The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Newsroom Management Training Video

Posted on | December 22, 2012 | 45 Comments

“The idea that I could do for a living that which I would do in my free time, for free, is the single greatest thing on the planet.”
— Andrew Breitbart, May 2007

“He had so much energy. He was so positive. . . . He was definitely a mentor. He was great to his employees. . . . He leaves behind a huge legacy.”
— Dana Loesch, March 1, 2012

“This case concerns a poorly managed but well meaning relationship gone tragically awry, resulting in the attempt by one vindictive party to sabotage the reputation and career of another. . . .
“For reasons that may just as easily be attributed to basic ideological conflicts, the working environment for Loesch became increasingly hostile.”
— Dana Loesch v. Breitbart.com LLC, December 2012

Generally speaking, when a routine personnel matter at a political news organization turns into a federal lawsuit that zooms to the top of Memeorandum, we might suspect that editorial management practices are not optimal, to say the very least.

Look, I once worked for the legendary notorious Otis Brumby, the pluperfect stereotype of the temperamental domineering publisher.

Otis recently did the world of journalism an enormous favor by dying, so that he can’t sue anyone for libel. Then again, truth is the ultimate defense and there were alway plenty of witnesses willing to testify that Otis was one evil, mean and crazy son of bitch.

A certain level of “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” in the newsroom therefore seems entirely normal to me, experience that came in quite handy during my decade at The Washington Times, another news operation where the words “commitment” and “institution” have special significance.

IYKWIMAITYD.

Megalomania as a managerial principle is perhaps a suitable topic for a graduate thesis at the University of Columbia J-school, but I digress . . .

Having further explored the background on what is now a matter of litigation (Loesch v. Breitbart.com), I think three things are obvious:

  1. Andrew Breitbart never would have let this happen;
  2. There’s much more to the story; and
  3. Dana Loesch has already won.

Whatever happens to the lawsuit, Dana is and will remain a person much beloved by the conservative Tea Party grassroots, whose light cannot possibly be kept hidden beneath a bushel.

The problem for the defendants in this lawsuit is that there is now blood in the water and the sharks — TPM, ThinkProgress, Media Matters, Mother Jones, Slate, Salon, Politico, Gawker, etc. — are going to insist on having themselves a feeding frenzy.

When McKay Coppins did his little “sources say” story in October, it pissed me off, because institutional loyalty and staff morale are essential to any news organization. It was shocking to think anyone who worked for Breitbart would have anything to say to McKay Coppins that did not begin with “fuck” and end with “you.”

Now, however, in my mind’s eye I’m seeing a 4,000-word article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, or an equally in-depth cover article in The New Republic — written by liberal journalists who despise everything that Andrew Breitbart believed — and there is nothing anyone can do at this point to prevent that from happening. Too many people are already talking, and the inherent news value is too great, to convince an editor that it’s not worth reporting at length.

Go read Dana Loesch’s lawsuit and ask yourself what is meant by such phrases as “poorly managed . . . vindictive . . . sabotage . . . basic ideological conflicts . . . increasingly hostile.”

Well, these are merely allegations, eh? So far as we can claim to know, all these things are wholly imagined by the plaintiff, and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

I first met Andrew Breitbart at CPAC in February 2007, and interviewed him for a feature profile in May 2007. I hung out with him many times over the years, including at the Michigan AFP event in February this year, just a few days before his untimely death.

And I think everyone involved in this unfortunate mess — defendant, plaintiff, and the horrified witnesses — can agree with this four-word sentence: Damn, I miss Andrew.

 

 

 


Category: Andrew Breitbart, Dana Loesch, Journalism

Put Stakes In The Hearts Of Fanny Mae And Freddy Mac

Posted on | December 22, 2012 | 15 Comments

by Smitty

This is area #234,125 for the GOP to come out with dramatic reform, to convince voters they are not part of the problem:

At ~4:00, recent Republican Artur Davis makes a brief appearance. So, he clearly has some insights into the nature of the discussion. It would do my heart proud not only to see Davis run for Congress again, now on the GOP ticket, but to champion a federalist solution that notes:

  • All houses exist in exactly one state
  • The Community Reinvestment Act was a 10th Amendment violation,
  • The result of he CRI has been economic devastation, irrespective of whatever the Good Idea Fairy was thinking, 
  • The time has come to return housing management to the 57 States.

