Daily Show zaps Brian Camenker
By Ethan Jacobs
Published: Thursday, November 10, 2005
Brian Camenker
Brian Camenker
Leave it to the fake news programs to do the mainstream media's job for them. On last Thursday's The Daily Show with John Stewart, "correspondent" Ed Helms sat down with the Bay State's own Brian Camenker, head of the anti-gay group Article 8 Alliance, to ask him about the horrible consequences of gay marriage in Massachusetts. Helms asked Camenker if gay marriage has brought down the quality of life in the state, caused a spike in homelessness rates, or lowered the quality of the air. Although obviously a joke, Helms's questions were, in fact, reasonable in light of Camenker's extreme rhetoric about LGBT people. Why not ask an activist who not only claims that civil marriage rights for same-sex couples will be the undoing of the state but who gets plenty of ink saying just that in the state's largest daily to explain himself?
Camenker, who clearly did not understand that he was being made fun of, answered: "I could sit here and I could probably, you know, find some way of connecting the dots to gay marriage to all of these if I had enough time and I did the research."
Helms responded, "Yeah, why take the time to do the research when saying it is so much faster?" The screen then cut away to graphics showing that Massachusetts ranks 50th among the states in illiteracy, 48th in per capita poverty and 49th in divorce. The unwitting Camenker proved to be the same-sex marriage movement's best PR machine, exposing the baseless fear-mongering used by same-sex marriage opponents to a national audience.
If Camenker's Daily Show appearance was a test of media savvy, he completely flunked, a bad sign for the newly minted media personality. Long content to spread his message via his Article 8 Web site and its accompanying MassResistance blog, Camenker launched MassResistance Radio, a new weekly radio program on WTTT AM, Oct. 29. And unlike The Daily Show, Camenker's radio show is utterly devoid of humor, largely because Helms isn't on the show. In its first two episodes the show featured no guests and took no calls from listeners. Camenker and his co-host, who was billed only as "Amy from Article 8," rambled for an hour from within an echo chamber, and the only respite was the periodic advertisements for cars and hearing aids.
"Amy from Article 8" is a pseudonym used by Amy Contrada. Contrada gave her full name when she testified at last week's legislative hearing on two bills that would forbid students to hear any discussion of LGBT issues at school unless their parents had signed a special permission slip. (Contrada told the legislative committee that gay-straight alliances were directing their members to the Boston Alliance of Gay and Lesbian Youth, which was in turn directing students to a Web site with information on sexual reassignment surgery, for the express purpose of encouraging boys to have the surgery.) I saw Contrada at the hearing and listened to her testimony. I saw her again at the Love Won Out ex-gay conference Oct. 29, during which she snapped photos of demonstrators and argued with police officers. "Amy from Article 8" recounted this same incident on the air, and it was clearly Contrada's voice.
More:
(deffinitely worth reading the rest of the article):
http://www.baywindows.com/media/paper328/news/2005/11/10/News/Daily.Show.Zaps.Brian.Camenker-1052978.shtml
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