Chuck Ross
The Daily Caller (DC) "journalist" who broke the story of Jessica Medeiros Garrison's $3.5-million default judgment against me has a history of publishing racist and misogynistic blog posts before joining the DC staff, which once was led (in part) by current Fox News host Tucker Carlson.Chuck Ross broke the story of the Garrison judgment on April 4, 2015, in a post titled "Blogger Who Accused Alabama AG Of Carrying On An Affair Slapped With $3.5 Million Defamation Judgment." Ross broke the story before I even knew about the judgment -- a sign that somebody fed it to the DC -- and it's possible Ross' "inside source" on the story was . . . Jessica Garrison -- who with her professional ties to Trump attorney general Jeff Sessions, former U.S. Sen. Luther Strange, and U.S. Circuit Judge William H. "Bill" Pryor -- has the right-wing bona fides to have written for The Daily Caller herself.
Of course, Garrison once served as head of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) and the affiliated Rule of Law Defense Fund (RLDF). That was before The New York Times unmasked RAGA as a shakedown outfit. Not long after that story broke, Garrison quietly left her positions at RAGA and RLDF. She held an "of counsel" position at Birmingham's Balch Bingham law firm, until that firm and Luther Strange became engulfed in the evolving Birmingham Superfund scandal. Once riding high in right-wing circles, Garrison doesn't seem to do much of anything now but work as a "consultant." How does Jessica afford that $835,000 house in Mountain Brook? When Luther Strange's ties to the Superfund scandal hit the press, Garrison's social-media profile went dark for several weeks.
Has Chuck Ross followed up with a Daily Caller post about all the dirt swirling around Jessica Garrison -- and Luther Strange? Has he informed readers that Garrison's default judgment, as a matter of law, is void and can be attacked as such at any time? Did he reveal that Garrison works for the DC? Of course not, and I didn't figure he would -- given the DC isn't known for making attempts at remotely balanced or complete journalism. After reading Ross' story on Garrison's $3.5-million judgment, the first words out of my mouth were, "This is the most inaccurate, one-sided, sophomoric piece of 'garbage journalism' I've ever read."
Ross' article on the Garrison judgment is such a sham that it takes me a while to describe all of its shortcomings. It also requires time to list some of the seedy right-wing blogging characters with whom Ross, the DC (and Garrison?) are affiliated. We'll do that in a bit, but first, let's examine recent reporting by Washington Post media writer Erik Wemple, who reveals that Ross' "training" for his Daily Caller position included producing racist and misogynistic scribblings at a nasty blog called Gucci Little Piggy. From the Wemple piece:
Back in 2010, some blogger wanted to vent about something. “Small towns like the one I’m from in Texas have a fat girl problem. The scent of cheap perfume, sweat, grease … forms a troposphere-like force field surrounding the town that I call ‘that fat girl smell,'” wrote the blogger. At the end of another post, this same fellow concluded, “When given equal opportunity women don’t have the tools to perform as well in business as men.”
That’s certainly not the most hateful stuff on the Internet, if only because there’s a lot of competition in this dubious category. What makes it noteworthy, however, is that it’s part of the oeuvre that preceded the blogger’s hiring at Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller, starting in 2014.
Also: The blogger, Chuck Ross, is now renouncing those words and many others. “A lot of the stuff I wrote on my blog and in comments sections on other websites were hare-brained responses to stupid arguments taking place within the tiny community of bloggers I knew at the time,” notes the 36-year-old Ross in a written statement to the Erik Wemple Blog. “I wrote a lot of stuff that I didn’t believe, but I’d write about it for the sake of argument, and sometimes to be provocative or to piss off other bloggers.
“I’ve matured immeasurably since then, and I regret that I put these ill-formed thoughts out into the public domain.”
Sounds like Ross is trying to save what's left of his tattered reputation. Was the work that led to his spot on The Daily Caller staff really just a matter of "ill-formed thoughts"? You can decide, with assistance from Erik Wemple:
The Daily Caller launched in 2010 under the editorial leadership of Tucker Carlson, who showed little compunction about posting content that objectifies women. Race, too, has been a problematic coverage area.
Such proclivities may explain why the Daily Caller first took a liking to Ross, who once wrote on politics, culture, society and other topics for a blog named “Gucci Little Piggy,” an apparent reference to a lyric from the rock band Radiohead. From this platform, Ross came up with some theories. Like this one, in a 2010 post:
Erik Wemple
"Black people walk slow – everywhere. This is especially puzzling since they tend to run so fast. Blacks meander through cross walks in traffic. They jaywalk in front of oncoming vehicles. They do the “Dougie” on two-way streets. Don’t get stuck behind them in a crowded mall or in line somewhere; they’ll walk slow just to go against the grain or force you (white person) to swerve around them. Inevitably, they’ll make fun of you for being a goofy, neurotic white person."Ross has tried to sweep the ugliness in his past under the proverbial rug. But Wemple has not let him get away with it:
Those racist thoughts no longer appear on Gucci Little Piggy. The link to the post — titled “Black Passive-Aggression” — no longer works. That’s because Ross eliminated that post from his site, which he shut down in 2014, less than a year after his hiring at the Daily Caller. Many of his posts, accordingly, survive only as block-quoted references on other sites, as well as on archived pages. “I shut it down completely,” Ross tells this blog. The remaining digital trail shows that in January 2010, for instance, he springboarded off of an essay by a social psychologist regarding genetics and behavioral differences among groups:
The question becomes, if each one of these groups is acting in accordance with their “nature”, how do we go about doling out justice or incorporating every group into the social fold? I touched on the question previously. As an example, if blacks have higher levels of testosterone and are more predisposed towards violent and aggressive behavior, “intertribal” competition, and work-aversion – antisocial behavior in today’s Western world – is it fair to “punish” them using white Western legal and social proscriptions? In these cases, legal codes and social norms that worked well for white Westerners may not work so well for blacks of African descent or people of other ethnicities and races who have had much less time to co-evolve within “our” society’s proscriptions.
Another archived post from “Gucci Little Piggy” went a bit further:
Let’s use blacks – especially African Americans – as an example. Blacks’ higher testosterone levels lead to increased aggression which in today’s confined society inevitably leads to increased violence and crime. In fact, African-Americans’ ancestors – slaves – were bred for high testosterone levels. A properly implemented penal code would account for the difference in nature to curb the problem. Laws and punishments that seek to reprimand outlying behavior on the “normal” (white) distribution of lawfulness may not fit the distribution of lawfulness for blacks.
Obviously, the U.S.’s penal code has led to blow back on the black community. A never-ending cycle of criminality and incarceration of blacks is one of the reasons for their low socio-economic status, low education levels, and higher crime. While individuals are responsible for their actions on the micro level, systematic incongruency will lead to higher incarceration rates on the aggregate. It’s nice to think that an individual will behave in accordance with the law, but its a pipe dream that a whole group will act against their nature to live by the letter of the law.
This all suggests The Daily Caller article about Jessica Medeiros Garrison' $3.5.-million default judgment was written by a raging racist. That's ironic because the judgment was issued by Judge Don Blankenship, a black man who apparently has no problem sucking up to the white conservative elites who have turned Alabama into a legal and political sewer.
Jessica Medeiros Garrison and Luther Strange
How bad is Chuck Ross' article on the Garrison judgment? And who are the sleazy band of right-wing bloggers with whom he and the DC are affiliated? We will examine those questions in an upcoming post.(To be continued)