If the Republicans are willing to talk substantial reform, the suspicion that GOP means “Glorified Obama Pets” might abate.

via preciseBlogs and Gateway Pundit

Category: HUD, Republicans

FMJRA 2.0: Relay Breakdown

Posted on | December 22, 2012 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Death Porn Media Victim Unexpectedly Negative About The Encounter

Obama’s Benghazi Fall Guys

‘He Was a Quiet Ewok, Kept to Himself a Lot. Kind of a Loner, I Guess You’d Say’

FMJRA 2.0: I Can’t Stay Long

Guns Don’t Kill People …

Criticism From a Friend: Can We Help Victims of Random Sarcasm Syndrome?

Rule Five Sunday: Night Flights

Furnishing Your Tidy Little Mind

Still Crazy, After All These Years

Patterico on Tommy Christopher and the ‘Wheelerization’ of Steven Crowder

I’d Always Taken ‘Valley of the Shadow’ As A Psalm 23 Reference

#Newtown: ‘Exotic Weapons’? Nope.

Is It ‘Metaphor’ to Suggest Erik Loomis Should Be Sodomized by Orangutangs? UPDATE: Is Professor ‘Head on a Stick’ Now Under State Police Protection?

Why the Creepy Little Weirdo Did It

Herbert Marcuse, Wile E. Coyote and the Auto-Beclownment of Erik Loomis, Ph.D.

LIVE AT FIVE: 12.19.12

University President Repudiates Professor’s Violent Anti-NRA Messages UPDATE: Associated Press Article Whitewashes Loomis Scandal

#Metaphor: Academics Sign Their Own Death Warrants by Defending Loomis

‘Candyass Blogger’ Update: Free Speech Absolutists Who Banned Mr. Althouse UPDATE: ‘These Are Historical Dildos’

Viral Video Idea, Only Minor Damage To Robert Stacy McCain Required

Leaders Are People With Followers

Don’t Get Too Fixated On The Raaaaace Card, Jonah

Professor Erik Loomis, Code Pink and the Media Hate America’s Gun Owners UPDATE: More Progressive Civility™

Gutfeld Hammers NYT’s Adolph Reed

Dana Loesch, Indentured Servant?

Top linkers this week:

  1. Lonely Conservative (8)
  2. Hogewash (6)

Everybody’s busy with preparations for Christmas or still hung over from Hanukkah, I guess. Deadline to submit links for next week’s FMJRA will be Friday, December 28.

Category: FMJRA Award

Dana Loesch, Indentured Servant?

Posted on | December 21, 2012 | 40 Comments

Rumbles of discontent at Breitbart.com, which I’d been hearing from various sources since spring, have finally erupted into actual news, as Dana Loesch has filed a federal lawsuit seeking (a) $75,000 and (b) to be released from her contactual obligations:

St. Louis talk radio host Dana Loesch, also a frequent guest on CNN, alleges in the suit filed in federal district court in St. Louis that the site is refusing to publish her work while “sabotag[ing] her attempts to labor in a similar fashion elsewhere through public misstatements and private threats to sue those who would otherwise employ Loesch.” . . .
Breitbart.com is “binding Loesch to what amounts to an indentured servitude in limbo,” she charges in the suit, which was first reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

More at the BuzzFeed. It’s unfortunate that matters came to such a pass, and I don’t want to get into the blame game in a situation where I don’t know both sides of the story.

As I said, I’ve heard “rumbles” about the Breitbart.com operation for several months, but having spent so long in the newspaper business — where every newsroom is a seething cauldron of frustrated ambition — it’s something I didn’t want to read too much into.

Dana Loesch is one of my favorite people in New Media, and I know she was one of Andrew’s favorite people. It’s just very sad to see things break down so badly so soon after Andrew’s death.

Click here to read the eight-page text of Dana’s lawsuit.

UPDATE: Now a Memeorandum thread. I’ve printed out the lawsuit and may have further comment after I read it.

UPDATE II: OK, now having skimmed over the lawsuit, the claim is that in October 2011, Breitbart.com failed to exercise its option to renew Dana’s contract for another year, so that her employment thereafter was on a month-to-month basis. In September of this year — perhaps having been offered better terms by another site — Dana gave a month’s notice of her intent to leave Breitbart.com, at which point management claimed that she was still contractually bound to the company, and threatened legal action against any company that hired Dana.

Four word come to minds: Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Without regard for contracts, it is just plain nuts for Breitbart.com to try to keep Dana if Dana wants to leave. What is this, the Mafia or something, where once you’re in, you’re in for life?

