Class Act

Some rightwing reactionary who put his own trademark imprint on the Republican Party died this week. DJ! wrote about him here:

[...] a toxic fabricator, a con man, and a dumpster-diver. He's a self-styled JackAss reporter; he's a balding, schlumpy and braying male version of Ann Coulter; a wannabe Christopher Hitchens without the creds. Yet his presence amongst the Limbaughs and O'Reillys serves a purpose; he makes them look like serious newsman in comparison with his own disgraceful method of gotcha! reporting.

Still applicable though in the past tense.

He engineered a malevolent hoax; this is what the target of his deliberate character assassination had to say about his death.

“The news of Mr. Breitbart’s death came as a surprise to me when I was informed of it this morning. My prayers go out to Mr. Breitbart’s family as they cope during this very difficult time.”

Shirley Sherrod is a class act, something Breitbart never was.

Ottawa-Centre: Stay classy, Scott

So far, the campaign focus at DAMMIT JANET! has been on Contempt party candidates and their Con jobs. Now it appears other party candidates believe Rovian tactics can work for them too.

Two campaigns, two approaches. Incumbent Paul Dewar, a capable NDP MP, launches a policy-based campaign, heavy on substance, and covering the entire range of issues before us, including a comprehensive plan to protect the integrity of the public service.

But Liberal hopeful Scott Bradley, who has no record to run on,

goes on the attack right away. In his front-page video clip, “Day Six,” he claims (@2:30) that Dewar has shown no interest in the public service since he was first elected five years ago. (This would be news to the largest federal public service union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, which has endorsed Paul Dewar in the past and is expected to do so once again.) That’s still within bounds as political campaign discourse, and the public employees who live in Ottawa-Centre will make up their own minds.

But the clip begins with what sounds like: "Paul was saying, see, the PS is a good place to make cuts and save money..." That’s where the line is crossed. The actual quote, before Breitbarting, is:"Across the country many voters, despite what Paul was saying, see the PS as a good place to make cuts and save money..." Only the first week of the campaign, and one candidate is already aiming low.

“Paul Dewar does not have the monopoly on being a nice guy,”

said Scott Bradley as he launched his bid.

Oh - Scott? This kinds of tactic suggests you're straying down the path of *fear and loathing* that has become the trademark of the Contempt party. Do your *nice* Liberal buddies know what you're up to?

"The closing of the conservative mind ..."

Once more, David Frum stands up for the principle of journalistic integrity. Although I don't share most - if any - of his ideological notions, I admire him for being the lone voice in the arid rightwing crackpot media desert.

When people talk of the "closing of the conservative mind" this is what they mean: not that conservatives are more narrow-minded than other people — everybody can be narrow minded — but that conservatives have a unique capacity to ignore unwelcome fact.

When Dan Rather succumbed to the forged Bush war record hoax in 2004, CBS forced him into retirement.

Breitbart is the conservative Dan Rather, but there will be no discredit, no resignation for him. Instead, conservatives are consumed with a new snippets-out-of-context uproar, the latest round of JournoList quotations. Here at last is proof of the cynical machinations of the hated liberal media! As to the cynical machinations of conservative media — well, as the saying goes, the fish never notices the water through which it swims.

The difference between Dan Rather and Andrew Breibart is more complex than the simplistic reduction Frum suggests.

Dan Rather, one of the last old-school journalists, "succumbed" to the pressure of a form of news reporting in the 21st century which has become fast, furious and focused on trash journalism. He was trained to rigorously examine the sources of putative damaging disclosures about public figures; in this case his need to prove himself in a media increasingly staffed with hungry young wolves proved to be his downfall. Although made the scapegoat by his superiors at CBS when the documents pertaining to Bush were alleged to be forgeries, Rather has not gone quietly into that good night.

Andrew Breibart is a toxic fabricator, a con man, and a dumpster-diver. He's a self-styled JackAss reporter; he's a balding, schlumpy and braying male version of Ann Coulter; a wannabe Christopher Hitchens without the creds. Yet his presence amongst the Limbaughs and O'Reillys serves a purpose; he makes them look like serious newsman in comparison with his own disgraceful method of gotcha! reporting.


This time, according to Frum, he has surpassed himself. Breibart sliced and diced a video recording of an USDA black employee so it made it seem that she was an unrepentant anti-white folks racist. The material was manipulated; in reality she was recounting an individual experience of a paradigm shift and how she went on to help the farming families she had prejudged.

Frum is visibly disturbed and outraged by Breitbart's willful deception and malvolence.

There will be no apology or statement of regret for distributing a doctored tape to defame and destroy someone. There will be not even a flutter of interest among conservatives in discussing Breitbart’s role. By the morning of July 21, the Fox & Friends morning show could devote a segment to the Sherrod case without so much as a mention of Breitbart’s role. The central fact of the Sherrod story has been edited out of the conservative narrative, just as it was edited out of the tape itself.

As I said, Frum's voice is a lone rational voice among rightwing media hate-mongers.