Breeding victory: Jennifer Stefano, pregnant in 2010

It’s officially called the “Defending the American Dream” Summit, but I’ve decided to re-name the three-day event that begins Thursday because Jennifer Stefano, who leads the Pennsylvania chapter of Americans for Prosperity (along with her friend Katy Abram) is just so awesome. Here is Stefano on Sean Hannity’s show last week talking about the media’s rush to blame the Aurora massacre on the Tea Party:

“Well, obviously, this is such a lesser issue than the actual tragedy of the victims, which all of us — and I really think, for all the Tea Party, for all the Tea Party — we’re focused on, as every American was, thinking about the victims as we are, as mothers and fathers, what was happening there.
“But what it does, the effect of that kind of bias, that left-wing media bias has long-term effects on people on the center-right. We’re consistently — two things happen: Number One, when we are demonized as mass-murderers and racists, it undercuts our political voice. No one wants to listen to our legitimate points about debt reduction when they think we’re just a bunch of right-wing gun-toting monsters. . . .
“That media bias, that constant left-wing bias, it has an effect on people’s lives, as individuals. . . . We are treated poorly, our children are attacked, our family members.”

This is an important point: Why should one side of a political controversy be demonized this way? Who were the people at major news organizations who made that decision, to treat the Tea Party movement as a collection of dangerous extremists? Where did they get that idea? Was it from the bogus Department of Homeland Security report that was coincidentally released immediately before Tax Day 2009?

Why are major media institutions like ABC News — where George Stephanopoulos and Brian Ross falsely blamed an innocent 52-year-old Colorado Tea Party activist for the rampage committed by a deranged 24-year-old grad-school dropout — incapable of examining their own biases? Why is there never even a thought like, “Hey, maybe we should at least get a token right-winger on the news production team, to help us avoid such blatantly one-sided coverage”?

It is wrong, as I have previously explained, to look at the problem of liberal media bias with an attitude of hopeless pessimism. Journalists are human beings — they are individuals — and if we can get past the collective concept of “the media,” to focus on the individual decision-makers who are personally responsible for what Jennifer Stefano calls “constant left-wing bias,” then there is hope to make a difference.

There will be a lot of big names at this year’s AFP Defending the American Dream Summit — including Gov. Scott Walker, Rep. Paul Ryan, Mark Levin, Michelle Malkin, Anita Montcrief, Brent Bozell, Katie Pavlich, Jim Hoft, Tony Katz and Andrew Marcus — but I have just made an executive decision that this is The Jennifer Stefano Summit.

Because I am The Decider, that’s why.