“. . . that didn’t stop him from launching the smear campaign. And that’s what Andrew Breitbart and Fox News and the right-wing media does. They’ve been doing it for a long time and it’s sort of ugly and contemptible, and if he had any decency, he’d apologize to Shirley Sherrod. He’d also stop with this incessant race-baiting that we’ve seen.”
— Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America
A couple of points: First, Andrew Breitbart didn’t fire Shirley Sherrod; Tom Vilsack did. Secondly, according to Steve Doocy, “Fox News never mentioned the story until after Sherrod had quit” — and if Doocy is right, as Dan Riehl says, the administration’s pre-emptive Blame-Fox excuse is non-operative.
Summer is a great time for blog-fights because traffic always goes down during the summer anyway, and you might as well be in a pissing match as trying to get people to pay attention to politics on the cusp of the Fourth of July. (Why do you think Pat Leahy scheduled the Kagan hearings now, anyway?)
I didn’t know Dave Weigel from a hole in the wall until January 2010. At that time, I was researching and blogging about an idiot named Dale Robertson — who was caught holding this sign at a Houston Tea Party event. Dave Weigel broke the story for a wider audience and it was picked up by Chuckles at Little Green Footballs . . .
Weigel’s original story reported this reaction from the Houston Tea Party Society:
Update: Josh Parker of the Houston Tea Party Society tells me that Robertson was booted out of the event for this sign.I thought to myself: Wow, now there’s a newsworthy nugget that Chuckles seems to find irrelevant in his zeal to tar and feather all Tea Partiers as racists. . . .
Even Media Matters reported the Houston Tea Party Society’s repudiation of Robertson because Dave Weigel reported on it! Some folks at Houston TPS were kind enough to give me some praise for blogging on their behalf, but it was really Dave Weigel who got the Houston TPS their due in a way I never could have with my miniscule following.
When the online Left, and even the Washington Times, tried to elevate Robertson as a “Tea Party Leader,” Weigel pushed back against this clearly erroneous meme. Dave didn’t do that to curry favor with anyone, but simply because this raaaaacism smear was a bogus hit-job, an illegitimate narrative that was being exploited to perpetuate a falsehood.
From the Fringe to the Mainstream
Several of my friends have pointed to Weigel’s habit of covering the fringes of the conservative movement, the goofs and nutballs and tinfoil-hatters. “He’s just interested in making us look bad,” seems to be the basic complaint.
Actually, I think this points to Weigel having the same Hit-‘Em-Where-They-Ain’t instinct that drives a lot of my reporting expeditions. Rather than engaging in pack journalism — jumping on the big Story Of The Day that everybody and his mother is already covering — there’s more news opportunity (and a lot more fun) in reporting stuff that isn’t yet on the radar of the mainstream press.
Hit ’em where they ain’t: Find a developing story that deserves more coverage and then jump into it neck-deep.
That approach to reporting works no matter what the story is. Who was the first music critic to see the breakthrough potential of the Ramones or REM or Nirvana? Better yet, who set out on an expedition to North Wilkesboro, N.C., in 1965 to cover a hillbilly pastime that now rivals the NFL as America’s favorite sport?
In politics, the hit-’em-where-they-ain’t approach means keeping an eye out for long-shot candidates and marginalized movements. The nature of American politics is that today’s kooky fringe is tomorrow’s rising insurgency and perhaps next year’s power structure.
Obama’s early association with the fringe leftovers of the ’60s New Left (Bill Ayers, et al.) led to a successful campaign fueled in large measure by the same anti-American kooks who thought Ned Lamont would make a good senator. Glenn Beck has become a TV star and bestselling author in large measure by chronicling shady connections among members of today’s Democratic/Progressive coalition — connections once known only to readers of publications that most reporters would dismiss as “right-wing fringe” — including WorldNetDaily, David Horowitz’s Discover the Networks and the John Birch Society’s New American magazine. (Hey, who has the lowdown when the story is a Russian spy?)
