ABC's Prank News Show Almost Gets Actor Playing Anti-Gay Counselor 'Killed'
[UPDATED with video.] ABC's prank undercover news show What Would You Do on Friday again attempted to find secret, anti-gay bias, this time featuring a counselor telling a sobbing teen that he needs to "pray away the gay." Host John Quinones managed to drag Michelle Bachmann into the topic and seemed to have no problem when a patron asserted he was going to "kill" the actor playing the counselor.
The program set up a hidden camera in a New Jersey pancake house. Narrator/host Quinones introduced the counselor as someone "who believes the power of prayer can change anything." A bizarre close-up of his mouth appeared onscreen and echoing sound effects are used as he proclaimed, "Together, we can pray the gay away. [Echoes] Away." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
Dragging the former presidential candidate into ABC's version of Candid Camera, Quinones derided, "The controversy has even made its way into presidential politics. Marcus Bachmann."
He added, "A clinic owned by Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and her husband was accused of practicing something called reparative therapy."
At the diner, an eavesdropping woman attacked the counselor, "You've got that amazingly calm demeanor that says serial killer to me."
Quinones cheered the woman's husband, "Their pancakes may be cold, but the man is on fire."
After being informed the falsity of the situation, the angry man told the faux counselor, "You are absolutely fantastic. And you almost died!"
This is the exact same thing that happened when ABC trolled for anti-gay marriage bias in New York. For more on that, go here.
On the What Would You Do website, viewers can submit their own undercover scenarios. How about one featuring a fake reporter making liberal, sneering comments to real journalists?
[Thanks to MRC intern Brent Scher for assistance with the video.]
To read a version of this article with a transcript, go here.
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Comments
⇒ Johnny Queenones
Submitted by Cool Arrow on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 2:21pm.
Wasn't there a big kerfuffle about James O'keefe misrepresenting himself as a pimp?
Didn't the [sniff] professional journalism world pooh pooh such tactics?
i predict that the pro-gay
Submitted by TruthMonger on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 2:39pm.
i predict that the pro- gay phenomen will end up like abortion in popularity and then eventually find itself in decline again - take that PC crowd
Congratulations Jimmy Carter!
What will make their heads explode
Submitted by Tugboat Phil on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 3:48pm.
suppose there actually is a genetic trait for homosexuality and that it can be determined prenatally? How will the abortionists and gays behave when people come in to have gay fetuses aborted?
We're beginning to see similar fights among lefties with pro-windmill, eco-nuts fighting with pro-animal, eco-nuts.
Bravo Sir!
Submitted by FearMonger on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 4:03pm.
Heads would indeed explode!
Just like AGW
Submitted by shayne62 on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 7:16pm.
Just like the Global Warming hoax, it will be ignored and true believers will double down.
never been a zygote
Submitted by Injest on Tue, 02/14/2012 - 3:46am.
Lets add to the debate that only those who have never been a zygote can vote on this issue
ABC News is making sure that
Submitted by deerjerkydave on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 2:42pm.
ABC News is making sure that you are a good liberal. If not, they will smear you as being a heartless bigot. What John Quinones is doing with his left wing self righteousness is possibly the lowest form of programming on television.
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"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. -James MadisonCandid Camera "journalism"
Submitted by rwesley2.0 on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 3:40pm.
Candid Camera "journalism" like this is usually the only way to get scenarios like this caught on camera. Those of us who don't agree with the homosexual agenda usually keep our beliefs to ourselves, not disrupting others in public by being outlandishly outspoken. That, and we're mostly at work, doing something productive during a greater part of the day.
funny... I was just thinking about this yesterday...
Submitted by FearMonger on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 3:47pm.
Here's a scenario for John Q...
Outside the grocery store (assume it's a Whole Foods considering the subject of this 'prank')... a stranger approaches John Q as he's loading his haul into his car. The stranger shows John Q a bag full of beautiful T-Bone Steaks just purchased inside the Whole Foods Store. The total on the steaks is well over $50 but the stranger offers them to John Q for half that price. John Q looks at the stranger incredulously and says "What's the catch?". The stranger says "Well, I can't buy my Beer and Cigs with food stamps. This way I get cash and you get a deal... everybody's happy!"
What would John Q do?
btw... they should thank me for providing them this scenario. Unlike the standard fare on his misguided show, MY scenario actually happens in the real world every damned day.
I think you should send it in...
Submitted by Rover on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 6:06pm.
They actually might go for it.
Another
Submitted by grammajane on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 4:39pm.
stupid and liberal political show with little or no viewers. Some how they will probably have a show blaming President Bush for all of Barry's failures. Am very tired of all the gay stuff being, to the media, a short-coming of Conservatives and enough already.
Only one customer sided with our "counselors"...
Submitted by upcountrywater on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 5:04pm.
The Journolist ‘Kafir’ shook hands the customers wife. @ the last 2 seconds of video.
ABC's prank undercover news, kook loses hand in freak accident.
You Didn't Build That.
They should call it the O'Keefe Factor
Submitted by BarneyFrankenstein on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 5:07pm.
This is just a rip off of what James does, they might as well go all the way with it and name it after him.
But since they are suggesting scenarios looking for hatred and intolerance, how bout going to Greenwich Village and campaigning for Rick Santorum?
I guarantee they will see all the hateful, vile things they were hoping to see with this setup expose.
Yup...
Submitted by FearMonger on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 5:26pm.
and no provocation necessary, just standard campaign rhetoric.
They should've had a camera on me that time I went to a Public Enemy concert. Bigotry is in the eye of the majority.
In the previous week's show,
Submitted by Rover on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 6:04pm.
In the previous week's show, they ran a skit in which a boy, maybe 9 years old, was working in a grocery store and being treated very badly by the manager, to see what customers would do when they saw it. That scenario was okay in-and-of itself, BUT they threw in a picture of Gingrich and talked about his suggestion that we put school kids to work providing janitorial services in their schools, AS IF the scenario they showed is what Gingrich was suggesting or what the outcome would be. They implied that Gingrich was suggesting child slave labor rather than a character-building program to prepare children for productive lives.
Generally (maybe 75% of the time) this show's scenarios range from harmless to thought-provoking, so I'm still watching it, although I think they're running out of good ideas. But occasionally they lapse into this outrageous liberal misrepresentation of our society.
I remember the scenario last season when, at a resturant in Arizona, an actor protraying a security guard demanded to see IDs of an Hispanic-looking family (also actors; and suggesting that this is what the AZ immigration law allows) to see what the other customers would do. As the customers almost universally told him to take a hike and stood up for the family, MY interpretation of the results of their "experiment" would be that Arizona is NOT as racist as the media and Administration are portraying them. Instead, the show concluded that THESE Arizonans are not as racist at the rest of the State is. In effect, they came into the restaurant with their conclusion already made, and were going to stick with it regardless of what the outcome of their test.
Will they just keep doing the
Submitted by rowdygirl on Tue, 02/14/2012 - 1:01pm.
Will they just keep doing the same thing until someone DOES get hurt?
Tam