Last modified on September 1, 2011 by Brad Phillips

The Five Worst Video Media Disasters: August 2011

Dear Politicians: You make it soooo easy for this blog to document your media mistakes. Did you really need to make misogynistic comments and violent threats? Did you really need to walk off the set of an interview and endorse an unpopular Chinese policy?

Here, without any further ado, are the five worst media disasters of August!

#5: Christine O’Donnell Walks Off Piers Morgan

She’s not a witch, but she sure is fiery. Christine O’Donnell, the failed 2010 Delaware Republican Senate candidate, sat down with CNN’s Piers Morgan earlier this month to discuss her new book. But she objected to some of his (totally predictable) questions, and walked off the set in middle of the interview.

Click here for the full story, Christine O’Donnell’s Bizarre CNN Walk Off

 

#4: Charlie Rangel’s “Pretty Girl”

When Laura Ingraham sat in for Bill O’Reilly on the Fox News Channel, she asked Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) a series of aggressive questions without allowing him to respond. But Mr. Rangel protested in the wrong way, resorting to an ad hominem attack better suited to 1957.

 

#3: Mitt Romney: Corporations are People, My Friend

When heckled at the Iowa State Fair, GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney angrily responded by blurting out, “Corporations are people, my friend!” He’s making a philosophical point here that corporations are entities run by people and that profit people. But it’s the kind of tin-ear remark that doomed John McCain in 2008 after he declared that “The fundamentals of our economy are strong” on the same day Lehman Brothers collapsed.

Click here for the full story, Two Ways to Handle a Heckler

 

#2: Joe Biden Endorses China’s One Child Policy

When he visited China earlier this month, Vice President Biden was speaking about entitlements when he went off-script and appeared to endorse China’s “One Child” policy. The policy is abhorrent to many Americans, since it leads many of China’s city-dwellers to abort female fetuses in an effort to produce a male child.  Biden said:

“Your policy has been one which I fully understand, I’m not second-guessing, of one child per family.”

 

 

#1: Rick Perry Threatens a Public Official

When GOP Presidential candidate Rick Perry was asked about the Federal Reserve, he made menacing remarks about Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke:

“If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what ya’ll would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas…I mean printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treasonous.”

 

Treason is a crime punishable by death. Perry was rightly criticized for his violent rhetoric, which has no place in a post-Giffords (or a post-JFK or post-RFK or post-MLK) world.

 

Bonus Video: Al Sharpton Will Much About That Will Be Committed. Or Something.

When new MSNBC host Al Sharpton appeared to experience the pain of a broken teleprompter, he struggled mightily to recover against the English language. It didn’t go well.

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Related: The Five Worst Video Media Disasters of July

Related: The Ten Worst Video Media Disasters of 2010

Note to readers: I’ll be taking a long weekend to enjoy Labor Day. Have a great holiday weekend, and see you back here on Tuesday, September 6th!