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The Breitbart Burn Notice

Aug 11, 2010 Breitbart, Burn Notices, Piltdown politics

SUMMARY

Andrew Breitbart (pictured) is a known news fabricator. Any material originating through his websites should be considered suspect at best, and subjected to thorough fact-checking before it can be reported on by anyone in any case.

Legitimate bloggers should avoid linking to his websites. Bloggers and other new media content creators who work for Breitbart, or who post to his sites, should be considered fruit of a poisonous tree.

Breitbart himself should be considered unfit for news. If it is absolutely necessary to report on him, Breitbart should be identified primarily as “known fabricator” — not a ‘journalist,’ ‘entertainer,’ ‘website mogul,’ or any other such title.

HISTORY OF FABRICATION

Breitbart emerged in 2009 with the introduction of prank videos made by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles in ACORN offices around the country. Said videos were selectively edited to create an appearance of improper conduct by ACORN staff. Breitbart participated in deception efforts, telling the Washington Times that O’Keefe had been dressed in a pimp costume when he visited ACORN offices. In fact, O’Keefe had never been dressed as a pimp in any ACORN office. Confronted at the 2010 CPAC Convention, Breitbart danced around the issue, calling O’Keefe’s costume “minutiae” despite how the entire narrative of the scandal revolved around it. Breitbart later confronted Max Blumenthal in what would prove to be a pattern of behavior under examination: Breitbart responds to exposure by attacking the motives of those who expose him.

This would be born out in his next big scandal. In 2010, Breitbart released a video of US Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod speaking about an encounter with a white farmer. The video had been closely edited to portray Sherrod as a racist. Sherrod was forced to resign her position. Within days, however, the full video emerged and it was clear to everyone that Brietbart’s video was a fabrication. Once again, Breitbart’s response was to attack the White House, the NAACP, and Shirley Sherrod. He continues to protect the source of the video while claiming the president and the White House are orchestrating a campaign against him.

This section may be expanded.

NEGATIVE ACTIONS

To date, Sherrod and one ACORN employee have filed lawsuits over the videos. The Republican National Committee has canceled a fundraiser at which Breitbart was supposed to appear. (The event has since been rescheduled.) FOX News, which aired both the Sherrod and ACORN videos, is reportedly examining its relationship with Breitbart. Baltimore Sun columnist Dan Rodricks wrote:

Had any producer at a local TV station, network or cable newsroom cobbled together a video like the one Mr. Breitbart posted of Ms. Sherrod, that producer would be among the nation’s unemployed today.

Nicole Sandler has signed.

GottaLaff has signed.

Ben Cohen writes:

Breitbart is a professional propagandist for the interests of corporate America, not a journalist in any sense of the word.

silvermaneman has signed.

Karoli has signed.

lsoderman has signed.

David Horton has signed.

Bob Kincaid has signed.

Michelle Oliver has signed.

Gary Blackmon has signed.

This section will be expanded.

Tags: ACORN, fabrication, fake news, fakery, fakes, racism, shirley sherrod

Morning Awful: FAUX Noise

Jul 26, 2010 Breitbart, Faux Noise Channel

The White House had a staged feud with FAUX Noise last year. They should stop firing Yosi Sergeant and Van Jones and start attacking FAUX Noise as the channel of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly — all of whom continue to pretend Andrew Breitbart is a legitimate journalist.

Tags: Glenn Beck

ACORN Victim Sues Giles, O’Keefe

Jul 15, 2010 ACORN, Breitbart, James O'Keefe

Back in September, I watched the ACORN “sting” videos from San Diego and reported:

Not only is Juan Carlos Vera’s behavior inconsistent with criminal habits, it screams of a desire to help two young people who seem to be in very deep trouble.

Nor should he be the least bit embarrassed by this video. In fact, everything embarrassing comes from Hannah and James. THEY are the ones who walked into this office with a crazy story about smuggling underage prostitutes from El Salvador. THEY are the ones reading intentions into the situation. NONE of this comes from Juan or the organization he worked for.

Having watched two videos, I have yet to see an ACORN employee break the law or offer to help O’Keefe and Giles break the law.

Mind you, I was merely paying attention to the same videos Breitbart put on his website. A full investigation of the unedited tapes by the California AG’s office vindicated Juan Carlos Vera, who is now suing Giles and O’Keefe:

On August 18, 2009, at approximately 5:00pm, Defendants O’Keefe and Giles visited the ACORN office in National City, California.

