Currently viewing the tag: “Tells”
One thing about Pulitzer Prize winner Leonard Pitts over at the Miami Herald, he doesn’t mince words.
In his most recent article about “birthers,” Pitts calls them “morons,’’ ‘‘jackasses,” “imbeciles,” “idiots,’’ “doofuses” and “pinheads.”
After admitting that name calling “lowers the level of discourse… forestalls thoughtful response and…does not suggest an excess of class,” Pitts says:
Where the birthers are concerned, however, the level of discourse is already lower than Neptune’s basement, a thoughtful response is about as likely as Miami snow on the Fourth of July, and I will just have to chance the loss of class.
Later on, Pitts calls the birther nonsense “not just claptrap, but profoundly racist claptrap.”
While I tend to agree with Pitts on the claptrap, I would not call the birthers morons, imbeciles, idiots, etc.
It is my belief that these people, especially the initiators and leaders of this “movement” are extremely intelligent, capable and resourceful.
How else would a movement, and its conspiracy theories, that started in mid-2008 following Obama’s win in the Democratic primaries, with such experts and heavy weights as Andy Martin (known as “King of the Birthers”), Jerome Corsi (of John Kerry swift-boating fame), Alan Keyes, Orly Taitz, etc., be able to convince, a mere two years later, 20 percent of all Americans and 30 percent of tea partiers into believing that the president was not born in the United States?
How else would they be able to convince a majority (51 percent) of likely Republican presidential primary voters that the president was born in another country? (2011 survey from Public Policy Polling)
According to the same poll, “Another 21 percent say they are ‘not sure’ if the president was born in the United States.” This means that “72 percent of the people who will be choosing the next Republican presidential nominee are either birthers or birther-curious.”
How else could this movement attract reputable and intelligent Republican Party leaders, notables and pundits such as Senator Richard Shelby, Tracey Mann, Liz Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Camille Paglia and others to grant the movement legitimacy, to defend the birthers or at a minimum to humor these conspiracy-minded people?
Even House Speaker John Boehner, when asked recently about his responsibility to repudiate “birtherism” avoided the issue by replying, “it’s not my job to tell the American people what to think. Our job in Washington is to listen to the American people.”
How else would some Republican elected officials, both in the U.S. Congress and at state assemblies propose and vote for legislation that would require presidential candidates to provide documentation that proves they are natural-born Americans?
How else would potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates such as Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and—more recently—Donald Trump “wink” at the birthers, play coy, demur or dodge the issue; allude to the President’s “Kenyan roots and connections,” but never categorically discredit the birther movement?
All this, according to Pitts,
… even though Obama provided his birth certificate and its authenticity has repeatedly been vouched for by Hawaiian officials.
… even though, if there were the slightest chance he was ineligible for the presidency, opposition researchers working for his opponents would have shredded him like an old bank statement.
… even though his Aug. 4, 1961 birth was noted by contemporaneous (memo to the morons: that means it happened at the time) birth announcements in not one, but two Hawaii newspapers. What’d he do? Jump in a time machine, zip back to the ’60s and plant the notices?
Still, in my opinion, these birthers are not ‘‘jackasses,” “doofuses” or “pinheads.”
They know exactly what they are doing, and why.
Again, according to Pitts:
Criticize him to your heart’s content. Give him hell over Libya. Blast him about Guantánamo. Knock him silly on healthcare reform. He is the president; taking abuse is part of his job description.
But this ongoing birther garbage, like the ongoing controversy about his supposed secret Muslim identity — is not about criticism. It is not about what he has done but, rather, what he is.
Like “state’s rights,” these controversies are a code, a dog whistle for those with ears to hear. They provide euphemistic cover for those who want to express alarm over the raw newness of him, the sweeping demographic changes he represents (‘‘He’s black! Oh, my God, they’ve got the presidency now!’’) without appearing uncouth enough to do so.
Memo to the morons: It doesn’t work, folks. Nobody is fooled. You are about as subtle as Lady Gaga.
Pitts concludes:
Frankly, I wish Trump and his fellow birthers would just go ahead and call Obama an N-word. Yes, it would be reprehensible and offensive.
But it would be a damn sight more honest, too.
As I said, he tells it like it is.
