McCain to renounce Hagee. I'd done a massive amount of homework. Although some people had been hammering on Hagee for a month or two prior to the breakout, I'd been hammering on Hagee for about two years.
I've done the bulk of the writing establishing much of the "Hagee's an anti-Semite" frame in the first place. Scroll to the end of the following story and you'll see a list of my Hagee stories--especially on the anti-Semitic nature of Hagee's Christian Zionist Beliefs--over the past 1 and 1/2 to 2 years. No one else has done more hammering on Hagee re hate speech. Sara Posner, Max Blumenthal, Bill Berkowitz, Esther Kaplan and Frederick Clarkson have also done great work on Hagee, Christian Zionism and CUFI. But, over the course of the past 1 and 1/2 years I've done 20-30 stories on Hagee's anti-Semitism and on McCain/Hagee, and they've gotten around the Net.
For that writing, see the links appended to the following story, at the end of the story.
It "only" has racked up ~117000 hits on YouTube video so far because countless media outlets grabbed the video and put it on their own servers. Fair enough--that's what I hoped would happen.
I posted the first iteration of the video on YouTube and on TalkToAction and also the Daily Kos ~May 15. Here's my first dKos post, May 15. Here's my second dKos post, May 16, which went to the top of the DKos rec list (it had the now infamous video) :
On May 16 I posted the 4th iteration of the video -- the one that went viral.
One week later in May 21st, Sam Stein, at the Huffington Post, noticed my video and post and did a storyon it. I saw Stein's story and promoted it on dKos, asking people to vote it up on Digg :
Stein's story, plus my video and one other story on the video ALL zoomed up top the top of one of the biggest Newsladders (Digg) and the story went top the top of a lot of other newsladders around the net too. Stein's story probably went up much faster than it would have on Digg because I promoted Stein's story on dKos and asked people there to vote it up on Digg = I provided the Digg link and routed maybe ~250-500 votes, maybe more (who knows) to support Stein's story : which probably provided a key boost to it at the time because the Digg algorithm that determines popularity of stories is X votes / Y amount of time story has been up on Digg.
Stein's story zoomed to the very top of Digg, then to the top of many other news ladders. Then 2 other posts about the same story, one a post directly about my video, zoomed to the top of Digg too. Then the story zoomed up other news ladders.
Then, the media breakout happened. The MSM, it seems, REALLY pays
attention to the news ladders. Many cited Stein, but a Google search on MSM stories, a day or two after the breakout, with "McCain","Hagee" and "Talk To Action" produced 231 hits. That was only a fraction of the 2-3K MSM stories plus all the TV and radio (I couldn't possibly have counted).
The McCain-Hagee breakout might not have happened at all except that one Huff Post writer, back on May 21, had the class to credit me with making the video which then went viral.
Let me repeat: it might not have gone viral at all--and reached millions or hundreds of millions of people (my mother-in-law saw my website's URL on TV and figured out that it was me) if one Huff Post reporter had not given me credit in his story. When I saw Sam Stein's Huff Post May 21st story--on my story and video (Stein credited me with originating the story--his Huff Post story was an expansion of my original work) I was moved to support Stein's story because it had given me proper credit.
From there it moved on to Olbermann/Countdownand "The Verdict". Olbermann showed my viral video, as did "The Verdict." Countdown mentions the source, my blog: www.talk2action.org. Countdown called me that day, to go on, but they never got back to me - I'm not in a big city so that I could get to an affiliate station quickly. So, Countdown threw up another talking head.
Thus my little video precipitated the McCain Hagee split. Olberman, "The Verdict", and probably about 10-20 million Americans (or perhaps 100 million ? who knows)--via the gazillions of network TV and network affiliates that ran it--saw my the 4 minute video I did that was designed to go viral.
My mother-law-law even saw it randomly, on TV and saw my website's name and knew I'd done it. She called my wife to talk about it.
It was one of the biggest, fastest viral breakouts in history, as far as I'm aware.