Whatever Weigel’s sins, his reporting on the Dale Robertson meme shows that at times he performed the valuable journalistic service of separating the factual wheat from the bogus chaff in MSM coverage of the Right. I’ll also remind you of Liz Mair’s suspicion that Weigel got burned by a progressive on Journolist for the “sin” of defending Rand Paul.
And by doing such things, Weigel pissed in Charles Johnson’s cornflakes.
Rep. Ron Paul (R, Tex.) knew that I liked him, and that I was voting for him — although that didn’t stop me from co-writing a story about the history of racist comments in newsletters he published. Bob Barr knew that I liked him, and trusted me enough to tell me, off-the-record, what he thought of people. I kept that trust with people, and people kept it with me. In this business you have to keep that trust or no one will talk to you, and then you can only learn what people want you to know. . . .
Yeah. It’s all about access. But . . . access to what?
Previously in this blog, in the “Joan Walsh: The Smoker She Drinks, The Player She Gets” episode, we explored Joan’s ludicrous assertion of earlier, pre-racial epithet video from March 20th at the Capitol Building being used in place of some hypothetical footage that would substantiate the false claims. Walsh:
As a friend notes, “It’s like running video of the Twin Towers on 9/10 to prove 9/11 didn’t happen.”
I caught the retiring, unassuming and altogether mellow Mr. Breitbart just after he had finished electrifying the crowd at the Washington Monument, and queried him concerning Ms. Walsh and Salon:Unofficial money quote transcript:
The point of showing that sequence is to show the tenor of the tea party crowd. They were boisterous. They were upset. And they were saying ‘Kill the bill, kill the bill, kill the bill’. And [the media] impugned the entire Tea Party movement. And that video shows you , as best as one could possibly show, that the narrative constructed falsely by the press, and its aiders and abettors in the shit new media like Salon, is that they wanted to be part of the team that impugned the Tea Party movement and toxified it in perpetuity as racist. And. They. Failed.
Upset? Rather. I was there, sporting my USS Constitution ballcap, albeit not present near the alleged incident:
Follow the link for the full shot with the crowd and Capitol Building in the background. As with the other half a dozen Tea Party events I’ve attended, it was a congenial, patriotic affair, deeply suspicious of the current Congress/Administration sort of affair.
The punchline to Walsh’s beclownment is that, when questioned in an old-school journalistic fashion, the so-called witnesses are walking back their stories.
Andrew Breitbart isn’t fit to spit-shine the shoes of civil rights hero and Congressman John Lewis. It’s ludicrous to think that the right-wing bully believed he had the moral or political standing to call Lewis a liar, after Lewis and two other black congressmen reported they were called “nigger” by tea partiers during the healthcare reform vote March 20. Lewis’s word on the confrontation is good enough for me.
What about personality-free facts? Videos shot on the spot? What about the fact that Breitbart backs up his claims with money? What about the fact that Breitbart, while arguably abrasive, as truth can be at times, has a sterling reputation?
Now comes news that Breitbart is the liar – or at least the misleader. Video he’s been peddling to “prove” the congressmen were not called the N-word was actually after the slurs occurred. As a friend notes, “It’s like running video of the Twin Towers on 9/10 to prove 9/11 didn’t happen.” Of course the videos Breitbart peddled to claim ACORN helped a supposed pimp and prostitute set up a child-prostitution ring have also been found misleading, at best. The California Attorney General’s review said they were “severely edited” and in fact “showed no violation of the law.” New York authorities concluded the same thing.
Was the video from after the alleged incident? You must have a hard timestamp for the purported event yourself to back up this claim of time shenanigans, Walsh. Why not trot out some facts to back up your claim? Could there be a total lack of facts on your side of the argument?
The video of the perp walk is not like running two different September 2001 videos, Walsh. 9/11 actually happened, with mass casualties.
Your attempt to link an unproven, suspect allegation of a bad word to an act of terrorism is sad, gross, and demonstrates a lack of both judgement and proportionality on your part. Boo, hiss, Walsh.
