MSNBC Analyst's Claims About 'Obscene' Attack on AOC Undermined When Reporter Goes Digging
I’m kind of surprised that an alleged graffito in the bathroom of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport is actual news in 2019, specifically when we don’t actually know what it said and only know who it’s about.
Then again, when you consider it involves Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, there’s little that should surprise us — including the fact that said graffito may not have even existed and could have been a figment of an MSNBC analyst’s claims.
So, the saga of the alleged hateful scrawl in the bathroom of an airport begins on Tuesday morning when David Corn — D.C. bureau chief for liberal rag Mother Jones and MSNBC contributor — tweeted about the anti-Ocasio-Cortez vandalism.
“I just spotted obscene anti-@AOC graffiti in a bathroom stall in the Phoenix airport,” he tweeted. “Yes, really. (Not going to post a photo of it.)”
I just spotted obscene anti-@AOC graffiti in a bathroom stall in the Phoenix airport. Yes, really. (Not going to post a photo of it.)
— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) March 5, 2019
Looking at the tweet in isolation, I didn’t think I would need to see a photo of the “obscene anti-@AOC graffiti” Corn was talking about. In fact, the only part of this tweet that interested me is the fact that Corn engaged in one of my random pet peeves: using “graffiti” to refer to a single instance of vandalism as opposed to the correct singular form of the noun, “graffito.”
The kind of person who would scrawl something on a bathroom stall with a marker is also the kind of person who would use said marker for purposes of intoxication; I’m not terribly concerned with their political opinions and I’m surprised Corn would be, though his opinions on Ocasio-Cortez are probably diametrically opposed to mine. There wasn’t anything remotely interesting about this tweet — that is, until the airport responded to him.
Thanks for the follow-up. Our Facilities team checked the restrooms in the area last night, and although they didn’t find anything, those restrooms are checked and cleaned several times a day.
— PHX Sky Harbor (@PHXSkyHarbor) March 6, 2019
OK, so that’s slightly curious. The Daily Wire’s Amanda Prestigiacomo asked further questions regarding the graffito. (Which she called graffiti as well, proof that there are some things both the left and the right get wrong.)
Hi Amanda, we did have our custodians check the restrooms in Terminal 2 and they let us know that they did not find anything. That doesn’t mean something wasn’t cleaned up earlier in the day. Thanks,
— PHX Sky Harbor (@PHXSkyHarbor) March 6, 2019
Amber Athey of The Daily Caller decided to dig a bit deeper. (Although not deeply enough to consult a dictionary regarding the proper use of that g-word — for the love of Pete, people.) Smelling a minor-league Jussie Smollett incident, she messaged the MSNBC contributor and asked him if she could see the picture of the infamous graffito.
“Corn replied that he did not trust me enough to share the photo with me online, an admission I found somewhat ironic considering a whole lot of people didn’t trust Corn enough to think the graffiti was real,” she wrote in a Friday article. “Nonetheless, Corn offered to show me the photo in person if I dropped by his office the next day.
“We ended up meeting at a coffee shop between our two offices on Thursday morning, and Corn requested I record our conversation, which I was happy to do. As a condition of seeing the photograph of the anti-AOC graffiti, I had to agree not to quote what the graffiti actually said.
“Given the relative lengths I had to go to just to catch a glimpse of this photo, I was preparing myself for something pretty wild.
“The graffiti consisted of three words and compared Ocasio-Cortez to poop.”
You can probably take a decent guess as to what it said. Corn, however, was a bit more concerned about the timestamp on the photograph to prove he wasn’t engaging in a low-stakes Morton Downey Jr. airport stunt.
“You can see the time it was taken. Tuesday, 1 o’clock p.m.,” Corn told Athey. “Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. And if that doesn’t trust you, you can do the information, and it says ‘places: Sky Harbor Blvd., Phoenix, Sky Harbor Airport,’ with a little photo in the middle of the map.”
Athey then asked whether or not he sent the picture to authorities at Sky Harbor International Airport. “I didn’t DM them, because I said follow me and I will DM you the picture, and they never followed me,” he said.
“And they didn’t DM you?” she responded.
“No, there are no DMs. They said they sent someone to look, and they didn’t find it,” he replied. “I think they probably had more important things to worry about at the airport.”
“At least I hope so,” he added. “And I was able to, you know, I was curious how indelible it might be. So I took a piece of toilet paper and rubbed one of the letters, and with a lot of elbow grease it came off, and then I just kind of stopped.”
The rest of the interview was a melange of strangeness. Corn says he thought the Ocasio-Cortez-related graffito was worth being mentioned because it was so far from her home district. (The idea that maybe it was one of her constituents passing through Phoenix was never explored, though it seems unlikely.)
There was also a discussion regarding whether liberals would have attacked a Daily Caller writer who tweeted about vandalism regarding a conservative the same way conservatives attacked him on Twitter. (Somewhat unsurprisingly, Corn doesn’t think they would while Athey wasn’t so sure.)
And then there was talk over the nature of the responses he received.
“The attacks ranged from questioning my sanity to questioning my masculinity,” Corn said. “People say I’m only doing this because I want to date her. I mean, why are so many of the criticisms about her sexualized? That’s a pretty interesting question. And then also people saying I should kill myself … I mean that’s a pretty over-the-top question.”
Again, peoples’ responses on Twitter are roughly as telling regarding the political climate of the country as graffito-writing marker fiends at Sky Harbor International Airport are. That doesn’t mean there weren’t valid reasons to question this foul-sounding story.
The fact that there’s a subset of Twitterers who aren’t playing with a full deck doesn’t make “over-the-top” insults such as Corn is talking about right, but it puts them in context. They’re not coming from bureau chiefs for Mother Jones or analysts for MSNBC.
Corn is both of those things, and while Athey seems to have proved (to herself, at least) the scrawl existed and that someone thinks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is comparable to poop, it’s still a truly bizarre story that people were right to question. Why was this worth tweeting about in the first place? Why didn’t the airport find evidence of the vandalism? Why the strange John le Carré-worthy meeting at a coffee shop to show a Daily Caller reporter the photo? Why not send the picture to anyone — in particular, someone at Sky Harbor Airport?
“Long story short, I can confirm that the anti-AOC graffiti exists,” Athey said at the conclusion of her story. “I’m not sure it was worth a 15-minute walk in below-freezing weather, but it is, in fact, real.”
Yes, but we still don’t know why there was so much secrecy or why we can’t examine the evidence. And I still don’t know why people think “graffiti” is now acceptable in both the plural and the singular. Inquiring minds want to know.
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