A Houston grand jury has indicted two anti-abortion activists who were behind this summer’s series of undercover anti-Planned Parenthood videos. The activists are David Daleiden, founder of the anti-abortion group that created and publicized the videos, and Sandra Merritt…. Daleiden is facing two charges, Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson said Monday: “tampering with a governmental record,” a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison, and a misdemeanor charge of “purchase and sale of human organs.” Merritt is also facing a charge of tampering with a governmental record. The “purchase and sale of human organs” charge is ironic, since Daleiden and his collaborators at the Center for Medical Progress have been trying for months to convince the public that Planned Parenthood is the one illegally “selling” fetal organs and tissue for profit. Planned Parenthood says Daleiden repeatedly tried to get Planned Parenthood employees to sign fake agreements to sell fetal tissue, but that employees never actually signed those agreements. That’s probably why Daleiden is facing the charge about organ sales.
It’s no secret that Schadenfreude is one of my favorite words. When combined with “karma,” the result can be positively orgasmic. This is particularly true when those furiously engaged in playing “gotcha!” find the tables turned on them. Try as I might, it’s hard not to revel at least a little bit in seeing karma catching up with those whose humanity is open to question.
David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt have spent months trying to convince America that Planned Parenthood is in the baby parts business. Never mind that their “evidence,” a video heavily and very selectively edited, proves nothing of the sort. Nineteen states have pursued various investigations, and not one has been able to find evidence indicating that PP was selling baby parts for profit. The case presented by Daleiden and Merritt was about as dishonest and lacking in integrity as humanly possible, yet many on the Far Right accepted their “evidence” without question. If you watch Fox news Channel, the talking heads there are STILL promoting this fact-free narrative…because they hate Planned Parenthood Just. That. Much.
A Harris County grand jury was impaneled to investigate and determinate if PP was in fact illegally selling baby parts for profit, with District Attorney Devon Anderson pledging “we must go where the evidence leads us.” Imagine the generalized surprise, then, when the evidence led the grand jury to indict…wait for it…Daleiden and Merritt.
Karma…meet Schadenfreude. Let the self-righteous weeping and gnashing of teeth begin. Not even the righteous bleatings of Fox News Channel’s talking heads are going to be sufficient to salve this wound.
[T]he praise and the invective intensified after Monday’s announcement in Houston that a grand jury had indicted Daleiden and one of his colleagues, Sandra Merritt, on a felony charge for using fake driver’s licenses to gain access to a Planned Parenthood facility in Texas. Daleiden was also indicted on a misdemeanor count related to purchasing human organs; Planned Parenthood says it turned down an “astronomical amount” offered by Daleiden to procure fetal organs.
It appears Daleiden was trying to prove his dishonest story by becoming the story, a time-honored journalism technique since…never. The grand jury did indeed follow the evidence…and it led them straight to Daleiden and Merritt. Both responded by claiming the mantle of responsible journalism. That specious claim aside, they failed to explain how obtaining fake government documents and attempting to bait PP employees into agreeing to sell baby parts is either “responsible” or representative of anything resembling “journalism.”
It appears the unprincipled, morally vacant pursuit of “Gotcha!!” journalism (a la James O’Keefe) has come back to haunt Daleiden and Merritt. Yes, karma can be a real bitch sometimes…and it can be SO hard to find a good witch hunt these days. Especially when the wrong witches get indicted.
I’ll grant Daleiden and Merritt their right to believe abortion is wrong, but that doesn’t confer upon them the right to break the law, toss aside journalistic integrity, and just generally be as dishonest as they feel they need to in order to find “evidence” that proves their “case.” For my part, I hope the (not so) Dynamic Duo serve every bit of the 20 years behind bars they’re facing. Their dishonest attempt to smear good people in an effort to serve their ideological ends deserves nothing less.
