LAFD “Porn Shoot” Lands Two in Hall of Shame

I’m tying up some loose ends from 2011 that I didn’t have time to blog about.  One of them is documenting the ongoing assault on first responders by The Young Turks.

In the clip below, Ana Kasparian (already tied for #1 Public Safety Hall of Shamer with her boss, Cenk Uygur) brings up an incident involving the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Venice Beach Station.

Note that the date on this clip is September 30, 2011.

I found this report from Venice311.org, which offers an entirely plausible explanation, including:

The porn video in question was filmed three years ago,

One of the things that puts Ana Kasparian atop the Public Safety Hall of Shame is her non-stop sensationalism of public safety stories.  This reminds me of the small-town newspaper in The Shipping News that re-runs old pictures of wrecks on slow news days.  When she’s not doing this sort of sexy nonsense, she complains about the sexism that rampages across her channel.

It’s not unlike her pointing out the sensational hyping of the story by warning that it’s graphic; this is a technique her boss explained to her on air when they did the Bert Lopez story.  It’s not clear why she feels exempt from this same criticism, possibly because she’s an idiot.

From Venice 311, linked above:

…and as expected, the Venice Beach Fire Fighters had nothing to do with facilitating the “porn shoot”, which was clearly not a porn movie but a video chronicle of someone exposing themselves in public. It was not set up ahead of time, if you live in Venice you know the Fire Fighters park their trucks in the Washington and Venice lots when they play paddle tennis or volleyball.

Porn Actress Charlie Chase Responds:

Charlie says:
September 22, 2011 at 6:10 PM

Check it out! I was involved in a scandle… hummmmm who would have thought! hehe

I just want to say that I am soooo sorry to the fire fighters involved. it was not my intentions for any one to get hurt or fired or whatever. I am not sure why news reporters are resorting to porn to make there stories these days, but shit… it was a fun day!

Good question, Charlie.

The Fire Fighters watched me stroll the beach from a distance, but were NOT involved in us invading the truck. I love how news people bend and twist the stories they report to better suit there point. [emphasis added]

Indeed.

As I said before… there was no set up to that day at all and I tried everything I could to let that be know. That was almost three years ago and it is crazy stupid that this is a problem now… Video has a way of making time seem longer then it really is and unfortunately, in this case, it is used for the worse.

I am excited for it to all blow over… Especially for the fire fighters case. I never got to meet any of those men that day, but I sure do hope they don’t hate me or porn for what happen. Again, I am super sorry to all of them involved and I promise to keep the fun we have in the future our dirty little secret
Charlie Chase (adult actress)

Porn actress Charlie Chase has higher journalistic standards, and more consideration for firefighters, than does Ana Kasparian.  Just for the record.

The department investigated.  I don’t have time to fully research the details.  As I’ve said before, The Young Turks’ ability to drop bombs on first responders greatly outstrips my ability to clean up behind them.  My numerous requests that they either do actual journalism or STFU about first responders have been repeatedly rejected.  The investigation I have done strongly suggests the firefighters knew nothing about this.

Regarding the individual at 0:51 who claims to be a firefighter and knows this was a setup, consider this; firefighters know their crew members very, very well; they know each other’s spouses, food allergies, and can sometimes identify each other by their snoring.  Blurring that idiot’s face would prevent his identification for zero seconds.  In other words, he’s lying.

An article linked below states that the chief had to do community service.  Be advised that this could simply be a result of the media coverage itself, even if, as Ms. Chase states above, the crew knew nothing about  it.  Within this culture, seeing your chief humbled in this way is sort of like watching your dad being perp walked in handcuffs.  It also strongly suggests that the crew is 100% NOT GUILTY — despite their conviction being stated as fact by The Young Turks.

That’s life in public safety.  It aint fair.  The media tastes blood, they chum the water, the citizens eat it up, firefighter heads roll.  The individual firefighters involved will never be allowed to testify on their own behalf — see the “permanent gag order” section of this blog.   Michael Shure gets promoted, and is featured in roundtables with Al Gore.

The first time I looked into this I saw an article on a firefighter site about it.  A female assigned to the Venice Beach crew had blogged her objection to the libelous coverage.  Her statement was that her crew was absolutely not guilty.  She was angry and wanted to set the record straight.  (A kindred spirit to this author?  You decide.)

When her statement was discovered, she was reprimanded and ordered to delete her blog.  Ana Kasparian, meanwhile, is free to say whatever she wants in increasingly larger echo chambers, no reality checking required.