Frankly, I’ve never heard of anything like this before. It simply doesn’t make sense: If, as Dana alleges, Breitbart.com no longer wants to publish her writing, why would they prevent her from taking her work elsewhere? If her services are not valuable to them, why deny her the right to find another publisher who might value her services more?

Maybe management at Breitbart.com can explain this, or maybe I’m somehow misunderstanding the dispute, but what it looks like is, they’re trying to drive Dana Loesch off the Web altogether: She can neither write for Breitbart.com, nor write for anyone else.

How the hell can they do that in America?

UPDATE III: Linked by Doug Hagin at Daley Gator and by The Lonely Conservative. Continuing rumbles indicate that the situation with Dana Loesch may be part of a larger issue with the business model and the management philosophy at Breitbart.com: More like an old-style Hollywood studio system, oriented toward celebrity “star power,” so that if they can’t have Dana Loesch, nobody can have Dana Loesch. Or something like that, anyway.

David Martosko at the Daily Caller points out that, since Andrew died in March, “a coterie of friends of the company’s late namesake has continued to run the  company, most recently hiring a raft of conservative bloggers and reporters that  included former Washington Times staffer Kerry Picket and former Daily Caller  reporter Matthew Boyle.”

Knew they had hired Boyle, a young investigative reporter, but didn’t realize they’d also hired Picket, an ultra-aggressive Capitol Hill reporter. And, to show you how little attention I pay to these things anymore, I hadn’t seen this Dec. 10 story by Betsy Rothstein at Fishbowl DC, talking about Breitbart.com’s Stephen K. Bannon hiring up reporters by the bushel basket load, signing them up to four-year contracts:

Reporters around town being wooed for Breitbart.com include: Katie Pavlich of Townhall, Lachlan Markay of Heritage, Charlie Spiering of the Washington Examiner, Caroline May of The Daily Caller and Daniel Halper at The Weekly Standard.
Some have described a cultish feel to the process, with phrases such as “This is the way Andrew would have wanted it” being bandied about in conversation.

So, if they’ve got all this cash to throw around for hot talent in D.C., why should they insist on keeping Dana Loesch sidelined?

To repeat: Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

Category: Andrew Breitbart, Dana Loesch

Gutfeld Hammers NYT’s Adolph Reed

Posted on | December 21, 2012 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

Greg Gutfeld does a straightforward job of rebutting Adolph Reed. It’s a fairly obvious argument, but it builds nicely, and the conclusion is effectively delivered, for all you kind of know it’s coming:

via The Daley Gator

Category: Uncategorized

Professor Erik Loomis, Code Pink and the Media Hate America’s Gun Owners UPDATE: More Progressive Civility™

Posted on | December 21, 2012 | 16 Comments

Code Pink protesters — including the group’s Marxist founder, Medea Benjamin — disrupted today’s press conference by National Rifle Association chairman Wayne LaPierre. Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit has video. Meanwhile, as Alex Pappas of Daily Caller reports, influential members of the nation’s elite press corps were openly mocking LaPierre:

Who is Jonathan Weisman? Just another neutral, objective congressional reporter for the New York Times, that’s all.

Might as well get your news from Erik Loomis. (“Metaphor“!)

Here’s the full text of Wayne LaPierre’s speech. More at Memeorandum.

 

 

UPDATE: If there’s one thing America can always expect from progressives, it’s civil discourse about important policy issues:

 

Lots more Progressive Civility™ where that came from.

Linked at Hogewash — thanks!

UPDATE II: Oops! Neutral objective reporters caught on a hot microphone disparaging the NRA, praising Code Pink.

UPDATE III: Linked by American Glob — thanks!

UPDATE IV: Linked by the Lonely Conservative — thanks!

 


Category: Media Bias

Don’t Get Too Fixated On The Raaaaace Card, Jonah

Posted on | December 21, 2012 | 9 Comments

by Smitty

I tried out Ricochet, which gave a free login to Goldberg at the NRO:

Just this week, in an essay for the New York Times, Adolph Reed attacked South Carolina governor Nikki Haley — the first female Indian-American governor in America — for appointing Representative Tim Scott to retiring senator Jim DeMint’s seat. Scott is a black man and a conservative Tea Party favorite.

So obviously, this is a very clever ploy to restore Jim Crow.

