I would be very interested to learn what our American commenters make of Andrew Breitbart. My impression is that he’s really making misery for the One Party Media in the USA, but occasionally making mistakes. Did he mishandle that video featuring Shirley Sherrod? Or is he being falsely accused of having done so by lilly-livered Conservatives who are too keen on being liked by liberals who will always despise them? My impression is that Breitbart didn’t call Sherrod a racist, but that he did, rightly, call her audience racist.
I ask because the latest Breitbart sally seems to contain a (another?) quite serious error. The New York Times has issued what looks to me like a deeply dishonest “retraction”, saying that the racist things said to some Congressman in the street were nothing to do with the Tea Party Movement, when the actual truth, as commenter number one on his piece immediately points out, is that they were nothing to do with anything because they never even happened. And Breitbart seems to me to be letting the New York Times get clean away with this piece of blatant scumbaggery, contenting himself with merely demanding that all the other One Party Media organs issue the same utterly dishonest semi-retraction. If this is Breitbart hitting back twice as hard, my reaction is that he could have landed a far heavier flurry of punches than he just did. Is that a fair criticism, and even if it is, am I just doing that old arm-chair moaner thing of saying that whoever is doing the real business for my team, when I am doing nothing, could be doing even better. Am I demanding the best in a way that is for practical purposes hostile to the good?
Whatever the particular truth about just how good a job Breitbart is or is not doing on the One Party Media, I get the distinct impression from over here that something very big is happening to the US media. Some kind of – sorry but the phrase is exactly appropriate – “tipping point” seems to be being reached.
The thing is, people on the whole tend not to unleash cumbersome solutions upon circumstances that don’t seem to be a problem. It takes time for people to desert their old familiar ways of acquainting themselves with what’s going on in the world, and there has to be a solid reason to do this, same as there has to be a solid reason to move house or switch from PCs to a Mac, or to stop drinking any alcohol. It takes some particular lie about something that they are personally familiar with, to “tip” them, like when their own genuinely good-guy cousin and his thoroughly nice wife get called (along with a few thousand other people) racists by some loud-mouthed hand-deep-in-the-government-till scam-artist on the television, without any corrective complaint from the grey-haired professorial old guy introducing it, and when they read the same stuff in their newspaper the next morning. At which point they start suspecting that everything else in their formerly trusted newspaper, or on their hitherto perfectly adequate TV channel, could also be deception and scumbaggery. The point being that this switch wasn’t going to happen all in one go, with the overnight arrival of the internet. But I have the feeling that the number of US citizens who are, just about now, arriving at this point in their news and current affairs habits, is becoming something approaching a Moment in US History.
Is that right? Or just wishful thinking. To put it another way, Paul Marks is fond of saying in comments here that “most people” still get their news from the regular old media rather than from blogs and such. Is that observation starting to become seriously obsolete? After all, if a quite large percentage of those who still read (exclusively) and trust (implicitly) the regular old media now have family or friends whom they do not consider to be completely mad who don’t and who don’t, that has to change things. Doesn’t it? At the very least, that means that the One Party Media are now experienced by most as putting forward a distinct point of view, rather than just serving up The News. And that’s quite a change. Isn’t it?
ADDENDUM: I wrote what is immediately above before reading Dale’s piece immediately below.
I have followed a bit of what he is doing, and yes, he makes the odd howler, but often as not, he is effective; he played a bit part in bringing down the ACORN organisation – a deeply corrupt body serving the interests of the far left – has also taken the fight to a number of other individuals and organisations in the Obama tent.
He is generally good news for our side, if I can say so. He is going to make mistakes, and that is part of the game.
The truth is, that despite all the sneers, parts of the left are shit-scared of him. They should be.
I am not American – but I will comment anyway.
Andrew Breitbart has done many good things (both on biggovernment.com and on bighollywood.com – and before either of these existed), however his very successes may have made him a little careless (“paranoia” is the first rule in these matters).
Mr Breitbart first got the Mrs Sherrod film in April – but he did not spread it about because it was only a partial film. However, as the “Tea Party is racist” disinformation and propaganda campaign gathered strength his anger started to rise (as, I suspect, the people who sent him the partial film guessed it would) and when the NAACP joined in the campain he could stand no more – and sent out the film of Mrs Sherrod seemingly making a racist speech at an NAACP.
Glenn Beck was too “paranoid” to show the film (he has a private rule, now no longer private, that he will never show anything that he has not seen the full CONTEXT of) which rather messed up the Obama Administration plans – they had already told Mrs Sherrod “you must resign because the film is to be shown on the Glenn Beck show tonight”.