On May 22nd, Mike Stark contacted me to say I'd gotten the award. He and I talk in the AM, May 23rd, and Stark did a dKos post, with a little biopic on me, announcing the award.
Now many nonprofits and efforts are claiming credit and sure - a lot of people and orgs were hammering on McCain/Hagee. But, a Google search one day after the media breakout had 230 msm stories crediting my website (Talk To Action) and Wolf Blitzer (of all people) gave credit to Talk To Action on CNN. It was true enough - all the hammering by various orgs, people and efforts had potentiated the climate for such a breakout, but I created the video that did it.
Yesterday, John McCain renounced his political endorsement from Pastor John Hagee, and yesterday I was on the phone with what seemed at the time to be dozens of reporters, journalists, and network producers, talking about the details of one little video I'd made, a video which has come to trouble the presidential candidacy of Arizona Senator John McCain who once, it is said, was a maverick but who I have come to feel has lost his moral bearing. Now, a Google search on "Hagee,McCain,endorsement" pulls up over 1,000 news stories, both national and international, on John McCain's rejection of the political endorsements of John Hagee and Rod Parsley. And, a Google search that includes "Talk To Action", the website I co-founded in late 2005 with Frederick Clarkson and which centrally helped make this possible, produces over 230 news stories.
As a result, I've heard I may be nominated for a special award, and at the end of this post (and, I'm adding those credits now) I want to emphasize this: my name will be most centrally this but i want to emphasize the collective nature of this triumph which, in essence, represents a triumph for a traditionally marginalized class, people who study, wrote on and focus on the intersection of religion, especially the Christian right, and politics. This is their triumph, not mine.
The following is a speech--about my role in this, and about the wider context, the path our planet can take now either towards peace of towards nuclear apocalypse. But also, it is a tribute to those who have participated in this, working with me to enable what can come to be, I hope and pray, a shift in our national discourse and a moral awakening, out of the long nightmare which has come to trouble our nation, and hence the world, over the past several decades. lastly, there's an action item concerning Joseph Lieberman--who has publicly compared John Hagee to Moses. I'm preparing a mre focused video on the subject which I'd like to ask you, should this post of mine hit the rec list, to vote up on YouTube, and I'm also preparing a short story on Joe Lieberman's embrace of John hagee, which I'd like to ask you to vote up on Digg and elsewhere. I'll have those two items ready by noon, so if you want to support those with your votes, please return to this post around noon or a little before.
Best,
Bruce Wilson
THE SPEECH
My friends [as John McCain would say], ours is a troubled and perilous time but it also is a time of great promise...
In troubled and perilous times we must, if we are to prevail so that brighter visions of the future can come into being, remember foremost that we are strong, politically and morally, to the extent that we remember who we are, where we came from, those who have befriended us and aided us each in our personal paths.
And, we must look to tomorrow, towards where we collectively want our nation and our world to go. We must look away from the visions of John Hagee and John McCain, visions of war and thermonuclear war. We must look towards, and envision, peace in which, as Lyndon Johnson said in 1964, "all God's children can live".
So above all, we must hold fast to out moral bearings, be they grounded in religious, philosophical or ethical precepts. That is what is at national issue here.
The celebration, in American national discourse, of the Holocaust, even of Hitler as somehow inhabiting a unique, divinely mandated role, must end. The discussion of using American nuclear weapons against other nations of the world must also end, for The United States occupies a unique place, in history as the only nation on Earth to have wielded nuclear weapons in anger, in war, in the nuclear immolation of the civilians of the Japanese citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
We do not know if there is life on other planets. We must treat the life that is here, now, on our planet with care, with reverence. To do less than that some would call abhorrent, and I would say that it is that but I would also call it unholy. The whole of life to me is sacred. All of it, not just the fate of humanity but the fate of all living beings on our small, troubled planet. That is why I write this today and that is why I have devoted my life to fumbling towards solutions to that which challenges the existence of earthly life.
In the 1964 US presidential election campaign, one campaign ad above all shaped the course of the election, tarring Barry Goldwater, fairly or not, as a madman prone to launch an apocalyptic nuclear holocaust that would devour the facve of our planet with fire: The Daisy Ad.