And don’t even bring up Jerry Brown in defense of ACORN. If ACORN was even slightly innocent, and Breitbart even vaguely in the wrong, do you think that Federal funding would have been cut, and ACORN putting forth so much effort to rebrand itself?
Forget the rhetoric, Walsh: the money talks in both the racial epithet and the ACORN cases, and your insipid attempts at smearing Andrew Breitbart mark you a sad little tool. And now, for therapy, let’s shift from Joan to Joe:
“Best photo ever!” Lyndsey Fifield exclaimed after seeing this photo of a conversation at Friday’s New Orleans blogger bash off Chartres Street near the levee:
Lyndsey reacts to Breitbart’s remark — a Tulane alumnus, Breitbart was confirming that New Orleans voodoo is a reality — as Dave Weigel of the Washington Post and political operative Zach Oldham stare in stunned amazement. The conversation continued as Breitbart made several bizarre gestures, their symbolism only understood by the Tulane voodoo cult:
Because I didn’t take notes of the conversation, I cannot confirm that Breitbart was actually performing a voodoo ritual meant to endow cult inductees with online mojo.
Breitbart, Lyndsey and GOP New Media strategist Ali Akbar, who seriously covets the Tulane voodoo secrets. Of course, I don’t believe in voodoo and laughed when Breitbart told me that the mojo has been known to perform strange transformations on Bourbon Street — even in broad daylight.
Oldham snapped this photo Sunday morning in the French Quarter, and claims that it shows a well-known voodoo victim. But you can’t believe that kind of crazy stuff on the Internet . . .
Dave Weigel was asking Breitbart about criticism of the O’Keefe-Giles ACORN sting videos. And then a guy from CBS News asked some more questions:
Right now, I’m blogging this upstairs while a Blogger Bash is going on downstairs. Breitbart is supposed to be here in a little while. We’ve got jamabalaya, sausage, red beans and rice, and there’s a cold keg on tap. Already on-site: Tabitha Hale, Ed Morrissey, Anita Montcrief, Rick Moran, Melisa Clouthier and others to be named and photographed later in scandalous conditions of drunkenness and debauchery. Watch for updates . . .
In an otherwise splendid post on the Left’s deconstruction plans for our country, I submit that he may need to revisit an assertion:
The Democrats need to kill the Tea Party movement. They need to marginalize and demonize those who would stand up to their hardball, toxic and anti-democratic tactics. Their strategy is to bait and incite the Tea Party and to use whatever they can get to silence the awakening giant. They have failed, epically, and the American people now see these tactics for what they are. At long last, new people every day are beginning to understand the kinds of people we are dealing with here.
The Tea Party movement is at or near the ‘too big to fail’ point.
When anyone, e.g. Andrew himself, is calling their bluff to the tune of six figures, outright destruction will be too hard.
Expect judo.
If I’m the Left, I’m building up Sarah Palin, and her negatives as well. I want Ross Perot in a skirt. The only feasible strategy against the Right is to divide it against itself. Work to get Tea Party candidate victories who are as ill-screened as BHO himself to knock out more qualified candidates in the primaries, so that the video of them gathered with several species of small furry animals together in a cave, grooving can come out just in time for the election, bringing back the Democrat.
Too, these pesky cel phone cameras are making shenanigans rather hard.
As they did at Duke, the brain-dead press went along with it – and so, predictably enough, did much of the Republican leadership.
The press are more than brain-dead: they are complicit, wholly-owned subsidiaries of their lying overlords. If I’m wrong, I’ll cheerfully retract the accusation, but the evidence clearly seems to indicate that they say what they are told and when.
So the real approach to dealing with the Tea Parties is going to be divide and conquer, I expect. And those divisions will likely be about primary candidates, attempting to fragment Tea Partiers to be loyal to specific candidates, instead of supporting the GOP candidate, however odious. For example, in the case Rand Paul has to run as an Independent in Kentucky, and splits the conservative vote, then the Democratic Party overlords win. I would expect that copious funding will become available . . . from somewhere . . . in cases like that.
“We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
-Benjamin Franklin in the Continental Congress just before signing the Declaration of Independence, 1776.
