“Keeping The Receipts”

     Chaya Raichik, the worthy proprietor of the popular Twitter account “Libs of TikTok,” has demonstrated that she knows the importance of “keeping the receipts:”

     It all started with USA Today “journalist” Will Carless and his article trying to tie Raichik and her tweets to threats supposedly made to people and organizations whose derangement Libs of TikTok has highlighted on social media. Carless asserts his publication “confirmed dozens of bomb threats, death threats and other harassment” that can be traced directly to Libs of TikTok posts starting in February of 2022.

     And where did Carless go to get such confirmations? Media Matters of America, of course. That bastion of truthfulness. Media Matters exists as a welfare scheme for liberal writers who failed to succeed in any other profession. Hillary Clinton co-founded MMA, so that’s all you really need to know.

     Back to Chaya and the hit piece. She actually agreed to be interviewed by Carless for his piece, and, smart girl that she is, recorded their call in order to have the “receipts” when he and USA Today inevitably tried to skew her words and use them against her. The hit piece hit the internet last week and in print form on Monday.

     Emphasis mine. This is absolutely mandatory when one is confronted by a “journalist” today. They have no ethical code. They have no personal scruples. They’re out for “eyeballs,” and they’ll do anything to draw them in. This is what followed:

     Smart girl indeed!

***

     My lumber-room of a memory has cooperated this morning. As a result I’m able to provide yet another instance of a smart fellow who “kept the receipts.” That smart guy was a Congressman who found himself at seriously cross purposes with…drum roll, please…Mike Wallace and 60 Minutes.

     Shortened version, for those who don’t have the time or inclination to read the whole story: The year was 1993. A “researcher” was shooting cats in the head as part of his entirely unoriginal “research” into battlefield brain injuries, on the taxpayers’ dime. Congressman Bob Livingston of Louisiana wanted the “research” suspended so it could be peer-reviewed. 60 Minutes did a hit piece on Livingston, a generally pro-military Congressman whom Mike Wallace tried to portray as indifferent to soldiers’ lives. In doing so, Wallace lied blatantly to his audience: he said that Livingston had refused to be interviewed to defend his position.

     But Livingston had agreed to be interviewed, if his statements were broadcast live or unedited. He said exactly that, directly to Wallace. He’d recorded the call in which he said so. He played that recording for the president of CBS News. This is what followed:

     Wallace said, on air, that he had repeatedly offered Livingston a chance to discuss the situation, but that Livingston refused.

     Not, mind you, that Livingston had offered to be interviewed live or unedited, but instead as if Livingston had totally ducked all questions. The next day, Livingston called Wallace and chewed him out. Again, my tape was running, again secretly.

     […]

     THIS TIME, we called the president of CBS News. Bob played our audiotape for him. And then played it again. There was Wallace apologizing and admitting to having been “dishonest” and “stupid.” And yet the show had run again, without correction. It was clear we had a slam-dunk legal case if we wanted to press it.

     The CBS president was irate at his own team. He made that clear. The tape did the trick. Apparently the news president then came down hard on Wallace. Really hard. Wallace soon called back. His voice was shaky. “Well, um, you know something? You’re a better man than I am, Congressman.” He promised to go on the air and apologize to the entire country. Then, after more of what can only be described as groveling, Wallace said this:

     “You can get this on your tape recorder—I wish you told me you had a tape recorder going; that would have been the gentlemanly thing to do, the first time….”

     Livingston interrupted, lowering the boom: “It would have been, but then I didn’t think that I was necessarily dealing with a gentleman.”

     Wallace: “Well, in any case…”

     Livingston: “And frankly, you’ve proven me right.”

     Bingo. You could almost hear the phone line sizzle. Wallace had no answer. There was no good answer. Livingston was correct.

     “I wish you told me you had a tape recorder going.” That was all Wallace had to say for himself. He was aggrieved that Livingston “kept the receipts!”

     Verbum sat sapienti, Gentle Reader.

4 comments

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  1. I have a log entitled “Fighting Back.” This is its newest entry.

     

    Of course, the enemedia would infer that proves we are violent. It’s central to their “you also” preempt: they know their side has been waging war on us and that has indeed included violence. Progs have been projecting their own behavior on opponents since their inception.

    • J J on November 9, 2023 at 11:04 AM

    Society has degraded to the point it’s wise to record practically every conversation you have with anyone, whether in government, business or personal.   You just never know when someone you previously trusted decides to stick a knife in your back.

    • Santas List on November 9, 2023 at 11:39 PM

    Never, talk to the media.

    They are the enemy.

    • SteveF on November 10, 2023 at 6:51 AM

    I wish you told me you had a tape recorder going

    Some years ago a student recorded a public school teacher saying something egregious, as she regularly enough to form a pattern. When the recording came out, the principal or union head or some such asserted that the recording was invalid because if the teacher had known that she was being recorded, she wouldn’t have said what she did.

    Yes, that’s kind of the point.

    As for 60 Minutes, I’m so old that I remember when it was a respected name in investigative journalism. As a preteen I watched when my dad watched it. Alas, by my mid-teens I was already seeing the bias and a few things that didn’t add up. Most likely, 60 Minutes was like the FBI, all of mainstream journalism, and many other institutions: respected because that was the picture they put out and the public didn’t have access to contrary information. If they’d kept their lies and manipulations small, they could have kept the scam going, but they got complacent and the lies got bigger and bigger. Then the Internet came along and blew the lid off and we could see that they were corrupt from the beginning.

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