Dear New York Times: YouTube is Censoring Satirical News Videos Based on Publicly Available Information
Rich Girard-Little Mel “Sexting” Videos Are Being Taken Off YouTube
Youtube is taking down satirical videos based on a 2014 political sex scandal (involving “sexting”) in which the names of the politician, the other party (reportedly a former sex industry worker) and the “sexts” themselves are all a matter of public record. The videos are being taken down on the subject of privacy complaints, but the person making the complaint is never named.
The politician, former Manchester, NH alderman and school board member Rich Girard is running for mayor in a three-way race against the incumbent and a woman who lost the 2019 mayor’s race. The “sexts” (Facebook prime messages) were publicly revealed by the woman whom the politician was trying to seduce. She was interviewed by the press, and was involved in another sex scandal with another politician that year.
The sexting scandal has been brought up in this campaign, although confined mostly to social media as the press and both other candidates have given Girard a pass on his indiscretion. The 2014 sexting scandal became an issue in 2018 when School Board member Girard was accused of illegally contacting an 18 year old high school girl who had written critically of him in a high school newspaper — citing federal law, her family lawyers demanded that he cease publicizing her name in a public effort to shame her. The 2014 sexting scandal was raised at this time. (Ironically the complaint of a privacy violation had to go to the NH Dept. of Education, where one of the Sec. of Education’s aid was a friend of Girard and former publisher of a Patch news website that had published articles by the woman involved in the sex scandal, whom Girard was trying to mentor and turn into a conservative talking head.)
In 2014, I had published on the Yahoo! Associated Content platform (not sure if Yahoo! picked it up for their News feed) a story about Girard harassing a woman employee of his. He never disputed the story. I ceased writing about it when a friend of the woman approached me and asked me to stop, saying she was “terrified of his power.” (At the time he was a right-wing radio talk show host.)
I’m sure Girard is really afraid of the story. I have given that story to local media, and they ignore it, even in the #metoo era. Manchester is a city of coverups (Boston diocese sent abusive priests here). My writing a petition asking the Board of Aldermen to investigate the former mayor’s coverup of a high school rape led to his suing me for libel (the suit was thrown out, the judge all but calling the mayor a liar).
As I said, YouTube is taking down my videos that satirizing a political sexting scandal. Manchester, NH — which plays an outsize role in picking a president — ignores the peccadilloes of this politician. He counts on that silence. I guess he is counting on YouTube silencing my videos, too.