O’Keefe was wearing a hidden camera and recorded audio and video of the visit.

Defendants O’Keefe and Giles conspired to secretly video tape and audio tape Mr. Vera.

Defendants went into Mr. Vera’s office, sat down, and began a conversation.

O’Keefe and Giles asked whether the conversation would be kept confidential and Mr. Vera agreed.

I’m glad. I hope all of the victims sue them into oblivion — as well as Andrew Breitbart and FOX News, the New York Times, the Baltimore Sun, CNN, and every media outlet that replayed or reported on the videos without a critical eye or even a pretense of fact-checking. They should all be indicted for the high-tech lynching of an uppity black organization, but I’ll settle for the justice Juan Carlos Vera seeks.

And he should get justice. Despite having done everything right, including calling the police after they left his office, Juan Carlos Vera was fired as soon as his supervisor watched the selectively-edited video. Such “accomplishments” cannot go unpunished without incentivizing more of the same.

Just a few things that even liberal and progressive bloggers should try to remember:

1. O’Keefe was NEVER dressed like a pimp at any time in any ACORN office.
2. Hannah Giles told ACORN workers she was leaving an abusive pimp and needed housing before she mentioned any girls from El Salvador.
3. The first videos were the most highly-edited; the last revealed their con game, but the damage was done.
4. Giles and O’Keefe should not be referred to as “filmmakers” of “journalists.” They are neither.

Tags: FOX News

Not So Breitbart

Mar 18, 2010 Breitbart

This goes in a bookmark folder near to my heart. From Chez:

“I use Google Alert for my name to start fights with people in comment sections or on Twitter. It’s clear that Keith Olbermann’s strategy to get noticed was to attack people above him. I have precisely the opposite strategy: to go after the mosquitoes that bite my ankles. I’m not sure it’s a good business model but I’m a petty enough man to indulge them.”

The truth is that Andrew Breitbart is as narcissistic as they come and has no better use for his time than picking fights with strangers on the internet. From a hagiographic WIRED article:

The filet finally shows and Breitbart digs in, ignoring the risk to his mustard-colored sports coat. “The idea is that I have to screw with media, and I have to screw with the Left, in order to give legitimate stories the ability to reach their natural watermark,” he says.

The “natural watermark” is subsumed in the trademark symbol I use in phrases like Teh Librul Media™ and Teh Stupid™ to indicate their origin within the paranoid universe of right-wing politics. But to call his nontroversies “legitimate” is the height of intellectual arrogance. White House Christmas ornaments, microcamera improv games, and Yosi Sergant all turn out to be more of the same OMG Global Socializams™ hysteria. It’s made worse by the wackaloon bloggers he uses.

Back in 1964, this C student would have been drummed out of the movement; his continued presence in the halls of conservative fellowship is a testament to just how far the American right has fallen. Breitbart is a case of diminished standards.

Breitbartocalypse

Mar 17, 2010 ACORN, Breitbart, James O'Keefe

isn’t quite what Breitbart had in mind: I’ve gone and destroyed his protege with his own videos. If you don’t like loud music, just mute the volume and it’ll work just as well. For me, though, the music is part of the indictment.

Best Tweet

Feb 18, 2010 Best Tweeter, Big Hollywood, Breitbart, Chez Pazienza

Chez Pazienza, in reply to Andrew Breitbart’s incredible defensiveness:

What? I’m gonna argue with you over Twitter? That’s makes a hell of a lot of sense — tough guy.

As I keep saying: DO NOT ENGAGE TEH CRAZY™! Backstory here.

Tea Party Crashing

Feb 7, 2010 Breitbart, James O'Keefe, Sarah Palin 2012, Sarahpalooza, Teh Train Wreck™, The Teabagger Fail, sarah palin

Gaylord. Heh. Sumptuous digs for a "populist" movement.

Well, last night was interesting.

I needed to be in Nashville yesterday anyway, so I crashed the tea party at the Gaylord (heh!) Grand Ole Opry Hotel and Convention Center to catch as much video as possible. I went as a citizen journalist with every intention of promoting my work via Huffington Post in all probability, but in the form of You Tube video that will be available elsewhere (including, and especially, my own website).