Said Lyndon Johnson, in the ad:
"These are the stakes: to make a world in which all God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either learn to love each other, or we must die."
Johnson's words are as true now as they were in 1964. The threat of nuclear Holocaust is a future which John Hagee and Christian Zionists worship--as an event that would "cleanse" our Earth: which they have come to regard of infested by evil, by demons, by Satan and by satanically possessed liberals, liberal Jews, "secularists", homosexuals, communists and fellow travelers, and the multitude of other classes of humanity - Muslims and Hindus, Buddhist and Jains, and all those who believe anything other than fundamentalist Christianity. Christian Zionism claims the only hope for a better future lies in destroying the earth, to "save it", such that God remakes it anew. They feel our Earth, and most of its people, must be destroyed, "cleansed" by nuclear fire.
Did God send Hitler and the Nazis to drive the Jews of Europe towards Palestine ? Is God a genocidal real-estate agent who red-lined Europe, as an area out of bounds for Jews to live in, because they possess and embody, claims Christian Zionism, souls that are different from Gentile souls and which consign them to being forced to settle in Israel where, claims Christian Zionism, they will all be killed in an apocalyptic orgy of violence which will eradicate Judaism from the face of the earth and leave only a handful of Jews living, living because they have converted to Christianity ? That is the vision that Arizona Senator John McCain embraced as he has embraced Pastor John Hagee - not just once but numerous times on the national stage, before the press - and that is the vision John McCain tacitly endorsed by endorsing, and accepting the endorsement of, John Hagee before television cameras that broadcast the embrace to the ends of the Earth. Many of the leaders of John Hagee's group Christians United For Israel have talked of their expectations, of "another Holocaust", a "second Holocaust" and even a "final Holocaust which they hope, as part of their eliminationalist eschatological scheme, will forever remove from existence Jews and Judaism from the face of the planet.
Yesterday, Iranian television picked up on the story of my YouTube video, showcasing John Hagee's remarks suggesting that God sent Hitler and the Nazis, and the Iranians must be wondering this: why are presidential candidates, John McCain, Hillary Clinton especially, talking about the need for pre-emptive attacks on Iran, even of "obliterating" Iran with nuclear weapons if Iran uses nuclear weapons on Israel ? Especially when John McCain's political endorser John Hagee suggests God sent Hitler, especially because John Hagee and his church members celebrate the expected invasion and devastation of Israel in song, at their "Night To Honor Israel" events ? To the Iranian people watching, children, women and men who have been threatened with nuclear incineration, by the preeminent military power on Earth, a power which has invaded and occupied their neighbor Iraq in a devastating neo-colonial gambit for oil which has led tp the deaths of thousands of American troops, the wounding of tens of thousands, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the wounding, possibly of millions, the orphaning of millions of Iraqi children and the creation of millions of Iraqi refugees fleeing the violence...
To the Iranians watching these American presidential candidates, who threaten them and threaten to immolate Iran, in improbable scenarios, it must seem terrifying, absurd and morally grotesque...
And, it is.
The very suggestion that Israel needs an American "nuclear umbrella" is ludicrous; Israel has first and second retaliatory nuclear strike capability. "Never again, the Holocaust", Israel has vowed, and Israel does not need, for its defense, America's nuclear arsenal.
To talk on the national stage, so lightly, as campaign ploys or flip, or in flip, offhand remarks verges on what I have come to feel is close to a national moral derangement, but I do not, as do John Hagee or Jeremiah Wright, each for different reasons, feel America is cursed or doomed. We can change. We can do better, and we will do better.
To be very clear, I do not bear personal animus towards John Hagee or John McCain, though I do decry John Hagee's use of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism to advance the apocalyptic goals of Christian Zionism. I also disparage John McCain's choice, last February, to both accept John Hagee's political endorsement but also to co-endorse John Hagee, which John McCain has done multiple times before national media, calling John Hagee a "spiritual guide" (CUFI event, July 16-18, Washington DC).