One thing about Pulitzer Prize winner Leonard Pitts over at the Miami Herald, he doesn’t mince words.
In his most recent article about “birthers,” Pitts calls them “morons,’’ ‘‘jackasses,” “imbeciles,” “idiots,’’ “doofuses” and “pinheads.”
After admitting that name calling “lowers the level of discourse… forestalls thoughtful response and…does not suggest an excess of class,” Pitts says:
Where the birthers are concerned, however, the level of discourse is already lower than Neptune’s basement, a thoughtful response is about as likely as Miami snow on the Fourth of July, and I will just have to chance the loss of class.
Later on, Pitts calls the birther nonsense “not just claptrap, but profoundly racist claptrap.”
While I tend to agree with Pitts on the claptrap, I would not call the birthers morons, imbeciles, idiots, etc.
It is my belief that these people, especially the initiators and leaders of this “movement” are extremely intelligent, capable and resourceful.
How else would a movement, and its conspiracy theories, that started in mid-2008 following Obama’s win in the Democratic primaries, with such experts and heavy weights as Andy Martin (known as “King of the Birthers”), Jerome Corsi (of John Kerry swift-boating fame), Alan Keyes, Orly Taitz, etc., be able to convince, a mere two years later, 20 percent of all Americans and 30 percent of tea partiers into believing that the president was not born in the United States?
How else would they be able to convince a majority (51 percent) of likely Republican presidential primary voters that the president was born in another country? (2011 survey from Public Policy Polling)
According to the same poll, “Another 21 percent say they are ‘not sure’ if the president was born in the United States.” This means that “72 percent of the people who will be choosing the next Republican presidential nominee are either birthers or birther-curious.”
How else could this movement attract reputable and intelligent Republican Party leaders, notables and pundits such as Senator Richard Shelby, Tracey Mann, Liz Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Camille Paglia and others to grant the movement legitimacy, to defend the birthers or at a minimum to humor these conspiracy-minded people?
Even House Speaker John Boehner, when asked recently about his responsibility to repudiate “birtherism” avoided the issue by replying, “it’s not my job to tell the American people what to think. Our job in Washington is to listen to the American people.”
How else would some Republican elected officials, both in the U.S. Congress and at state assemblies propose and vote for legislation that would require presidential candidates to provide documentation that proves they are natural-born Americans?
How else would potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates such as Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and—more recently—Donald Trump “wink” at the birthers, play coy, demur or dodge the issue; allude to the President’s “Kenyan roots and connections,” but never categorically discredit the birther movement?
All this, according to Pitts,
… even though Obama provided his birth certificate and its authenticity has repeatedly been vouched for by Hawaiian officials.
… even though, if there were the slightest chance he was ineligible for the presidency, opposition researchers working for his opponents would have shredded him like an old bank statement.
… even though his Aug. 4, 1961 birth was noted by contemporaneous (memo to the morons: that means it happened at the time) birth announcements in not one, but two Hawaii newspapers. What’d he do? Jump in a time machine, zip back to the ’60s and plant the notices?
Still, in my opinion, these birthers are not ‘‘jackasses,” “doofuses” or “pinheads.”
They know exactly what they are doing, and why.
Again, according to Pitts:
Criticize him to your heart’s content. Give him hell over Libya. Blast him about Guantánamo. Knock him silly on healthcare reform. He is the president; taking abuse is part of his job description.
But this ongoing birther garbage, like the ongoing controversy about his supposed secret Muslim identity — is not about criticism. It is not about what he has done but, rather, what he is.
Like “state’s rights,” these controversies are a code, a dog whistle for those with ears to hear. They provide euphemistic cover for those who want to express alarm over the raw newness of him, the sweeping demographic changes he represents (‘‘He’s black! Oh, my God, they’ve got the presidency now!’’) without appearing uncouth enough to do so.
Memo to the morons: It doesn’t work, folks. Nobody is fooled. You are about as subtle as Lady Gaga.
Pitts concludes:
Frankly, I wish Trump and his fellow birthers would just go ahead and call Obama an N-word. Yes, it would be reprehensible and offensive.
But it would be a damn sight more honest, too.
As I said, he tells it like it is.
