I'm not a huge fan of Sacramento Bee editorial cartoonist Rex Babin, but for some reason I like this one...
Barbaric yawp barely audible in pro-Dean video
The Dean lemmings are now circulating, via the Internet, a homegrown video of Howard Dean's infamous Iowa caucuses concession "speech."
The video is supposed to exculpate Dean, the idea being, apparently, that television network news cameras make sane people look crazy, and if you want accurate video footage of Dean, it needs to have been shot by a member of The Cult of Dean.
Anyway, the homegrown video is pretty shitty. Dean is obscured in much of the video by what appear to be American flags and pom-poms, and, curiously, Dean's campaign-ending barbaric yawp is barely audible in the homegrown video.
I listened to Dean's barbaric yawp live on National Public Radio. It was so loud that even the NPR reporter was taken aback. The yawp is clearly audible in The Los Angeles Times' rather poor video of Dean's concession "speech," yet, as I said, for some strange reason it's barely audible in the video that the zombies for Dean are representing, explicitly or implicitly, as the real record of the event.
Was it a faulty video camera -- the camera's audio failed just at the very moment that Dean yawped -- or could it be that the video's audio was altered?
I e-mailed the purveyor of the video, a Joe Jensen, and asked him what the deal is. We'll see if he responds and if he responds credibly.
Whether the video's audio was defective (unlikely) or altered (much more likely), it's a shameless, blatant misrepresentation by the Dean lemmings, and I'm surprised that even Salon promotes the video under the headline "Last Words on the Dean Speech." (No, I'm not suprised -- Salon has always been shamelessly pro-Dean.)
Salon Managing Editor Scott Rosenberg also promo'd the homegrown video on his weblog, but at least he noted of the video, "If you watch this, interestingly, the famous YEAAARGH is nearly inaudible, and certainly not the Yowl Heard Round the World."
If he suspects that the video has been altered, as he seems to, why did he publicize it? That doesn't seem like journalistic integrity, so I e-mailed Rosenberg, too, to ask him about that.
Oh, well. The bright side is that the Dean lemmings must have at least a dim awareness that Dean is toast or they wouldn't be scraping the bottom of the barrel like this.
Yawpgate update: Joe Jensen replied to my e-mail. He gave me a technical explanation as to why Dean's yawp is barely audible on his video. Joe's jargon overwhelmed me, so I forwarded his e-mail to my brother, who does video production for the state of California for a living. He told me via e-mail that Joe's explanation is plausible -- but he also told me that "anyone can [alter a video's audio] with the audio production software that is available on desktop editing systems."
I'm trying to give Joe the benefit of the doubt. However, Joe apparently contradicted himself in his e-mails to me. In one e-mail he wrote: "Let me be clear: It [the video] was not manipulated in any way. It is from camera to tape to Web -- as is! No mixing, no sweetening, no post editorial." But in a previous e-mail, he had written: "With my shot I was in the crowd so I had no choice but let the crowd be heard. In fact I had to work hard in post to pull out what the candidate was saying. But what my angle gave was what the real conditions of the night were."
Now, I'm no sound engineer, but I'm pretty good with the English language, and in one e-mail Joe writes that there was "no post editorial" and in another he writes that "I had to work hard in post to pull out what the candidate was saying."
Alas, we may never get to the bottom of Yawpgate. And probably no one will spend any time behind bars.
But I think it's wrong for any party to have tried to manipulate Dean's barbaric yawp (if any party has), whether it be an unfriendly media trying to cast Dean in an unflattering light by exaggerating his yawp, as the Deanies have charged, or whether it be the Deanies presenting a counter-video in which Dean's yawp is barely audible. As Joe himself wrote in his e-mail, with his video he is trying to convey "what the real conditions of the night were." When a man yells, you hear him.
Scott Rosenberg also e-mailed me back. He wrote:
I'm curious why you assume that the audio was altered. This video camera had a mike that presumably was on the camera, as opposed to the stage mike that (I'm assuming) the "media version" of the event picked up. Isn't it entirely credible that the sound carried differently? The "yawp" is audible, it's just not as loud as in the more famous version.
If you have any hard evidence of any kind that this video was altered I'd certainly be glad to review it, but without such evidence, I will assume the simplest explanation for the divergence: that the speech sounded differently to people there in the room. This is also corroborated by people who were there....
I question whether the video was altered because I have a journalism degree and that's what journalists do -- they question. They don't present things -- especially odd things, such as a quiet scream -- as fact without questioning. (They say in journalism that if your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.)
Of course I have no "hard evidence." I don't have the evidence. Joe does. But rather than having questioned the questionable video, Rosenberg admits that he "[assumed] the simplest explanation for the divergence." (When you assume you make an ass out of u and me...)
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