Even BEFORE the full film was available Beck was busy DEFENDING Mrs Sherrod (perhaps because he guessed that, according the plan, he was supposed to attack her).
However, both Bill O’Reilly (briefly) and Sean Hannity showed the edited film – thus allowing the left (the academics, the government and the “mainstream” media) to denounce “racist Fox News”.
It must be remembered that Mr Breitbart was NOT the main target of the operation – Fox News was (as it was know that Mr Breitbart is one of the most important sources that Fox News people cooperate with).
However, things went wrong for the left – partly because Fox News did not really run with the story (indeed, as stated above, Glenn Beck actually moved the other way) but partly because Mrs Sherrod is NOT a trained operative (as became clear by her messing up).
Based at CNN Mrs Sherrod’s role was to play the innocent party hounded from her job by the evil Andrew Breitbart (and by…… the rest of the “right wing”) she was to tell the story of how her father was murdered by a white man – but how she managed to rise above racial hatred, only to have her speech telling the story wickedly edited …….
But Mrs Sherrod could not stick to the script (which makes me believe that this person had no prior knowledge of the plan – i.e. the Obama Administration were just USING her). Instead she fell into a insane rant about how Andrew Breitbart watned to “return blacks to slavery” and so on.
This made people watch even the full tape with a more critical eye – and spot the fact that Mrs Sherrod says that she rejected racism because “the real struggle is between the haves and the have nots” (i.e. racism is replaced by socialism).
Also then another film was found – a film of Mrs Sherrod’s husband (the Rev. Sherrod) who clearly has NOT given up racism, indeed is a racist bigot.
So, my judgement is that Andrew Breitbart did indeed make a mistake – but then his foes messed up, leaving him the winner.
They should have picked a more intelligent person than Mrs Sherrod – or at least briefed her in advance (so that she could be trained what to say and so on).
I have written my view of the Mrs Sherrod matter – but I did not reply to Brian’s specific question, the power (or otherwise) of the msm (and the education system – for the creatures of the “mainstream” media simply show the view of the world they were taught at school and college).
The principle argument AGANST me is a simple one…….
If most people have their opinions formed by education system and the msm (including the entertainment media) why is Comrade Barack Obama down to 40% job approval in the polls?
Why are the other 60% of the population of the United States not Obama Zombies charting “Obama-is-the-living-God”?
Most people may not be watching the work of Andrew Breitbart (or Glenn Beck or ….) but their “gut” (i.e. their experence of objective reality) tells them that something is wrong – so when they meet someone who does watch or read the work of critics of Comrade Barack, they are open to dissent.
I have met Andrew Breitbart and I think that given what he is trying to do and perforce how he does it, some mistakes are inevitable…
…but does the MSM not make howlers all the time? That said, it is the sins of omission that truly damns the MSM and that is where the likes of Andrew Breitbart do such sterling work.
He in particular is so deeply loathed by the establishment of both ‘left’ and ‘right’ (whatever that means) because he singularly refuses to play by The Rules and more importantly, he is effective.
He has done an excellent job of ‘sticking it’ to a great many people who badly needed to have all manner of nasty things stuck to them… and thus I would have to say that overall he is A Very Good Thing indeed.
From a conservative county in California.
Bumber stickers and street corner conversations, the peasants are restless. Political incorrectness is suddenly permissible.
The state of California itself, people considered lost: impossible debt, union stranglehold in Sacramento, replacement of the population by illegals. Retirement plans always involve moving away.
Fox and talk radio are our samizdat and they’re incredibly effective. On the web, Technorati shows liberty-leaning blogs even or ahead.
There’s a sense that a great battle is soon to be joined.
Being a life & death struggle, I’m impatient with armchair generals second guessing the likes of Breitbart.
I had the same reaction as the commenter. But one can get tiresome by quibbling over every word. That the Times has weaseling elevated to an art form is well known.
Andrew Breitbart is doing a great service. He promised to expose liberal lies and institutional bias and he delivers. The proof are the frantic attempts by the entrenched media to shift the story away from Sherrod , false racism claims and Journolist and onto Breitbart.
What “most people” (who bother) absorb, is not “NEWS;” that is, factual reports from which to draw conclusions; rather, they absorb opinions disbursed with “supporting” information, extracted from “facts.”
Crying racist doesn’t work anymore for real people here (USA). It is becoming damaging to anyone who does it and this is one of the (rare) positives of the Bamster.
Most of the public,here, as elsewhere is stupid, as is always the case. Unfortunately our Nomenclatura,is equally stupid. Prolonged lack of prosperity will teach the needed lesson to the public.
“Liberals” also call people stupid-the difference between them and me, is that I don’t presume this gives me the right to tell people how to live their lives.
