Pastor Cole's Stunt on National News [NBC; Harry Smith reporting]

#revonthestreets

The text to this NBC News segment can be found here.

What is annoying for those of us Sacramentans who followed the story while it happened, a month ago, are several things

One is that this all happened a month ago. When will it end? And how is this news for a nightly news show.

The footage for this "news" segment was mostly shot very recently, on Nov. 24th, not from Oct. 1 to Oct. 14 when Cole was walking around downtown pretending to be homeless. Viewers unfamiliar with Cole's shenanigans will be unaware of the deception.

NBC has very significantly -- if not totally -- faked this "news" segment. Cole, infamously, had very little interaction with real, live homeless people when he was on his early-in-November two-week sojourn. But this news segment shows Cole talking to homeless people -- but what we see was filmed on Nov. 24, with most at the end filmed in Friendship Park. It's faked!

I suppose people will say, "Well, sure it's faked, but that's not Cole's fault; NBC put together the story." But it is fake-Christian Cole's fault. He eagerly participates in this deception.

One thing that is pleasing is that when Harry Smith was at Loaves & Fishes on the 24th, he at first spoke to Libby Fernandez and Rick Cole who were inseparable (like Sonny & Cher) but Libster is fully absent from the NBC News report. I am sure that the media maven is boiling mad; she has a desperate need to be in the news, on TV. As homeless folk and other Sacramentans know, she will even push homeless people out of the camera frame when a TV film crew is on Loaves & Fishes property. Libby is like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard: "You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!... All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."

Yes, yes. "Those wonderful people ... in the dark!" If only Sacramento citizens knew what us homeless people know. Donations-grabbing would be so much more difficult for Loaves & Fishes (and, in his way, for Rick Cole).

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