Gilmore Gang Guilty of "Trackerphobia"?

First and foremost, you need to know that Lowell and I discussed by telephone earlier this (Tuesday, July 8) afternoon several titles for this diary, and it easily could have been named "Tracker Paranoia?" or "Tracker Confronted!" or even "Tracker's Rights Marginalized?!"  With Lowell's help, I finally settled on the "Gilmore Gang" reference above since that is one of my favorite phrases to describe former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore and many of his paid and volunteer campaigners.

As you may know, Jim Gilmore was on the U. S. Senate campaign trail today along the I-81 corridor, and he stopped off at the Orange Market convenience store outside Salem in Roanoke County at 9:00 A.M. for a scheduled media event there.

As an avid Mark Warner for U. S. Senate volunteer, I promised his campaign's Courtney Dozier that I would take along and employ my large, old VHS video camera while attending the Roanoke County event, especially since its location is so close to my home and my office, at a place where I do business every week, and that's important, as you will soon see...
I arrived at the Orange Market just before 9:00 A.M. and, wearing a white, short-sleeved dress shirt and black pants and carrying my big old camera, I blended in easily with the news media who had already gathered there.  Of course, they all knew me and began giving me a hard time about my "new job", but it was all in good fun and there was much laughter and good-natured ribbing.

So, for the ensuing 35 minutes or so, I freely filmed Jim Gilmore talking with various convenience market customers and its owner about the high price of gasoline and why - according to Gilmore - that is all Mark Warner's fault, and how Gilmore intended to fix everything immediately if elected to the U. S. Senate.  

During that entire time I kept a very respectful distance between me and Jim Gilmore, stayed out of the way of the media, never asked a single question nor made a single comment.  

If you look closely, you can catch glimpses of me filming Gilmore in these July 8 clips from WSLS TV Channel 10 (NBC affiliate) News available at this link:  http://www.wsls.com/sls/news/l... and on WDBJ TV Channel 7 (CBS affiliate) News available at this link:  http://www.wdbj7.com/Global/st... while always doing so at respectful distances.

Finally, at the end of the formal interview stage of this campaign stop, when the various news media had put away their cameras and gathered up their microphones and other equipment, and after I had turned off my camera and was preparing to leave, I was challenged by one of the Gilmore Gang's members, a young lady who introduced herself as being on his staff, asked my name and then began to question why I was there and what I was going to do with my video recording.  

At last she asked if I had been employed by Mark Warner to film the event, and I laughed and assured her that I had not.  (Heck, I thought to myself, I was having way too much fun to ever even think of asking anyone to pay me to do this!)

As I walked away from the dwindling gathering, I overheard one of the local network reporters ask Gilmore what he thought about Jim Webb's decision to withdraw his name from consideration as a possible vice-presidential running mate with Barack Obama, so I turned my camera back on and began filming Gilmore's response, and this is when it got interesting...

After a few seconds, a tall young man stepped in front of me in order to block my view of Gilmore, so I moved around to the side and continued to film Gilmore's response.  Then someone's hand was placed directly in front of the camera lens, and when I attempted to move out of the way of this obstruction, the person continued to keep his hand in front of the camera.  

I laughed and pulled the camera away from my face but kept the camera recording, and the same young lady then explained that this was a media event and that trackers were to stay at least 10 feet back from Gilmore at all times.  Of course, by that time I was considerably farther back from him than 10 feet, but that little detail didn't seem to matter to them.

I asked if she was telling me that there is a rule or a law that I could not videotape Gilmore, but then another young man answered my question by saying that there was no law that prevented him from placing his hand in front of my camera.

By then, this particular Gilmore Gang gathering consisted of the young lady and three young men, and they circled around me and continued to challenge my purpose for being there and decided that they would have the Orange Market's owner ask me to leave.

I explained to them that the owner and I were good friends but, of course, they challenged me on that, too.  It must not have mattered to them that I had been inside the owner's store earlier and had filmed his entire conversation with Gilmore for a full two minutes with no objections raised whatsoever.

I made sure to videotape the faces of all four Gilmore Gang members before I left, but I certainly did not want to place the Orange Market's owner in the position of having to decide whether to ask a long-time customer and friend to leave his business premises, so I left quietly of my own accord.

Of course, all of this is on tape, and I also took along a friend to serve as a witness in case that became necessary.  As we left the Orange Market premises, one of the young male Gilmore Gang members followed us across the parking lot and kept watch on us as we crossed the street, talked together for a moment and then got into our cars to leave.

Tomorrow morning my video tape will be converted to several DVDs and I will also have those final 90 seconds - when the Gilmore Gang obstructed and confronted me - of filming converted to either a JPEG or an MPEG file so that it can be transmitted via e-mail to the Warner campaign, to Raising Kaine if you'd like, and perhaps to YouTube for greater potential broadcast purposes.

Your opinions, please:  Would you like to see the video - or at last those final 90 seconds - here on RK, and is this episode worthy of YouTube publication?

Thanks!

Steve  

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