Hey there, Wells here with the Austin Chronicle, an alt-weekly serving that blue oasis in the reddest of states – Austin, Texas. We've been covering the November races with our own video blog, Hail to the Hustle, and this week we filmed an interview with Rick Noriega, running to unseat John "Box Turtle" Cornyn for his United States Senate seat.
At an early voting kickoff rally we attended, Rick gave a fiery speech espousing his vision of election night in the lone star state. We wrapped our episode, uploaded it to YouTube, and began work om the next one. All was good – or so we thought, until Friday afternoon.
That was when a coworker alerted us to the presence of this John Cornyn video ... and all hell broke loose. We described the following on our blog, Newsdesk:
This new web-only campaign ad from incumbent Texas Sen. John Cornyn tries – pretty lamely, in fact – to link challenger Rick Noriega to the infamous Howard Dean Scream. (What year are we in, exactly, John?) Thing is, at the 22 second mark, look who they lifted the footage from:
That's right, Cornyn jacked the footage from our own Hail to the Hustle, with no permission! You can see the Noriega speech – where he humorously fires up the crowd with his vision of election night – around the 5:40 mark.
Funny Cornyn didn't air any of the interview footage later in the episode where Noriega punks him out but good. As for the unsanctioned, unapproved, and unstatesmanlike use of the Hustle's footage, well ... we're considering all our options.
As for those options: we've sent a cease and desist to the Cornyn campaign, but as you can see, the video is still up. Guess they call him Big Bad John for a reason.