While I intend a more expansive response to my many critics on the USC issue tomorrow, I wish to address specific falsehoods, distortions and personal attacks in this hatchet job post by John Wellington Ennis -- which he is trying to pass off as journalism.
In his first paragraph he calls me a "simpleton" (I defy anyone who watches even two minutes of the interview I graciously gave John a few weeks ago to call me that) and seems to indicate he thinks that asking a security person legitimate questions on camera is a cause to be handcuffed, arrested and detained. This is a particularly galling assertion coming from someone who claims to be a documentary filmmaker himself.
He then brings completely up out of the blue and for no reason at all other than an obvious and desperate attempt to embarrass me, a tape from a minor league reality TV show that was edited and released only after I became a political target of the left. To my knowledge that show never even aired and John has never even bothered to ask the context of it, which, as anyone who is stupid enough to be part of a reality TV show will tell you, was, like Ennis' column, not even close to an accurate representation of what really transpired.
John's review of my film Media Malpractice is laughably biased, but he is certainly entitled to his opinion (which seems to be of the belief that because I don't have videotape of Brian Williams, Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson conspiring to destroy Sarah Palin that my film offers no new information on the topic).
When Ennis says that in my interview with him I offered contempt for the truth, this is bald-faced lie. I doubt that he is stupid enough to not realize that when I said that, "The truth is something that has no meaning," that I was CLEARLY bemoaning that reality. I have devoted my entire life (and suffered greatly because of it) to pursuing truth as I see it.
John says he saw me on the tape trying to heckle Katie Couric. I never came close heckling Katie Couric. I never even saw her there.
John's analysis that it was appropriate for me to be handcuffed and removed by security because I may have been "freaking people out" is both ignorant of the law and downright scary coming from someone who claims to be a filmmaker. USC is a private school, but the campus is "open" with no gates and USC accepts federal tax money.
John's assertion that he is amazed that I was not charged (for what exactly?) and that things would have been much worse if I were black is hilarious. If I were black and there to question why Bill O"Reilly was getting a journalism award if his Barack Obama interview had been perceived as bringing his candidacy down (like that would ever happen in academia), not only would I have not been touched, I am sure I would have ben given a front row seat and if not, I am quite certain that John and everyone else at the Huffington Post would be rising up in my defense.
John then calls me a "crackpot" and accuses me of taking part in a "Tom Green bit." Regardless of how desperate many liberals are to come up with an excuse to not make this a free speech issue, this was NOT a stunt. My more extensive response on Monday will prove that.
As for John saying that anyone who "embraces" me should be embarrassed, that is the exact type of thinking that opponents of free speech would hope would take hold in this country. As someone who has written a book called "The Death of Free Speech," even I never thought such beliefs would come to fruition so soon, voiced on a liberal web site, by someone who claims to be a documentary filmmaker.
Clearly the partisan divide is now eroding the foundation of our most precious freedom. The people who should be most embarrassed here are liberals who don't defend my right to free speech, which was clearly infringed on here.
John Ziegler is a documentary filmmaker. His most recent film is "Media Malpractice.. How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted." The full tape of the incident at USC can be seen at www.HowObamaGotElected.com