Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s Left-Wing Iowa Antagonist ID’d as David Goodner

Posted on | August 23, 2011 | 13 Comments

“What’s the big deal about Ahmadinejad anyway? … I’m not saying Ahmadinejad is Mother Teresa reincarnate or anything. But let’s face it: Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, even Vladimir Putin, all have less blood on their hands than Bush does. The international public enemy #1 is the president of the United States of America.”
— David Goodner, Sept. 25, 2007

Ambush interviews and “gotcha” questions aren’t my style. One of the most noxious developments of the TV era is reporters stalking politicians in order to get them on camera refusing to answer questions. This is a tactic of “reporting” that was first popularized by 60 Minutes in the 1970s: The shady surgeon who has been hit with 27 malpractice suits, covering his face and shouting “no comment” as he is chased across the parking lot by Mike Wallace and a CBS camera crew.

Should we treat politicians like that? Except in cases where they’re trying to get away with shenanigans (e.g., Anthony Weiner), I say “no.” The ambush interview is too much like trying to make news, rather than report news. I don’t like it when lefties do the “gotcha” trick with Republicans, and don’t think it behooves conservatives to do it to Democrats. However, when lefties go after Democrats . . .

No, I still don’t like it, and “citizen journalists” doing Mike Wallace imitations? That’s bad mojo. Politicians (and their security details) aren’t likely to permit bloggers to have access if such access results in ugly confrontation and outright harassment.

Which brings me to the case of the guy in the “Catholic Worker” T-shirt who interrogated Debbie Wasserman-Schultz after her Aug. 12 Iowa State Fair speech. Watch the video again:

The DNC chairwoman addressed him as “David,” and a tipster informed me that he is David Goodner, a rather notorious left-wing gadfly in Iowa. Goodner is a “community organizer” with Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, which Iowa public radio contributor Andrew Duffelmeyer calls “a group known for its confrontational style of grassroots politics.” I just called Iowa CCI, where a staffer confirmed that Goodner was the “David” in the Wasserman-Schultz video.

To describe Goodner as a “gadfly” is perhaps an understatement. He is an anti-war protest pest, the kind of smelly hippie peacenik who makes every red-blooded American nostalgic for the good old days of Mayor Daley’s police busting heads at the Chicago convention in ’68. Here is video of Goodner complaining that the FBI had his anti-war group under surveillance:

OK, so why would the FBI be snooping on Goodner — I mean, besides the fact that he declared the President of the United States a greater danger than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? (A declaration that evidently caused the Des Moines Register to terminate Goodner’s blogging privileges and purge his posts from their archives.) Here’s the FBI report of its surveillance of a Chicago Antiwar Network meeting to plan protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention, attended by Goodner. And when this surveillance was revealed, his mommy didn’t like it one bit!

Dr. Susan Goodner is not amused that her son was spied upon, though it did bring back memories.
“I was part of a campus anti-war group in Iowa City that was infiltrated by the FBI in 1970,” she says.

So he’s a second-generation hippie! He considers Karl Rove a “war criminal,” and was arrested for criminal trespass during a 2007 “occupation” of Sen. Chuck Grassley’s office. Goodner’s defenders would probably say he’s just exercising his First Amendment rights. OK, but what’s his track record when it comes to respecting the First Amendment rights of others?

A local war protester and University of Iowa student was arrested on Monday after he interfered with another protest.
Monday afternoon, an anti-abortion group was protesting in the Pentacrest on the UI campus. According to police, David Goodner, 27, of 527 N. Dubuque St., grabbed one of the protester’s signs and ran away. The victim chased Goodner and the sign was broken in the pursuit.

What? A guy from “Catholic Worker” harassing a pro-life protest?

He’s a 30-year-old who took 10 years to graduate from college with a degree in “human rights” (apparently Israelis don’t count as “human” to him) and I’d be worried if the FBI didn’t have him under surveillance.

Goodner seems almost as kooky as Jared Loughner. He’s lucky Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s security didn’t tase him the minute he got in her face. Better people than Debbie have had worse enemies, but all it would take is for one dangerous bozo like Goodner to do something violent, and access for “citizen-journalists” will be a thing of the past.