Breitbart is good-he stirs up the animals-he forces them into errors, and where he misses, there are others to drive the point home.
I have met Breitbart as well and think highly of the guy. He is doing great things and poking a lot of holes where air needs to be. Its good to see someone with profile doing this for a change and not cowering in the corner.
A friend interviewed him and he came across as a very exuberant, party guy who is having a lot of fun annoying the powerful.
His takedown of ACORN was brilliant and the left will never forgive him for it. He made a mistake on the Sherrod story and has taken criticism from conservatives for it.
The old media is a wounded but still powerful beast. They have thrown off all pretense of being ‘fair’, as shown by the journolist scandal. Worst of all they have become boring.
I saw the video as orignally aired by Breitbart and it had not just the part where she was relating how she had discriminated against a white farmer but also her redemptive “ah-ha, its really about poor vs. rich, not black against white” moment. In an interview I heard on the radio the day after, Breitbart pointed this out, that he had made sure to keep her redemptive moment in. He could have made it much worse by leaving that part out. What she was saying about her past conduct was not really the point of airing the video. What Bretbart was trying to highlight was the reaction of the NAACP audience, the expressions of approval for her discriminatory behaviour, before she got to relating the redemptive moment.
In subsequent comments, Sherrod hasn’t exactly covered herself in glory either. She’s not a terribly sympathetic figure.
Also, her knee-jerk firing by the Obama administration was, well, knee-jerk and revealed a lot about how this administration operates, tending to react before it has all the facts. I don’t think Highlighting this was something Breitbart intended, but an unexpected bonus.
Here is my take on the Sherrod video.
Breitbart was responding to the claim that the Tea Party is motivated not by small-gernment principles, but by racism (sometimes the claim is that small-government is just a code word for racism). The video, as it was first presented, was meant to show the NAACP clapping and cheering when their invited speaker made a remark about discriminating against a white farmer. The clapping was not taken out of context, nor was its significance changed by the fact that Sherrod was leading to a “Road to Damascus” story.
That at least was the way I remember seeing the video. The idea that the video was actually about Sherrod was made by her own agency, or the White House, not by Breitbart.
But … I always thought the video was just a cheap sort of “you’re another one” reporting. Generally, such reporting is not a good idea.
Breitbart is not a very good journalist. But he is better informed than, say, Andrew Sullivan, and he adds something to the mix. I’ll listen when he speaks, but I’ll take it with a grain of salt.
I should have added this: If the left has Michael Moore, then the right can have Andrew Breitbart.
What do our American commenters make of Andrew Breitbart – and of the state of the US media in general?
Say what you like about Breitbart, he’s effective, and he’s willing to put it on the line for what he believes in.
Unlike most of the Republican establishment, which is neither.
Yes, he’s going to make mistakes. Everyone screws up occasionally. But he’s already accomplished more than I thought possible- humiliating ACORN *and* pulling the NAACP’s fangs- and I suspect he’s just getting started.
We’ve needed someone like him for a long time.
Are you sure Breitbart is making the error you think he’s making? In the article – if I’ve read it correctly – he makes it perfectly clear that no racist remarks were ever made and that, therefore, the NY Times apology doesn’t go far enough.
Here’s my view from America:
Brietbart is just a symptom of the real issue. He’s a bombthrower, he admits to it, and the media is his soft target because of the real issue. The Journolist scandal and the Climategate scandal are also symptoms.
The American media has used up its credibility on vanity projects. AGW was the primary one over the last few years, but the biggest vanity project of theirs was Obama. He’s been elected, and no one in America really has any illusions, on either side of the aisle, that he was “the media’s candidate.”
The problem that they face is that they are now tied to him, and he’s sinking fast. Turns out, despite how many times they claimed it wasn’t true or didn’t matter, that he’s inexperienced, indecisive and lacks any sort of guiding principle.
They spent all the credibility they had with the American people over the last 15 years or so, and ramped that spending way up to get Obama elected. They are now broke, incredible, and paying the price. Fox News is the only one that didn’t waste its credibility capital on this (and have learned to horde it viciously after being under credibility attack by the others since its birth) and is now thriving because of it. Even leftists in America are now turning to Fox more than the rest of the media when they need hard news, like in a crisis or attack situation.
The media wasted the reputation they built up since WW2 on tawdry baubles like AGW and Obama, and now no one trusts them. That’s the state of the US media. (An unfortunate offshoot of that is that I am beginning to suspect that the reputation of our elections is coming under the same fire, and when they go, people won’t be changing the channels — they will be loading their rifles.)
Taylor:
“The [the msm] have become boring”.
