Les Jones

Obama delegate lies, claims to be physician at town hall meeting

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 | Health Care, Politics | Permalink | 3 Comments |

Roxana Mayer identified herself as a “pediatric primary care physician” at a Houston town hall meeting on government healthcare and that’s how the press reported it. She now admits she is not and never has been a doctor. Instead, she was Obama’s registered delegate in Texas.

Patterico’s got the story. Me, I’ve got a prediction.

During the Bush years we saw lots of phony anti-war soldiers - people like Micah Wright and Jesse Macbeth who lied about their service and made up atrocities to fit an anti-war narrative. With healthcare front and center I expect to see more fake doctors shilling for Obamacare. Roxana Mayer is just the first.

LATER: Patterico found the video.

After Mayer says she’s a primary care physician, Rep. Sheila Jackson (D-TX) leads a round of applause, thanking her for being a primary care physician and hugging her. Jackson asks Mayer how long she’s been practicing. Answer: “Four years.”

Tags: bullshit artists

Edgar Martins, photographer and bullshit artist

Friday, July 10th, 2009 | Media Behaving Badly, Photos | Permalink | 3 Comments |

Compare these two statements. First, le artiste:

Though my images are minimal in tone, they do not pare down my experience of place. In my work there is scope for so much more. What seem like highly controlled and manipulated photographs are but a product of illusion. The illusion of the photographic process. This is especially evident in “The Accidental Theorist” series. Most people assume that these image are manipulated. Or perhaps even staged. In reality, there is no post-production work, no darkroom or computer manipulation.
– Edgar Martins

And then the guy who doesn’t believe him:

I call bullshit on this not being photoshopped. Check it out. I’ll eat my hat if this is not fakery.
– unixrat

unixrat was right, his animated GIF proved it, and the New York Times has pulled Martins’ photos.You can still find them on the photographer’s Web site.

Now people are reviewing his other work. Despite his claims, Martins repeatedly mirrored and Photoshopped his images, both in the New York Times piece that led to his downfall and throughout his career.

Read the whole interview quoted above to see just how drunk on his artistic pretensions Martins is.

My work has an apparent formalism and aesthetic rigor that some define as being precise. However, the process by which the images are created is everything but precise. I photograph in often “unphotographable” conditions, whether in burning forest fires or the icy winters of Iceland. I also make use of long exposures. When you work in this way even the most natural of occurrences become difficult to quantify: light, time, focus, etc. For so long photography has been about control; I like to relinquish some of that control. This apparent contradiction, this dualism really interests me. I have always found photography to be a highly inadequate medium for communicating ideas—a subject and object of lack, if you like. However, it is this dissatisfaction with the medium that spurs me on to find a new visual language to work with, and, I suppose, a new vocabulary from which to derive my glossary of life.

Thing is, he has some good images. I wouldn’t care if they were Photoshopped if he hadn’t sworn up and down they weren’t, and if he weren’t so incredibly pretentious. You get the impression half of the guy’s cred was based on his patter rather than his portfolio.

Previously - YouTube, Meet Bullshit Artist. Bullshit Artist, Meet YouTube.

Tags: bullshit artists

That Lying Old Fraud Michel Thomas Has Died

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005 | News | Permalink | 7 Comments |

I knew a little about this guy, but didn’t know his full story until now. It’s always satisfying when a phony and liar is exposed.

For truth to win, lies have to come to the light. In the US, libel laws only protect a person until their death. I’ve always been uncomfortable with that, since it sometimes leads to salacious accusations following a person’s death when they can no longer defend themselves. On the other hand, Michel Thomas’s life is an argument in favor of the current arrangement: he had a habit of suing people who exposed his lies.

A scarringly skeptical report appeared in the Los Angeles Times in 2001. Its reporter questioned Mr. Thomas’s war record, claiming among other things that another man saved the cache of Nazi records from destruction.

Mr. Thomas filed a defamation suit against the reporter and the newspaper, which refused to admit an error in the article. A judge threw out the case and ordered Mr. Thomas to pay legal fees.

That wasn’t the first court to find Thomas’s forthrightness wanting:

In the 1980s, he testified against Barbie at his trial for crimes against humanity. Barbie received a life sentence but not before the French prosecutor, Pierre Truche, took a swipe at Mr. Thomas’s credibility.

“With the exception of Mr. Thomas, all the witnesses are of good faith,” he said, according to an account in the Chicago Tribune.

Roy Rivenburg, who wrote the LA Times piece, now feels safe in discussing more of Thomas’s incredible tales. Via Patterico.

Elsewhere in the biography, Thomas portrayed himself as a real-life Hogan’s Heroes, able to escape concentration and slave labor camps repeatedly at will. In one story, after learning his girlfriend secured his release by granting a romantic favor to a diplomat, Thomas claimed he voluntarily returned to imprisonment because he didn’t want to be freed under such circumstances.

If some old guy wants to sit around the bar and tell tall tales, that’s one thing, but Thomas tried to influence history, and told his stories in court as sworn testimony. The old fraud even managed to get people to hector the government into giving him a silver star - presented by Senator Bob Dole - despite the fact that he was apparently not in the military. UPDATE: Roy Rivenberg writes to note that civilians can receive the silver star, which is true, though that was not my whole point.

Tags: bullshit artists