In 2000, McCain said he would never solicit political support from evangelists like Hagee - McCain said Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were "agents of intolerance".McCain went on to chase, in 2006, after Jerry Falwell's and then, gaining that, McCain pursued John Hagee's endorsement for an entire year. In early 2007 Jerry Falwell and John Hagee, with McCain in attendance, staged a fund raiser for McCain 2008 presidential bid. John McCain has - repeatedly and on national television - endorsed John Hagee as a religious leader.
McCain's connection to Hagee has been direct and personal, and it reflects poorly on John McCain - it suggests he has sacrificed his principles on the altar of political power.
There is another politician who needs to be reminded of moral bearing he certainly once had, because we all, as humans, have those in some measure. Joe Lieberman needs to reminded now that John Hagee is perhaps less like Moses than Joe Lieberman would like Hagee to be.
***
The sudden explosion of this media event, hundreds of news stories on John McCain, John Hagee and Hagee's statements that God sent Hitler, was not my personal creation...
Over the past few days I happened to be in the right spot, at the right time, with the right knowledge, to trigger a shift in the dynamics of the current presidential election. Now, I've woken up this morning to hundreds of mainstream media stories which derived from one little, crude YouTube video I made last week and which triggered an avalanche of national media. It's a very beautiful morning here, now, as I write this - beautiful both because the sun is rising and its spring but also because the events of the past two days have that promises, if we are lucky, to become a shift in the national mood, a moral reawakening. Let us hope and pray for that.
I can't claim personal credit for what happened over the past few days, as a sudden national shift established that there are types of speech which should and must be decried and shunned, types of political and public speech which we should, and must, shun. I played a part in that, but in the end it was a collective project.
The McCain-Hagee viral video breakout was in the final analysis only possible as a collective effort, and I'd like to credit the fellowing people especially, for making it possible:
(coming up - I'm posting this first and then adding in the credits in the next 15-30 minutes... Best, BruceW)
I'd like to credit, first, my wife Sara, whose patient forebearance made this all possible.
And, I'd like to credit my late father, Richard - who had the moral courage to leave the ministry, in protest, because of the Vietnam War and the Methodist Church less than enthusiastic support of his anti-War work...
I'd like to mother, for all the support she's given me...
Then, I'd like to credit the following people:
Frederick Clarkson, for putting up with me until my knowledge of the Christian right got up to speed, and for teaching a great deal of what I know on the subject, through countless conversations...
The entire cast of people who have written at Talk To Action (I'm leaving some of the occasional/one time posters out for the moment because that this would take forever to compile)
Talk To Action writers -
Frederick Clarkson
Chip Berlet
Joan Bokaer
Esther Kaplan
Bill Berkowitz
Jonathan Hutson
Frank Cocozzelli
"Moiv"
John Dorhauer
Richard Bartholomew
Cindy Cooper
Michelle Goldberg
Dr. Bruce Prescott
Don Byrd
Carlos Stouffer
Jeff Sharlet
Pastor Dan
Chris Rodda
Andrew Weaver
John Gorenfeld
Rob Boston
Steve Martin
Kathryn Joyce
Tanya Erzen
Sara Posner
Max Blumethal
Ed Brayton
(I'm leaving off the last names of these folks, who choose to remain anonymous)
Marge, who sent me my "John Hagee Prophecy Study Bible" (!)
Ruth and her husband, who sent me lots of key Hagee material recently
George E. Lowe - who has been fighting this fight longer than anyone I know, about 5 decades, and whose fancy bureaucratic footwork helped to prevent, during the 1st Reagan Administration, the Christian right from destroying American public education.
Markos Moulitsas, for starting the Daily Kos - which has been crucial to the rise of the progressive left over the last several years.
The entire Daily Kos Community, for reading and supporting my work.
Sam Stein, whose story on the Huffington Post got the ball rolling and who did the classy thing, by crediting me and Talk To Action as the originator of the story.
Lastly, my mutt of a terrier, Sputnick - for being a companion both loyal and true.
