Mancow Muller
A Chicago shock jock who made news last week for being waterboarded and admitting it was “torture” reportedly faked the entire event.
Mancow Muller had argued on his morning radio show that the Enhanced Interrogation Technique known as waterboarding was not “torture” and agreed to undergo the procedure on-air to prove it. Mancow lasted only 6 seconds and dramatically renounced his position to his listening audience.
However, Internet news website Gawker has obtained a series of e-mail correspondences that show the entire event was a publicity stunt cooked up by Mancow’s publicist, Linda Shafran, a second publicist named Kathy Posner, and David Kupicent, who runs a Chicago-based veterans’ charity.
“It is going to have to look “real” but of course would be simulated with Mancow acting like he is drowning. It will be a hoax but have to look real,” Shafran wrote in the exchange.
After Gawker published their first exposé on the Mancow hoax, Shafran frantically e-mailed them to deny their article. The next day, Mancow himself admitted to perpetuating the lie.
“We went into this thinking it was going to be a joke,” Muller very quicklyGawker told when they spoke to him. “But it was not a joke—it was horrible. ‘Hoax’ is probably not the right word, but we did think it was going to be a joke.”
Klay South, the marine Mancow found at the last minute for the radio bit, admitted to Gawker he did not even know how to waterboard.
Mancow sells out America for 15 minutes of fame.
“I know nothing about waterboarding. I had never done it before, I have no formal training in it, and I’ve never had it done to me. The only thing I knew was what I saw on the Internet. I went to waterboarding.org and looked it up. I just did what I was told—poured the water on his face and that was it. I’m probably the last person they should have had do it. I didn’t know what I was doing,” South said.
According to the e-mails, Mancow also paid his fake interrogator’s gas and parking.
Also in on the radio stunt were the producers of liberal MSNBC commentator Keith Olberman, who donated US $10,000 to South’s charity, Veterans of Valor. Even though Olberman was told by his producers that Mancow was not really waterboarded, the left-wing ranter did not bring up that fact when he had Mancow on his show Thursday. Intead, Olberman used Mancow’s fraud to prove that “waterboarding is torture.”
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So waterboarding is torture if done by someone without prior experience in waterboarding? If done by experienced torturers it is just dandy. Get real. Simulated drowning is torture. You are misleading and distracting your readers from what was learned by this mancow experience. When is Sean Hannity going to submit and prove that waterboarding fun?
You obviously did not read the article. Mancow's publicist specifically states that the whole thing was staged – and they admitted it afterwards.
That really was a pathetic attempt at puncturing holes in an argument, even for a liberal.
-Admin.
I am a conservative that is against waterboarding after researching it. It was at first staged, but it soon became real for Mancow(he said that multiple times). Are you going to call former waterboarding apologists whose firsthand experience changed their view(Chris Hitchens, Daniel Levin) liars too?
I disagree with liberals and Democrats on 97% of issues, but they got it right on this one. You just seem like a partisan hack on this issue. You really discredit yourself on this one.
Absolutely insane. So, they faked waterboarding to prove what? That they were wrong, which they admitted, but then how was that proving anything if it was fake? So they initially thought it was wrong and pulled this stunt to make the right wing think they had reasons to believe it was wrong, or was he trying to provel that he was right, by faking and saying it was no big deal…None of it makes sense, and for this to be newsworthy is an insult.
So you are basing all your knowledge on this being faked from a “tipster” of Gawker…hmmm.
“The information provided to Gawker by our tipster” is a quote from the article you’re basing your theory on. What a joke.
Another thing that’s remarkable to me is that you’re so worked up about a media guy performing a stunt for publicity. What do you expect a media personality do you fool? This is some guy on the radio not some neighbor of yours trying to lie his way onto Larry King. But you and your ‘tipster’ you have a good life together. Glad you really put a lot of research into this article you blogisphere regurgitating hack artist.