That is the “killer fact” – for example when some msm creature interviews Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi and says (as they always do) “you have passed all these laws – but the right refuse to see your achievements, does it upset you when they attack you in such an unfair and partisan way” even I do not get angry anymore (and I used to get angry at anything) I am now so used to it that I can actually say the words before the interviewer does (and when my guess as to what they are going to say is confirmed I change the station).
The last person on the left to be an effective television performer is Jon Stewart (John Gibson was correct – Stewart was always the most effective person on the left, partly because he was not 100% predictable) and even he is looking a bit tired and bored with it all.
As for the print media………..
Time, Newsweek and the big city newspapers (led by the New York Times) – the supposed elite troops of the left.
And all boring – hopelessly boring.
It is not their bias that is destroying them, or even their blatent lies – it is the fact that are too boring to read.
Paul
It is not just the MSM, its the whole cultural elite, remember all those anti – Bush movies that flopped at the US box office,(maybe they did better in Europe.) and the endlessly boring reality TV shows. Not to mention most of what passes for comedy.
You’re right about Jon Stewart he is undoubtedly their most valuable player these days. I wonder how long he’s going to want to be on the same side with allies like Helen Thomas and Elvis Costello ?
Is there anyone else out there who thinks that the South Park guys have been pulling their punches lately ?
Not to rain on our own parade, but, as they almost say in my almost-native MO: show me the ratings.
Breitbart is certainly doing the Good Work of speaking Truth to Media, and yeah, he screws up too sometimes, though not monumentally like a Dan Rather-level self immolation.
I think the question is kind of odd, in that he is much like the dependable ball player who hits 99 home runs then manages to foul out once, and everyone is all over him for it.
Another Knights Templar of the Right, who has only gotten better with time is Michelle Malkin. Her daily blistering blog posts are a welcome addition to my morning coffee time, and it doesnt look like she is going to run out of ammo any time soon.
Commenting from Boston, Massachusetts.
Yes, there’s a tipping point that’s been reached with the media, and Breitbart is tapping into that. The tipping point is the disappearance of the myth of the “unbiased” reporter.
At that point, the realization by the financial blokes is that the USA is roughly 20% liberal, 30% conservative, and 50% “none of the above” (in US terms, not in comparison to Europe, or it would be 90% conservative).
What’s interesting is his bankroll – $100,000 for the Journolist archives, for example, or another $100,000 for the footage showing a Tea Partier using the N-word to the Congressional Black Caucus.
My take is that Fox is aiming for the middle 50% of the market, and letting the MSM fight it out over the 20% on the left. Breitbart is targeting the 30% on the right.
I also think that all this “Breitbart is making mistakes” talk is similar to what we heard a decade ago about Drudge. There’s quite good business in being a bomb thrower, and Breitbart to his credit is not so much throwing bombs as posting video.
This appeals to the age of “who ya gonna believe, him or your lying eyes” which seems aimed at a younger crowd.
Net/net, it looks like Breitbart is playing a long game, the MSM is playing a short game (badly), and Fox is enjoying what it’s built over the last decade in terms of credibility/market share.
@Alisa, it’s not so much “ratings” any more. It’s return on investment. If Breitbart gets enough ad revenue to give his investors a fat payback, you’ll see a lot more of him and of people like him.
If not, you’ll see less.
I’m not sure you’ll see it on TV at all, though. It’s pageviews, not audience share.
Breitbart is the Hannibal Smith of journalism.
Borepatch: you are talking about tomorrow, which, while very interesting and encouraging, may just be too late. What I would like to know is who has the eyes and the ears (and consequently the brains) right now.
Brietbart rocks … He took on the race baiting and racism in the NAACP head-on and won. Now even the NYTs apologized to him.
Democrats playing the race card has now turned into being a risky proposition.
The Democrats, the party of the KKK, has been doing this for along time, but people had been reluctant to go at them in return. No more.
@Alisa, I’m not sure that anyone has an answer to that, at least one that’s any good. We’re in the middle of a big market transition, and that means that market research is highly suspect.
Whatever the numbers are today, they’ll be different next year, and five years from now.
You have a point, Borepatch – thanks.
The internet has made it much easier to specialise. A consequence is that media is (has) becoming (become) much more polarised. This replaces bland mass market reporting. Whether the ‘left’ or ‘right’ narrative wins the day in terms of broad acceptance by the populace at large on any particular topic will likely depend on which side is straining most obviously from reality (e.g. Krugman’s ‘we need to spend more not less on economic stimulus’)
Taylor – yes I have noticed about South Park.
This has been true for some time – remember their big show on the election.