I introduced myself as Matt Osborne to everyone who asked. No one asked if I was with a media organization, including the woman who eventually “threw me out,” until Sarah’s speech was over and I was literally leaving the way I’d come. I got silent video of convention participants and Judge Roy Moore of Ye Ten Commandments. I talked to “media colleagues” and got samples of the propaganda. Though I was refused entry to the ballroom to so much as take a photo of Sarah, I watched a little of her speech on somebody’s laptop.

After getting shots through the wide-open banquet hall doors, I proceeded to interview two participants off-camera for research purposes. I didn’t take quotes and continued introducing myself as Matt Osborne.

I say all of this as prologue to explain that I’m working on a video involving Andy Breitbart; I was hoping to run into him, but was more concerned with getting video to lay out the narrative of astroturfery and right-wing nontroversy. If you follow my posts at HuffPo or my blog, you know that these are very big areas of interest for me; they’re subjects on which Maddow has reported as well.

So just in case I ran into Breitbart, I had decided to adopt the O’Keefe method: I went under pretext. The best part is, I did not lie about these things, and still got plenty of video. As far as professional ethics go, I think I did pretty well. My girlfriend thought it would be fun to try and say she was a high school senior working on a report for her government class; she does in fact appear quite young, but she’s no professional. Nevertheless, it’s her camera.

As I said, I got GREAT video that will be ready later today (I hope), but I didn’t get to meet or see Breitbart. So I was on my way out the same way I came in (the back door leads to the Opry Mills Mall parking lot; the facility has 24-7 public access) when I was stopped by a woman who claimed to be the event’s media liaison.

She had the a sharp, angry tone of a harpy. Mind you, this woman had already caught sight of us and the camera shortly after we came in  and did nothing. When I now held out my hand and introduced myself as Matt Osborne, she asked me who I was with and I suddenly grew devil’s horns. Remember, I had already done what I’d come to do; just to find out what would happen, I said two words that may get me in real trouble:

“Huffington Post.”

I said that because (of course) Huffington Post is not a “real media organization” (while Breitbart, who borrowed the Huffington Post business model to spread demonstrable lies and paranoid racist agit-prop, was a central figure at the convention). Huffington Post alone does not get invited to the tea party. Wing Nut Daily is more “respectable.”

The harpy said I would have been treated like any other media organization if I had checked in with her, but I got VIDEO of their plan for me. No thanks — the media room was on the opposite end of the extremely large building, and reporters from other news agencies described an oppressive atmosphere.

Remember, I used public access. I took video of people already appearing on video. I didn’t tape or record interviews. As far as ethics are concerned, I’ll gladly compare mine to James O’Keefe any bloody day. Which must be why I grinned when the harpy said she should have expected as much, that HuffPo was an unprofessional outfit and I was the perfect example.

I tore a page out of the Breitbart-O’Keefe playbook and she called me “unprofessional.” Let that sink in.

Anyway: the harpy texted or tweeted someone. I did not have a press credential from HuffPo (I don’t think they have any, actually) so I began to explain that I am an unpaid blogger for Huffington Post…but she was already calling security as the words started coming out of my mouth.

The harpy said that I was to be detained and held for questioning, which was not about to happen for any number of reasons. It’s still the goddamn United States of America; I am not easily intimidated by civilians playing tinfoil god. I also found her highly offensive, so I just said “no” and turned to walk away.

Then the harpy followed me (she would follow me all the way to my car, she said). She attempted to taunt us (laughable) and hollered that we were in terrible trouble — which, in fact, we were; my girlfriend has breathing problems and was now having difficulty getting enough air.

When the harpy realized how I’d accessed the building, she took verbal offense that I had not paid $18 for self-parking. At that point I turned to her in an attempt at reconciliation; there were no grounds for arresting us, and my girlfriend was having a panic attack.

Which is the moment the harpy called the police. Irony: I was in a building full of people convinced the president was an illegitimate foreign agent bent on removing their constitutional rights.

We lost her and made a clean extraction, but there’s no video of all this — my girlfriend was so scared she thought she would drop the camera.

I will understand if Huffington Post is forced to disavow me. That’s fine; I’ll take whatever bad-boy punishment Arianna determines — and make no whimper of complaint under the lash. (Though it would be great to get some consideration from George Soros, who has yet to send me that check we’re all supposedly earning in the liberal ’sphere.) The fact is, I haven’t made any money by being on HuffPo and that’s not what I blog there for.

