On September 27, 2012, I discovered that I was selected as part of the 13%. No, I am not over 65, foreign-born, African American, a federal employee who "observed an incident of workplace violence in the past two years", or even one of Toys R Us's new seasonal employees—it's much worse than that.
I received an unsolicited copy of Joe Gilbert's Dreams from My Real Father.
According to Ohio's Secretary of State, John Husted, there were over 7.7 million registered voters in Ohio as of its March 6, 2012 primary election. Of those registered voters, one million were targeted by a mass mailer campaign containing a free copy of the incendiary anti-Obama documentary.
Our friend, Jerome R. Corsi, at World Net Daily reports (emphasis added):
One million copies of the documentary film that presents evidence Barack Obama’s real father was Communist Party activist Frank Marshall Davis have been mailed to households in the crucial presidential-election swing state Ohio.
Filmmaker Joel Gilbert told WND his mass distribution of his documentary "Dreams from My Real Father" is an attempt to bypass an establishment media blackout.
Notwithstanding its dubious claims, circumstantial evidence, and abject falsehoods regarding President Obama's upbringing and political ideology, the decision to essentially carpet bomb Ohio voters with right-wing conspiracy theories is emblematic of a developing Republican narrative decrying liberal bias within
the mainstream media and
political pollsters.
In a speech at the National Press Club on July 19, 2012, director Joel Gilbert reinforces this narrative:
I accuse ABC, NBC, and CBS network news Divisions of violating the public trust by refusing to cover my documentary film....
I accuse MSNBC of an intentional and often vile campaign of lies and misrepresentations to protect Barack Obama’s false narrative. I accuse Newmax.com of censorship and suppression of the news....
I accuse all leftist website-based news organizations of intentional bias—like Talkingpointsmemo.com....
I also accuse all the main stream print media, like the Washington Post, the New York Times, Newsweek, Time Magazine, all their ilk, of intentionally suppressing the truth about Barack Obama’s history and agenda and refusal to cover my findings....
Only a very few news organizations, like WorldNet Daily, Drudge Report, USA Survival and a handful of independent journalists like Jack Cashill, have done their jobs as journalists
Mr. Gilbert invokes
The Journalist's Creed—developed in 1906 by modern journalism's founding father, Dr. Walter Williams—to lambaste his peers who allegedly pander to the liberal elite rather than exhibiting an inkling of journalistic integrity. This is absurd.
Rather than acknowledging the toxicity of his unfounded hypothesis, Mr. Gilbert perseveratively projects his own shortcomings upon credible journalists. Censorship within private publications, Mr. Gilbert, is less of an infringement of your First Amendment rights as it is a cleansing or distancing from your noxious nonsense; it is an act of preservation with which any reputable news source reserves the right to execute when confronted with such petulant drivel. Had Barack Obama actually conformed to your conspiratorial allegations, the story would not have originated within the fringe crevices of a rightist witch hunt writhing in its terminal death throes. Fuck off with your racist McCarthyism, Mr. Gilbert. Fuck off.
In an attempt to rationalize my frustration with my unexpected intersection with this fraudulent film I have vehemently avoided, I considered the ways in which the filmmaker or his distributor might have received my address: I am 21; I am a recent college graduate; I have a small business license; I have donated to Obama for America and Friends of Sherrod Brown; I recently updated my voter registration; and, as a matter of public record, I have a recent minor misdemeanor conviction. I am otherwise a private person. While I may have characteristics which allude to a certain impressionable mind requiring a conservative indoctrination, any suspicion that I have been explicitly targeted is quite questionable.
The Daily Beast's Michael Goldberg opines (emphasis added):
Gilbert won’t say who is funding this distribution, and there’s no way to verify his numbers. Had he not made other right-wing documentaries in the past, I might suspect that the whole thing is a brilliant conceptual art project about the limits of anti-Obama credulity. But the fact is, people are reporting receiving the disc in the mail.
I am right now. The mailer I received on September 27, 2012 is a tan pasteboard jacket the size of a conventional DVD case. On its face is the film's cover with a call to action across the bottom: "MUST WATCH DVD INSIDE! The bombshell documentary the mainstream media doesn't want you to see." The opposite side is a conventional postcard layout. The return address is:
DFMRF, LLC, 365 E. Avenida de Los Arboles #1000, Thousand Oaks CA 91360. The Presort Standard postage was paid via:
Arcadia CA 91006, Permit No. 313. Within the jacket is the film synopsis and credits, 95 minutes of bliss, and links to
Highway 61 Entertainment,
MVD Visual, and
ObamasRealFather.com.
So I turn to you, Kossacks. Although I realize that I have no personal army in you, I recognize that many of you may have the resources to better dissect its backroom funding and dissemination. How did this happen?