“Just as white Southern Democrats once used cynical manipulations — poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests — to get around the 15th Amendment,” Reed writes, “so modern-day Republicans have deployed blacks to undermine black interests.”

That’s it exactly. Indeed, that’s what the Tea Party was always about: undermining black interests.

When Herman Cain — another inconveniently black man — was the overwhelming preference among Tea Party activists for the Republican presidential nomination, a historian writing in the New York Times suggested that Cain could be seen as proof the legacy of the Ku Klux Klan lives on.

You know you’ve been pounding a square peg into a round hole for too long when you find yourself insinuating that a black man from Georgia represents the KKK tradition in contemporary politics.

But it’s really not about the card as such. Abstract a bit. The race card is just a cheap means to the end of amassing political power. If, indeed, the insertion of race/color/creed divisions loses its power generation capability, substitutes will be found. Class warfare for example.

The interesting question is how much longer conservatives can continue to hang out with the likes of a Tim Scott or a Herman Cain, or nominate Mia Love, and so forth, before the whole Racism Industrial Complex begins to crumble.

But who wants to listen to my pigment-deprived self?

Category: Uncategorized

Occupy Althouse? (The Zero-Sum Error)

Posted on | December 21, 2012 | 19 Comments

There are times when you must choose between gratitude and resentment and, considering how rarely this blog gets linked by Ann Althouse, I’ve decided to be grateful that my thoughts on Professor Erik Loomis provided her and Meade with some laughs. Also, because her post linking my post got linked at Instapundit, I’ll be grateful for what bloggers know as the “Secondhand-o-lanche.” Nevertheless . . .

What’s up with people choosing to leave clever comments at Althouse’s blog, rather than to share their pithy witticisms with us?

Moneyrunner said…
It’s worth stating that there is a case to be made for the freedom of academics to take unpopular views. In Loomis’ case it becomes a matter of defending the right of academics to be outrageous assholes without consequences.
12/21/12 6:47 AM

Jim Treacher said…
What’s the big deal? It’s not like he put crosshairs symbols on a map.
12/21/12 7:27 AM

Astro said…
I’m guessing that 100 years from now, Prof. Erik Loomis will be regarded as an historical dildo.
12/21/12 8:46 AM

Jim Treacher? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Never mind. If Treacher wants to goldbrick on his Daily Caller gig by commenting at Althouse’s blog, that’s between him and Tucker, I guess

Good thing I’m not a lefty, or I’d call for an “Occupy Althouse” movement, to demand a more equitable redistribution of funny comments. This is where one is reminded again of the alternative between resentment and gratitude.

Our commenters aren’t chopped liver, after all, and what’s to stop other bloggers — Donald Douglas or Bob Belvedere, for example — from launching their own protest campaign against us?

“Comrades! We must resist the imperialist dominance of the blogospheric bourgeoisie that exploits the commenter proletariat!”

No, we’ve seen where that ideology leads: The HuffPo “killing fields,” with volunteer contributors rounded up in a digital veal pen, promised that their unpaid work will help advance the Progressive cause, only to see the People’s Democratic Republic of HuffPo shamelessly sold to the highest bidder by Arianna and her investors.

We’re not going down that road. We’re not even going to slow down as we pass the off-ramp that leads to that road.

It would be easy enough, I suppose, to find bloggers prone to a sour-grapes mentality, to convince them that success is a zero-sum game, to mobilize their petty resentments, to persuade them that the reason they don’t get more funny comments on their blogs is because Althouse is unfairly monopolizing funny comments.

But that would not only be false, it would be evil.

The spirit of generosity and gratitude can accomplish more in human affairs than can the spirit of selfishness and envy. And I suppose, since this is the Friday before Christmas — and most of you are reading this while goldbricking at your jobs prior to taking 11 days of paid holidays — I should remind you of this greatest gift, that God so loved the world as to give his only son. And the shepherds heard an angelic host, proclaiming, “Peace on Earth! Goodwill toward men!”

If you don’t get back here until Wednesday, Jan. 2 — like Treacher, goldbricking at your job again — Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!




 

UPDATE: This seems to be a good time to thank readers who have hit the tip jar in the past week: William in Bakersfield, James in North Carolina, Gregory in Elmhurst, Clare in Larchmont, William in Dallas, Cathryn in Oregon, Glenn in Tennessee, John in Annapolis, Charles in Oregon, Amelia in New Jersey, William in Owego and Dianna in San Jose.

Category: Ann Althouse, Christmas
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