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"I went into religious broadcasting so I could TELL THEM WHAT I THINK OF THEM!"
Yah!
"The left-wing media is the biggest problem we got in America. If it wasn't for them, our president and a lot of these other politicians would stand up and tell the truth, but they're afraid of these guys!
"But you don't be afraid of them!"
"Don't be afraid!" someone in the crowd repeats. "Don't be afraid!"
"Woo! Yah!"
After the diatribe, a smarmy, well-groomed reporter from Tucson takes flak from several Minutemen who've surrounded him.
"Aren't you that guy who had the hidden camera and walked around?" an old man asks.
The well-groomed reporter defends himself. "I've been on this story since day one, and I've been nonbiased," he says, standing his ground.
It's not pretty when a well-groomed local TV reporter becomes unnerved. In a tizzy, he snaps, "I'm done with this!" He motions to his production assistant and storms off, reporter-panties in a huge bundle. I follow. He gains composure, readying himself to interview a random Minuteman with some well-groomed and ultra-hard-hitting questions. "It started out with protest. It ended peacefully," he says with a big grin and an almost goofy giggle one would expect if he were covering a story on a Teens for Christ community bake sale. "How good is that?"
After the interview, I ask the reporter why he freaked out earlier. He explains the effort he'd put into the story, the depths he'd plumbed. "I came out here. I sat with the Minutemen in the lawn chairs!" he notes.
Looking at the desert dust beneath my fingernails, I ask, "What was the last story you covered?"
"The popularity of Texas Hold 'Em," he says, pausing uncomfortably. "It was sweeps week."
And as a journalistic peer, I know immediately what to do. I shun the well-groomed TV reporter, because what he's just described is, my friends, some dirty motherfucking journalism.
