video fakery

There’s a video clip circulated by notorious nutjob Michelle Malkin making the rounds; it’s of Democratic advisor Mickey Kantor, who is currently advising on the Clinton campaign.

The scene is an edited clip from the 1993 movie “The War Room” about the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign. The movie followed Kantor, Stephanapoulos and Carville as they worked to get Clinton elected. In the clip, Kantor is discussing a memo of poll numbers put out by the Republican party, where the numbers had been faked one explanation says faked, other say talking about Ross Perot’s poll numbers. In it, Kantor appears to be saying about the Republicans putting out fake data “These people are shit. How would you like to be {inaudible}?”

The circulating video clip from the movie has been edited to make it sound as though Kantor was talking about the people of Indiana, who’s poll numbers he mentions right before he makes the derogatory remarks. The filmmaker says the inaudible section was dubbed or manipulated to say “a worthless white n**ger?” In the original movie, this section is not clear, according to the Huffington Post.

It also leaves out the origin – suggesting that the video is recent and from the current Clinton campaign, not from 1992.

UPDATE: According to the filmmaker, the sound was edited from the original, and everyone in the room including the filmmaker agrees that he never used the N-word. Other people claim they hear it even on the original DVD. Until I hear the DVD for myself, I can’t tell. I doesn’t sound like this on other clips posted on YouTube.

The edited version appears on YouTube with comments and ratings turned off, and is being circulated around Indiana now. You can see it here:

I saw part of the movie back in 1993, but I didn’t remember this scene; just lots of video of Carville and Stephanapoulos with their heads together, so I recognized what I was seeing pretty quickly as being from the 1992 clinton campaign.

If Kantor had actually said this about Indiana, it wouldn’t just be coming out now. It’s getting dugg and heavily circulated, so I’m blogging about it in hopes that people watch the actual movie and see what it’s saying before leaping to conclusions about it.

Also — the fact that Malkin is pushing it obscures where it’s coming from, but I can’t see something this hacked up coming from Obama’s campaign. Smells like McCain to me.

NOTE: The reason I’m blaming Malkin for this one is because the story about it first “broken” on her blog and on the Drudge Report, with other discussion following pretty widely after that in the blogosphere. But she’s definitely one of the primary voices pushing this out there. That’s also the reason I think McCain is behind it rather than Obama.

Also, I got a couple of nasty right-wing comments on the post defending Malkin, which I deleted, per my comment policy. Comments are closed due to conservative dickishness.