Dear Dirty America

Credit: Jane Rahman

What you need to know from the first reports:

San Diego Police Department Lieutenant Andrea Brown tells a local NBC affiliate that Russell was found masturbating in public, vandalizing cars and possibly under the influence of an unknown substance at around 11:30 am on Thursday. Authorities detained him at the intersection of Ingraham Street and Riviera Drive in San Diego, only a stone’s throw from the Pacific Ocean.

When the Kony 2012 campaign was released earlier this month, Russell’s activism group, Invisible Children, described him on their website as being the “grand storyteller and dreamer” behind their operation. By Friday afternoon, however, the bio page of the Invisible Children website was unavailable.

Within minutes of the news of his arrest being released on Friday, the group issued a statement. Invisible Children CEO Ben Keesey published an one-paragraph press release, but did not touch on the topic of arrest. Instead, Keesey says, “Jason Russell was unfortunately hospitalized yesterday suffering from exhaustion, dehydration and malnutrition.” (source)

Maybe all of that “Sesame Street for adults” horseshit drove him crazy. Or maybe it’s the millions of dollars raised by Russell’s company, Invisible Children, that enticed him to eat strange substances that altered his mind and make him behave this way. After all, both directors of IC rake in around $90,000 a year from their labor of love.

See also:

Kony 2012 is “Bullshit”