At the end of the story (in which it turned out that McCain and Obama were partners and the whole election was just a cover for a robbery) Barack Obama decides to remain President after all – and do some good.
That is the thing – people mistake the SWEARING on South Park for radical dissent.
It was never anything of the kind – in the end the South Park people were fairly conformist types who made up for that by having little kids swear constantly and so on.
The plots were funny yes – and the more absurd parts of the left (such as the Green movement) were a target. But a demand for a radical reduction in government – a restoration of Constitutional principle? No the show was never that.
Remember (years ago) the South Park creators brought up “Atlas Shrugged” – only to mock the book? “They mock everything” – no they do not (not in the end), in fact their position (under the swearing and so on) is a fairly conventional status que one.
They do not want to believe that the President of the United States is a hater of the basic principle of the United States – that is not funny, it is threat to their comfortable lives, and they ATTACK anyone who mentions it.
Remember how they attacked Glenn Beck as Cartman – NONE of Beck’s specific charges or evidence was mentioned. He was just presented as a fat kid making insane claims.
Jon Stewart did the same thing.
No contradiction of the evidence (because that is not possible) – so attack the man, the way he uses a chalk board (and so on).
The one bit of courage the South Park creators have left is their attack on Islam.
And when the network they work for would not allow that – they did not resign.
Obviously, I can’t speak for any American other than myself, and don’t pretend to have my finger on the pulse of mainstream America. But personally, I think Breitbart is doing a wonderful job and providing a hugely valuable public service. The current crop of bombthrowers (Breitbart, Malkin, Beck, Coulter, etc.) is growing, and I say the more the merrier!
That said, I’d like to look more closely at the Sherrod matter. Breitbart’s point in posting the video was to display the institutional racism within the NAACP, which has certainly been obvious for many years to anyone willing to look with clear eyes. Most people haven’t seen it, however (the organization does, in fact, have an honorable history, before being hijacked by racist radicals, and has been living on that reputation for the last few decades), and Breitbart was trying to show to the broad public that this emperor has no clothes. So how did the Obama administration react? Brilliantly, in my opinion.
First, they focused (via a dishonestly edited version of the video) on the first part of Sherrod’s speech, wherein she discussed her early (20+ years ago) racist insticts. They then both ignored her repudiation of that racism and the most important matter (the wild applause of the NAACP members to this bigotry) which, of course, is what Breitbart had wanted to highlight. This permitted the White House to paint Sherrod (unfairly) as an unrepentant racist and to order her summary dismissal, thus establishing their “post-racial” posture as unaccepting of racism in any form, even black-on-white. Then, they “discovered” that in the unedited video Sherrod had, in fact, expressly repudiated her prior racist attitude, which permitted the White House to feign mild embarassment about its initial “over-reaction” and to offer Sherrod an apology and reinstatment. Now they are perceived as being thoughtful, understanding and willing to admit to and atone for error. (There’s nothing Obama loves more than a good apology!)
So the White House has taken an unequivocal example of NAACP racism and turned it into a small morality play in which it is the hero, demonstrating all the modern virtues of equality, humanity, rationality, humility, etc., leavened with a small dash of fallibility. Mrs. Sherrod has not been harmed: she has been offered reinstatement, and will probably wind up with some truly cushy government job, a promotion and a big raise. No one within the administration or HUD has been punished in any way. Life goes on. And, as icing on the cake, they can permit the public discourse to shift to Breitbart and his supposed “dishonest” manipulation of Sherrod’s speech. He, and not the NAACP, can be made the villain, for something he never did. Sherrod’s promised lawsuit against Breitbart will never materialize (it would never succeed), and the memory of her threat will just fade away as the public moves on to the next spectacle.
This has been a truly masterful example of misdirection. It has Rahm Emanuel’s fingerprints all over it. Indeed, it is machiavellian enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if James Carville had a hand in there somewhere.
Breitbart is doing a fine job.
We conservatives have shied away from using the in-your-face tactics of the left because we believed in the old axiom that “two wrongs don’t make a right”. Also, I should add, politics aren’t the center of our lives.
Breitbart has realized that it’s time to fight fire with the proverbial fire and I support him.
I think you nailed it Laird. Funnily enough, this is more or less what I had in mind in our discussion on decision making, conspiracies etc.
Which mason lodge breitbart belongs in?
The revolutianry chicken leg – marxist jesuit sign – he’s got to hang on top of his ‘peace’ site tells of Knight of Malta?
Which ma son lod ge breitbart belongs into?
The rev olutianry chicken leg – mrxist jeessuit sign – he’s got to hang on top of his ‘peace’ site tells of K night 0f M alta?