Alex Constantine - August 1, 2010
Edited by Alex Constantine
Transparent Andy Breitbart
"JournoList: …Yes, But the Reporters at Pravda Weren’t Such Insufferable Assholes"
by Andrew BreitbartJournalists love whistleblowers. Just not when the whistle is blown on them. Journalists love transparency. As long as they’re not the ones being exposed. ...
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/author/abreitbart/
Turnabout's a Bitch (7/22/2010): "Thursday morning, Andrew Breitbart accused the Obama administration and their allies of orchestrating the entire Shirley Sherrod video escapade to 'bring him down.' While the White House says Breitbart set them up, he is saying that he was set up by the liberal camp, according to Politic with whom he spoke. ... "
H. Brandt Ayers: Consider the source (Excerpt)
Aniston Star | Aug 01, 2010
Did you enjoy spending the week with Shirley Sherrod? ... It was a non-story until … the hand grenade of “race” rolled onto the stage. ...
An unnamed source edited her parable of redemption to make it appear as a racist rant against white people. The right-wing guerilla blogger Andrew Breitbart aired the doctored tape, which was quickly picked up by Fox News and then went viral. Ms. Sherrod was fired, the truth came out, and the White House, the agriculture secretary and everyone with decent instincts competed in a pageant of apology — except for the grenade thrower, Breitbart.
The unapologetic right-wing blogger is the villain, and he is symbolic of how modern technology has been misused to pollute the information stream, seepage from which is poisoning the lifeblood of democracy ... Breitbart, who if questioned by any legitimate player in the sad saga of Shirley Sherrod would have to admit that the ultimate source was the entirety of her speech. There would have been no story. ...
Breitbart wasn’t interested in ethics; his job is to damage enemies of the hard right, in this case the NAACP. ... If an obscure mid-level bureaucrat, Shirley Sherrod, was collateral damage in his war against the oldest civil rights organization, that’s too bad. War is war.
What drives a man to spend large portions of his life at war with blacks and other counselors for the poor, I wondered, asking myself where was he during the civil rights movement? Did he wear a hood and burn crosses?
Of course not, the civil rights movement was history when he was in high school. The young Breitbart is really an appealing story. He is a West Coast native who went east to Tulane and had a helluva good time … off campus. After graduation, he found himself adrift, as he recounted in a New Yorker profile, desperately wanting something to believe in. He found it in what he took to be the mistreatment of Clarence Thomas in his Judiciary Committee hearings.
He began to see conservatism as a bunker shielding the true believers, the true Americans, from the forces that are undermining bedrock constitutional principles, a definition of which he has trouble articulating. In his new-found, post-college self-confidence, he calls the president a Marxist, makes frequent use of the “f” word and sometimes, when the context is appropriate, refers to women as the “c” word.
“I love judgmentalism — it’s a sport,” he said. “I remember that mantra, ‘Don’t judge.’ I’m, like, why? I like judging. I like judging! Let me judge.”
And this is what reporter Bowden says of the Internet insurgency:
“The truth is something that emerges from the cauldron of debate. No, not the truth: victory, because winning is way more important than being right. Power is the highest achievement. There is nothing new about this. But we never used to mistake it for journalism.”
As an old newsman, I wish I had the power to summon the outrage of the movie Network and call on Americans to throw open their windows and shout, “Stop guerilla journalism. Bring back fairness, and always … consider the source.”
Full commentary: http://annistonstar.com/view/full_story/8949383/article-H--Brandt-Ayers--Consider-the-source?instance=home_opinion
A Real Conspiracy: Timeline of Sherrod Debacle Reveals Disturbing Coordination Between Fox News and Bloggers - Huffington Post, July 22, 2010.
Hypocritical Charges of "Racism" and "Misinformation": Conservative blogger says Obama not 'post-racial' Lebanon Daily News :
"It is my belief that President Obama promised, tacitly, to be a post-racial candidate, and it is sad to say that he hasn't," Andrew Breitbart said at a news conference before his appearance at a "Uni-Tea: United Tea Party For All Communities." Breitbart accused the president of engaging in a "proxy warfare plan" using the media, Hollywood and lawmakers Breitbart accused of having made false charges of racism during the health care debate as well as the NAACP's recent call on tea party groups to disavow "racist elements." "There is a strong desire to create false information ... because that's how desperate this strategy is," he said. ...
ACORN
Reopen Andrew Breitbart's ACORN fraud and get the story right: The shoddy Shirley Sherrod mess parallels right-wing deceptions used in that other big smear and offers a chance to restore lost standards of journalism. (Salon)
Uninformed and/or inexperienced reporting. Breitbart's previous doctoring of video in the ACORN episode was exposed in an investigation by California Attorney General Jerry Brown. Few knew that, or bothered to think of it if they did. ... It was amazing to see how easily the cable news culture was spun up by Breitbart. Of course, it happens all the time with trusted political consultant "sources" driving coverage through manipulation. The only real surprise here is how easily such a non-credible, patently dishonest figure as Breitbart was able to manipulate the system.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/harsh-realm-the-post-pres_b_665580.html
Religious conversion from "Jew" to "Reagan Conservative" (?) and start in media - Wikipedia: " ... He says he 'grew up in Brentwood a secular liberal Jew' who celebrated his bar mitzvah and 'has the tape to prove it,' but had 'an interesting epiphany' during the Clarence Thomas hearings. He now describes himself as 'a Reagan conservative' who has 'sympathies towards the libertarian side of issues.' His early jobs included a stint at cable channel E! Entertainment Television, working for the company's online magazine, and some time in film production. ... "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Breitbart
On Ted Kennedy: " ... In the hours immediately following Senator Ted Kennedy's death, Breitbart called Kennedy a 'villain,' a 'duplicitous bastard,' a 'prick' and 'a special pile of human excrement.' ... "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Breitbart
