Video of Anne Arundel County Council candidate Michael Peroutka’s press conference yesterday is now available. The entire conference follows the excerpt I want to present first. In the presser, Peroutka was asked if his endorsement of Southern secession and singing of Dixie as the national anthem was a mistake. He responded by saying that I altered the video to suit my political objectives. Au contraire, Mr. Peroutka, you do not speak truly.
First here is Peroutka’s claim:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/kYKDRWKUjFk[/youtube]
You can go to the posts where those clips are embedded (on secession and on Dixie) and see that I did not alter his words. And in the second post (on Dixie as the national anthem), I included the entire video as recorded at the conference by League of the South leader Michael Cushman. Jonathan Hutson points this out as well in his Huffington Post article:
Peroutka asserted that Professor Warren Throckmorton had “altered” the revealing 2012 video of his controversial comments and “Dixie” chorus at the League convention before posting it online. In fact, Throckmorton had reposted the entire, unaltered, 51-minute video on the conservative Evangelical Christian blog Patheos. The video was shot by Michael Cushman, a former member of the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group, who now leads the League’s South Carolina chapter. Cushman had posted it at RedShirtArmy, a League-affiliated YouTube channel.
Cushman, in an irate comment posted under Throckmorton’s piece, demonstrates that the video is authentic, because he insists that he made it, and he demands credit. He complains that “neither this hit-piece nor the Leftist bloggers who are linking to it give me any credit for shooting this video.” He adds, “Nor did they ask my permission to post it on their websites.” The unedited video on Patheos is identical to the one on RedShirtArmy. Several outlets, including RightWing Watch, Raw Story, and Gawker, have posted clips of the video, crediting Throckmorton with the find.
Watch the entire press conference here:
[youtube]http://youtu.be/6UpwSFrRWBg[/youtube]
Peroutka didn’t help himself with this performance. He refused to back away from the League of the South, he defended secession, and said calling Dixie the national anthem was just fine. If anything, he simply validated my reporting and that of others.