In what kind of bizarro dimension would Andrew Breitbart continue to be taken seriously as a newsman despite his obvious lack of credibility and well documented history of lying and falsifying evidence? Unfortunately we’re living in that dimension and it’s becoming just all too ridiculous. With Anthony Weiner’s resignation all but confirmed it would seem that Breitbart has quashed yet another source of progressivism in American society. So long as American media continue to indulge Breitbart’s vile output he will remain a poisonous influence on public discourse and society at large. For the American public to save itself they must stop taking Breitbart seriously.
To be fair, Weiner’s inevitable resignation will have more to do with how he personally handled the incident, but just because Breitbart happened to publish un-doctored evidence in this particular case doesn’t mean we should forget what a underhanded creep he is. The story of how one of the most boring sex scandals in history became a media sensation has much to do with Breitbart’s “flair for publicity,” specializing in hackneyed stunts involving hysterical PR techniques and the use of deceptively edited video footage supposedly revealing incriminating behavior.
In almost all cases the so-called scandals that Breitbart claims to uncover are outright hit-jobs on people that he has an ideological vendetta against. His victims have included Shirley Sherrod, whom at the time was Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture, providers of contraceptive and sexual health care Planned Parenthood and ACORN, an organization that tries to give a little bit of political power back to the poorest and most marginalized members of American society.
The Weiner story happens to be unfortunately all too true but it became “Weinergate” because of Breitbart’s afore mentioned skills in working a hapless media to his own needs. It’s a pattern that has become a familiar aspect of Breitbart’s antics: staggering the release of evidence to drag a story out but also amping up the salaciousness of each release to create a raising inferno of outrage.
Thus, in revealing Weiner’s cyber-flirting Breitbart began by releasing the fairly innocuous underwear photo that we all know so well now. He then let the congressmen sweat a bit. It didn’t seem like too big a deal, Weiner thought he could lie his way out of it. But Breitbart had more than just the one photo up his sleeve and about five days after the underwear photo was released Breitbart released the shirtless photo. It was this which prompted Weiner to call the press-conference in which he spilled the beans on the entire thing, admitting that he had “engaged in several inappropriate conversations conducted over Twitter, Facebook, email and occasionally on the phone.”
We also know now that this wasn’t even the worst photo of Weiner that Breitbart had and it would seem that Breitbart had held the worst back for another “gotcha” moment on Weiner. Perhaps sensing defeat after Weiner’s more or less complete confession but still wanting to tarnish Weiner’s reputation further, a few days later Breitbart showed the nude photo to the Anthony and Opie radio show were it was subsequently released on their twitter account supposedly without Breitbart’s knowledge or permission. However, given Breitbarts reputation as a maven of media manipulation it’s pretty likely that Breitbart intended for this to happen.
Indeed, one can also see this strategy of media manipulation at work in the ACORN controversy, which Breitbart more or less single-handedly engineered after discovering James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles’ little video adventure and the heavily edited results thereof. The problem was that the videos were so obviously edited, so lacking in substance, so outright sketchy that they alone wouldn’t be enough to make the media firestorm that Breitbart was intending to create. So he lied, he schemed and he came up with a strategy that would ensure the story clogged up news coverage throughout American media. As with the Weiner story the timing of the video releases was essential to his plan. “Every step of the way, we wanted to plant traps,” Breitbart admits. After releasing the first video Breitbart waited for a response from ACORN. They foolishly claimed that O’Keefe and Giles had been shown the door at the New York ACORN office but of course Breitbart also had the video of that particular conversation.
In addition to his slow-drip release technique Breitbart also strategized to deprive other media outlets of the information they needed to report the story because, he claimed, of their “liberal” bias. The first video was exclusively released to FOX News, an ally of Breitbart’s, and he instructed O’Keefe and Giles to not interview with any other news outlet. He then cited the media’s lack of coverage as evidence of their bias, appearing on FOX News five days after the first video had been released claiming it was “day five of the mainstream media ignoring the story.” Foregone conclusion or circular logic? Either way Breitbart reveals himself to be a dishonest, repugnant character. Oh, and that’s not to mention the fact that the mainstream media been covering the story quite extensively from the first day the videos had appeared on FOX and then fell over themselves to over report it lest they appear guilty of liberal bias.
“This plan wasn’t just to defend against the media’s desire to attack the messenger, it was also a means to attack the media and to expose them for the partisan hacks that they are.”
The delusion shown in the above statement is rather astounding when you consider the behind the scenes maneuvering involved in the ACORN and Anthony Weiner stories. Whether Breitbart is truly this ignorant or just doesn’t care how ignorant he sounds so long as his stories are dominating the airwaves hardly seems to matter. What does matter is the bald-faced hypocrisy of what Breitbart is doing: picking out targets based on his own partisan hackery, creating fraudulent video evidence to try and incriminate them and then projecting all of this onto the world around him, claiming that other media don’t give his stories any currency because they are in fact targeting people based on their own partisan hackery.
It cannot be stated emphatically enough: Andrew Breitbart is a partisan hack that does whatever it takes to smear his ideological enemies and is a most heinous hypocrite as his favorite attack tool is to accuse others of being partisan hacks. Breitbart is frank about declaring Democrats and the “mainstream” media his enemies, yet these institutions continue to be duped into bending to his will. The White House quickly turned on Sherrod and the Democratic party were swift in calling for Weiner’s resignation despite his sex “scandal” being positively vanilla in comparison to some of the scandals that GOPers have been involved in. Somehow Breitbart has a magical influence over the Democrats and they respond like frightened school children to whatever scandal he concocts, whether it’s the obvious fraud of Sherrod’s video or the trumped up scandal of the Weiner photos.
And the mainstream media were willing participants in Weinergate, Breitbart partnered with ABC this time rather than FOX to create the hullabaloo he wanted. This despite Breitbart’s purposely antagonistic relationship with American media, admitting readily that he only wants to make them look like hacks. Any sane and reasonable person can see that Breitbart is an untrustworthy character that doesn’t traffic in news at all but specializes in manipulating the media to his own ends and using underhanded techniques to create overblown public outcry against his enemies. But all this goes out the window when a flashy sex-scandal comes down the pipe and MSNBC, CNN, ABC and the rest of them go into dog-chasing-cars mode. One can’t help but feel that it was also Breitbart’s intention to make the mainsteam media look like fools by tricking them into giving complete coverage to a lame sex scandal to the exclusion of real news and real issues.
So I beg the American public, the American media and the Democrats to ignore this clown. Realize that in his own words Breitbart is nothing but a political saboteur whose interests lie not in reporting genuine news but in obstructing legitimate and honest public discourse by manipulating the media. He admits that the ACORN controversy was designed to “suck the air out of the room on the health-care debate. That was intentional.” Breitbart will do whatever it takes to get his way, he’ll lie, cheat, scheme and use doctored video evidence.Realize that Breitbart only wants to hurt you and when you take him seriously, when you agree to partner with him to hatch a trumped up sex scandal or when you let him dictate who is and who isn’t a reliable member of your political party, you are empowering him. Realize that with the power that you grant him his intentions are to destroy any remnants of progressivism in American society and realize that the destruction of progressivism is not in your best interests. This realization could save your lives.
Sources: Media Matters, WSJ, NYT, FOX News, Washington Times.
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