Category: Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Iowa, Liberals

Comments

13 Responses to “Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s Left-Wing Iowa Antagonist ID’d as David Goodner”

Debbie’s Very Bad Day in Iowa : The Other McCain
August 23rd, 2011 @ 2:51 pm

[…] readers, too! (I’m sure the Trotsky reference was a just a coincidence, comrade.)UPDATE II: Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s Left-Wing Iowa Antagonist ID’d as David Goodner.google_ad_client = "pub-9749646473075980"; /* 300×250, created 12/5/10 */ google_ad_slot = […]
Danby
August 23rd, 2011 @ 7:39 pm

The Catholic Worker movement’s founder, Dorothy Day, was a committed Marxist who abandoned socialism when she discovered Christ. She abandoned the Revolution and instead dedicated her life to actually serving the poor. She and the Catholic Worker movement fed literally tens of thousands in the depths of the Depression.

Unfortunately, the Catholic Worker movement has become a refuge for socialists who want
to claim the name of Catholic, without bending their will to the mind
of Christ.
Anonymous
August 23rd, 2011 @ 7:54 pm

Goodner sounds like a typical rank & file member of the DemonCrook Party. Nothing unusual there.
ThePaganTemple
August 23rd, 2011 @ 8:09 pm

So she’s on a first name basis with him, which suggests that she knows him and has probably had some kind of contact with him before. That’s typical Democrat. Just like the nuts in Congress that allow members of Code Pink to attend Congressional hearings, where they have to know they are going to be disruptive and make general asses of themselves and a shambles of any proceeding they attend. It’s good enough for her that every now and then somebody like this gets in her face. You can only nurse a viper to your breast so many times before it finally strikes. It would be fun to see a guy like this tased by a Democrats security detail.
Anonymous
August 23rd, 2011 @ 8:33 pm

“You can only nurse a viper to your breast so many times before it finally strikes.” Good line.

It made me go full-circle in thought: from Cleopatra to Elizabeth Taylor, and then to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which brought me back to DWS.
DaveO
August 23rd, 2011 @ 8:40 pm

He’s a professional bomb-thrower and presented himself to the left of Wasserman Schultz in order to make her appear as a centrist, and therefore reasonable and worthy of having her words considered.

Every revolution requires folks to man the heavy-assault squads to storm bastilles and become engloried in martyrdom. Nothing more than a corn-fed Mohammed Atta who hasn’t been given the go-ahead, yet.
ThePaganTemple
August 23rd, 2011 @ 9:25 pm

Exept DWS looks a lot more like Barney Fife than Elizabeth Taylor.
Anonymous
August 23rd, 2011 @ 10:55 pm

She didn’t play her part very well in that clip, she responds to one of his statements, saying “that’s not true and it’s unacceptable to…” I couldn’t make out the end of what she said. I suspect the left doesn’t like being told that criticisms or questions about Obama’s or her policies and actions are “unacceptable” any more than we do.
David R. Graham
August 23rd, 2011 @ 11:52 pm

“Nothing more than a corn-fed Mohammed Atta who hasn’t been given the go-ahead, yet.”

Mohammed Atta was state-sponsored, by Saddam Hussein/Iraq. Who is Goodner’s state sponsor, CIA unnameables? They sponsor the cat in the White House:

http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1852/article_detail.asp
Adjoran
August 24th, 2011 @ 6:49 am

60 Minutes loved the ambush journalism, but their mark in trade was the long interview with the target, usually set up to appear that he was not the target or that it was not “the” interview, just “background” stuff, all with a friendly tone, then at the end hitting him blindside with some loaded questions.

Then they would take the hour’s worth of tape back and splice together 2 minutes that made the guy look like a crook. It was this habit which made people stop agreeing to talk to them on camera, which in turn led to the ambush style.

So it wasn’t so unusual when Rather and Mapes manufactured a document, or used one obviously manufactured, in an attempt to smear Bush in 2004. It was completely within the tradition of deceptive reporting 60 Minutes was built upon.
Bob Belvedere
August 24th, 2011 @ 12:22 pm

I fondly remember Martin Short’s skits playing the target – perfect parody of that technique.
dad29
August 24th, 2011 @ 12:46 pm

Yes. Day was a good person; her successors are questionable.

Interesting side-note: Benedict XVI mentions, twice, that Christ’s passion/death/resurrection conclusively separated religion from politics by ‘pointing to’ the real Heaven (which is not on Earth.) That in his second volume of “Jesus of Nazareth.”
Obama’s Erstwhile Allies: Left-Wingers Attack Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller : The Other McCain
August 25th, 2011 @ 8:31 am

[…] MFMG is a matter of priceless hilarity. Remember David Goodner, the left-wing anti-war pest who harassed Debbie Wasserman-Schultz at the Iowa State Fair? Goodner is a “community organizer” with Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (Iowa […]