Ray Bradbury put the words in his Guy Montag, his hero’s, mind: “Fahrenheit four-five-one is the temperature at which book paper catches fire and starts to burn.”  Although we don’t know how much heat CNN is pouring on the folks at YouTube, but we know it is enough to squash video that has been circulating via the online video clearinghouse of CNN reporter Susan Roesgen’s unprofessional interactions with protestors at a tea party in Chicago last Wednesday.

The video – which shows Roesgen posing stilted questions and then arguing with selected protestors – was shot by Andrew Marcus of Founding Bloggers and quickly made the rounds of conservative web sites and blogs last week (with the help of Twitter, the information superconductor) before CNN convinced YouTube to put it in cold storage on grounds of copyright issues.

CNN rarely claims copyright on items that place it in a good light, but they are not under any obligation to equally apply the law.  Clearly, an incident that arouses this much reaction, paints the network in its proper shade of pink, and is followed by the reporter’s ‘previously scheduled’ (wink, wink) leave of absence, does nothing good for the network.  Lawyers are tapped.  The video disappears.  Or does it?

Michelle Malkin has posted copy of the video to her YouTube channel and suggests a kind of bucket brigade to keep the video circulating outpace the CNN watchdogs.  Malkin writes, “Grab a copy of the forbidden video and post it yourself on YouTube,” citing the “I am Spartacus” strategy proposed by fellow blogger Patterico who has done yeoman’s work documenting Roesgen’s pattern of biased reporting going all the way back to the Jena 6.

While available, I have embedded the YouTube video for you here:

A video that only show the on-air portion of Roesgen’s exchanges with tea party protestors also still available (for the time being) at Eyeblast, or you can watch it through the embedded player right here.

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