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| RTC makes false accusation. |
Peterson is Democratic mayoral candidate Ben Florsheim's campaign manager, and herself a candidate for Common Council.
In the press release, Republican Town Chairman Bill Wilson calls for Knoll to resign as campaign manager and Common Council candidate.
"I set out to serve the people of Middletown, and intend to stay on that path," Knoll said Sunday. "I conitnue to be appalled by the opposition's willingness to mislead voters. We are all members of this community and purport to serve the people of Middletown. We've been honest throughout our campaign, and have been horrified at the mistruths that the Giuliano campaign has continued to distribute."
When called and asked where he had gotten the image, Bill Wilson, the RTC chair hung up without comment.
The image in question is based on an original counterfeit Facebook post that was released in an attack on Knoll without Facebook thread context to prove its veracity. It was discredited as counterfeit.
The original counterfeit was distributed repeatedly by a Giuliano campaign worker, who confirmed that he originally received it from Joe D'Ambrose, a graphic designer and Creative Director at Palm Tree Media and Web Design. D'Ambrose has been accused of falsely claiming that the Florsheim campaign treasurer had a criminal record.
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| The counterfeit image. (Offending comment intentionally obscured.) |
In the new press release, the original counterfeit "comment" reappears and has been pasted into a counterfeit Facebook thread, then photographed as if it had appeared on a cell phone.
When shown the image, a graphic designer, who regularly creates false Facebook lookalike threads for use in advertisements and online videos, laughed. Because he does work for political campaigns, he asked that his identity not be revealed.
The graphic designer's assessment:
"It's clearly fake. The resolution is garbage compared to the rest of the image. The font bolding on Joey Fresh is different and off. In addition the font is off. Look at the "ha" in "have" vs. "ha" in "That's." The h is different (shorter vertical on the left edge) and the kerning is slightly off. In my professional opinion this is 100% fake."
"It's desperate lie from a desperate candidate," Ben Florsheim the Democratic mayoral candidate said. "It shows that he's worried about losing the election. The fact that it's already been disproven makes it all the more likely that it's not going to affect the outcome. But as obvious as this lie is, it's not the biggest lie of the campaign. That would be the notion they've been spreading that the Republicans are the only ones who care about this community. I think that if Seb really respected the people of Middletown and cared about them, as he claims to do, we would not see him treating them with this level of contempt."
In an ironic twist, the Republican Town Committee released the counterfeit image and press release in a Facebook post on the Middletown Republican Town Committee page with an image of Knoll used without permission or attribution from a video released by the Florsheim campaign.
3 comments:
All fluff. Where's the substance? What are your ideas? Where do you stand?
Do you have any idea how this kind of comment is viewed in the community?
It sounds like little children (boys, right?), calling each other names, one worse than the last, and throwing sand at each other in the sand box.
All sand and no substance! That's my beef! Makes no difference--Republication or Democrat: Where's the substance? May the gods save us from imbecils. Amen.
So Middletown’s GOP is going full monty in their attempts to lie their way into the mayor’s office. Anyone involved in creating and distributing a phony facebook post like this ought to be sued, and I’d gladly contribute to a go-fund-me page aimed at supporting that action. What a pathetic, desperate bunch of losers.
As a former teacher, I find that one of the most important aspects of information that we can teach students is to know the source of one's material. I think that there is a critical deficit of this sort of basic integrity clearly in evidence. Why would anyone forward information for which there is no factual basis and where the sources are so suspect? Is this the kind of information that we want our mayor to base his decisions on? Why are women the primary targets of these attacks? Why are there no apologies when the information turns out to be demonstrably incorrect?
Elisabeth Holder
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