My main issue with this story, however, is with Michael Shure and Ben Mankiewicz. Kasparian is a known offender, while the other two are now coming into sharp focus.

At approximately 2:40 in the above clip Kasparian asks them if the firefighters should face consequences:

Michael Shure:  I’ll say no.

Ben Mankiewicz:  I think the consequences should be a very, very, very stern, “Jesus Christ, Larry, you can’t do this.  You know that.”

Michael Shure:  Yeah.

Ben Mankiewicz:  Never do it again.

Michael Shure:  Right.

Ben Mankiewicz:  Now go save people’s lives.

Michael Shure:  Exactly.

Ana Kasparian:  Yeah.

Judge, jury and executioner have spoken.  Do any of them understand that part of a firefighter’s job involves using their own discretion to decide when to cut someone’s clothes off, including women?  That I have many times been alone and unsupervised with an unconscious naked person, and if I could have done whatever I wanted to them?

Is that still OK with Kasparian — that there should be no real expectation of sexual self-control among the exact same large (mostly male) group — LAFD — who might extricate her from a car and cut her clothes off?  Nobody ever expects to wake up strapped to a board looking up at firefighters, but it happens every day.

Their infuriating condescension aside, apparently it doesn’t occur to them that a fire department is a workplace, where people are expected to take a higher than average amount of responsibility.  They must know that it’s not OK to shoot a porn video on the clock in your workplace, unless you work in the sex industry, right?

Look how giddy they are.  Like their boss, anything goes as long as it tickles their pickles.   The damage they may be doing to the lives of firefighters means absolutely nothing.  They think firefighters and police officers are like cartoon characters, 2-D, fictional people who exist only for their amusement and exploitation.

They interviewed zero firefighters prior to reporting.  They know I exist, and they know of my background and repeated criticisms of their “reporting.”  They know how to find me.*  And I’m obviously not the only firefighter in the world.

Habeas corpus again denied for the firefighters.     Collateral damage:  all firefighters, especially the females.  Way to drop a bomb on firehouse gender politics.  You’re a classy bunch, don’t ever change.

Mankiewicz goes on to snark about the official statement, as though the politics of the situation were so self-evident.  Ironically, he’s oblivious to his own role in the creation of the need for said statement, and his culpability in the backlash to the firefighters.  Welcome to the Hall of Shame, Ben.

Both Shure and Mankiewicz are apparently oblivious to their own sexism, as is Kasparian. She complains about not being respected by her male co-workers while tossing the rights of female firefighters into a wood chipper.

TYT viewers flood the comment section with lewd statements about Kasparian’s breasts to such a degree that even many men are uncomfortable with the atmosphere it creates.  A quick glance at the YouTube comments on the above-linked video should make it abundantly clear.  Predictably, other viewers seek to defend Kasparian, who famously refuses to read the comments because of the entirely predictable response her sexist nonsense generates.

These three individuals have made a strong statement that the public and the media support fire departments operating on a “boys will be boys” system.  The whole thing is a dog whistle to the many firefighters who believe that “a crew with a woman on it is short a man.”

All of them have explicitly stated their support for a hostile work environment– ironically at a station where a female firefighter disagrees with the stated facts.  A fire department is a workplace.  Women are human beings with a right to work.

I covered Shure and Kasparian’s assault on the South Fulton Fire Department, in which Shure exclusively uses the word “fireman,” another dog whistle to sexist firefighters that their misogyny will be tolerated in the court of public opinion.  I know, he doesn’t get it.  A lot of people don’t.  Nothing like privilege to blind you to what a jerk you are.

I don’t know anyone on LAFD, and don’t have any factual context to work with.  I do, however, understand that fire departments are defenseless against public caprice, particularly the kind so amply displayed in this video.  Dredging up this old story and covering it automatically triggers an artillery strike on this fire department — whether they deserve it or not, which is still not known.

One thing that is well known among firefighters around the country about LAFD:  they run an insane number of high-acuity calls.  It’s one of the hardest-hit, hardest running departments in the country.  They run more gunshot wounds than any other department in America.

Here, The Young Turks convict the innocent in absentia, then dismiss the charges after the execution.  It’s cold comfort.

*I actually got an email about this piece from Michael Shure.  It’s not worthy of a response.

Related articles

• Fire Chief Brian Cummings is Doing Community Service to Make Amends for LAFD Porn Scandal (laist.com)