The woman called herself an employee of Gaylord’s, but I have yet to confirm that and have reason to doubt it. More as this develops…

ADDING: She actually yelled a verbal no-trespass order for the entire convention center and the Opry Mills mall at my back. Boo f***ing wa wa hoo, I can’t drive two hours to pay a retail markup.

ALSO ADDING: Did you know that shutting a door is “assault?” I didn’t, until the harpy shouted this fact too. Interesting how adaptable definitions become whenever wingnuts get involved.

Also also Adding: Gaylord (heh). Turns out the great Nashvegas institution is a corporate welfare recipient.

Manufacturing Nontroversy

Jan 29, 2010 ACORN, Breitbart, James O'Keefe, nontroversy

Everyone wants to know whether Andrew Breitbart was involved in “Whodatgate,” the attempted wiretapping of a Senator in a Federal building. I say this is not mysterious; of course Brietbart is involved. After all, he admits to paying O’Keefe a salary (or “life rights,” whatever those are); and James O’Keefe hasn’t produced any new content for Brietbart’s BigGovernment.com since November, when he posted the last of the ACORN videos.

Basically, O’Keefe needed a new scoop. For some reason, he got the bright idea to involve himself in a really stupid scheme to access the phone lines of a federal building — an act that has resulted in the 25-year old being ordered to live with his parents while awaiting trial. Perhaps that is the most fitting punishment he could have received, since he evidently hasn’t finished growing up.

And poor Andrew, who has basically spent his entire life riding on the work of others, was going broke without a big source of traffic. After all, Victoria Jackson will only get you so many page loads. He needed a big score — a Drudge link. Which brings us to the excuse the defendant’s lawyer gave the AP, which Breitbart then dutifully reported as “news:”

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Four conservative activists accused of trying to tamper with a senator’s phones were just trying to record embarrassing undercover video of her staff ignoring phone calls from constituents angry that she supported health care reform, one of their attorneys said Thurday.

The four, including activist James O’Keefe, known for posing as a pimp and using a hidden camera to target the community-organizing group ACORN, were arrested Monday after targeting Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office in a New Orleans federal building.

Attorney J. Garrison Jordan denied they were trying to disable or wiretap the phones in Landrieu’s office.

“You’re dealing with kids,” he said. “I don’t think they thought it through that far.”

Instead, Jordan said, they hoped to get embarrassing video footage of Landrieu’s staff handling constituent calls. Her office received complaints last month that callers opposed to her health care stance couldn’t get through.

Really? Callers couldn’t get through to a busy office in December, when everyone’s on Christmas vacation? Really? Scandal! Stop the presses! These lovable kids are heroes!

Just one question: why would they need to access the phone closet to do that, when you can just as easily hook up $20 worth of Radio Shack gear and record the phone calls from home?

Ponder that a minute, because it’s absolutely true. It’s also perfectly legal. Brietbart only made speculation worse with his epic breakdown on MSNBC yesterday:

Breitbart later posted an angry admission that he’d done no homework on Shuster prior to the interview. Unintentional hilarity is his forte:

So when MSNBC led the charge on Tuesday against James O’Keefe when he and three others were arrested in New Orleans at Senator Landrieu’s office, it came as no surprise that the cable network seized upon a narrative that presumed O’Keefe’s guilt, falsely extrapolated that he was being charged with felony wiretapping and instantaneously coined and repeated endlessly the new buzz phase, “Watergate Jr.”

It’s not Watergate junior, it’s Whodatgate. And oddly enough, Breitbart once hosted an entire series of dishonestly-edited and dubbed videos calculated to attack the reputation of a community service organization, then went on national television to suggest they contained evidence of criminal activity — and never once opined that Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity ought not to presume as they pleased.

Breitbart and O’Keefe were up to something, but it wasn’t journalism. They were out to make the news — to manufacture nontroversy. It bit them in the ass, and that is all.

Your Daily Dose of Nontroversy

Dec 23, 2009 Breitbart, Christmas, Obama Derangement Syndrome, nontroversy

Death Of A Culture Warrior

Dec 16, 2009 Ayn Rand, Breitbart, Kulturkampf, Obituaries, Prosperity Gospel, The Malkin Malevolence