 Fox News |
A fourth ballplayer tells jury Barry Bonds' trainer injected him with drugs
Los Angeles Times Retired A's infielder Randy Velarde says Greg Anderson gave him human growth hormone during spring training in 2002. So far, the players have not implicated Bonds in their interactions with the trainer. Randy Velarde, a former player with the Oakland … Barry Bonds trial developments Barry Bonds Trial Nearing End Of Government Witness List Velarde says Bonds' trainer gave him injections |
ABC News’ Amy Bingham and Kristina Bergess report: Bright pink tablecloths, red carpet stars and 120 rosy-faced high school girls filled the East Room of the White House Wednesday night for a dinner to celebrate mentoring with First Lady Michelle…
Political Punch
ABC News’ Karen Travers reports: In an interview with Diane Sawyer about Libya, President Obama said he does “a lot of praying,” every night before he goes to bed. “I am praying that I’m making the best possible decisions, and…
Political Punch
Rep. Don Young (R-AK) held a town hall meeting at the Alaska Business Roundtable last week where he covered a variety of issues in discussions with his constituents, including his intention to vote against any funding for combat operations in Libya.
At one point, Benjamin E. Brown, a member of the Juneau Chamber of Commerce, asked Young for his feelings on Western military intervention in Libya. Before the congressman addressed Libya, he pointed out that he supported the war in Iraq but opposes the war in Afghanistan, citing imperial blunders by previous world powers in the region:
YOUNG: I’m a hawk. I supported the Iraqi war. I think it was the correct thing to do. But this [referring to Libya] deeply disturbs me. I do not support the war in Afghanistan. Because there is no way you can be successful in that arena. Alexander the great tried it, the British tired it, the Russians tried it, now we’re trying it.
Watch it:
Young’s criticism of the Afghan war is laudable, especially at a time when polls show that two-thirds of Americans want an end to the conflict. There’s just one problem: Young’s voting doesn’t match his rhetoric. Exactly one week before the event at the Alaska Business Roundtable, Young voted against a resolution calling for an end to the war in Afghanistan — and when he was campaigning for his seat last fall, he claimed that leaving Afghanistan would be tantamount to “surrender.” Young’s constituents deserve to know the truth about his voting record and he shouldn’t tell them he believes one thing and then vote a different way.
ThinkProgress filed this report from the Conservative Principles Conference in Des Moines, IA.
The defining political story three months into 2011 is the spread of anti-union legislation in the states. Now, a leading senator on the right wants to eliminate collective bargaining rights at a federal level.
During an interview with ThinkProgress in Des Moines this weekend, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), a leader of the Tea Party movement and veritable kingmaker for conservative candidates, made no bones about his desire to diminish the power of public employees. DeMint told ThinkProgress that he “doesn’t believe collective bargaining has any place in government…including at the federal level.” The South Carolina senator then went on to call public employees’ unions an “unelected third party” that enjoyed “monopoly power” in negotiations. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” DeMint quipped:
KEYES: Senator, would you like to see some of these bills that we see at a state level curbing the collective bargaining rights of public employees’ unions, would you like to see those on a federal level?
DeMINT: I don’t believe collective bargaining has any place in government.
KEYES: Including at a federal level?
DeMINT: Including at the federal level. That’s what elections are, collective bargaining, for people who are [inaudible]. I think it just doesn’t make sense. When we’re elected as representatives, to determine the fiscal condition of the government, then to have an unelected third party bargaining at the table with monopoly power, it just doesn’t make any sense.
Watch it:
Currently, most federal public employees – with the exception of the postal service and some others – are only permitted to collectively bargain to improve their working conditions (their pay and benefits are set by Congress). However, DeMint is apparently seeking to take away even the meager rights that federal employees currently have.
The South Carolina Republican’s push to strip public employees’ unions of all their collective bargaining rights is part of a larger battle by the GOP against labor unions. Currently, the right is targeting labor unions in states across the country, from Maine to Missouri and elsewhere, with nearly-identical legislation crafted by the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Earlier this month, Wisconsin State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) even admitted to Fox News on air that the goal is to defund labor unions and hurt President Obama’s reelection chances.
Now, as the fight over public unions expands to more states, Sen. Jim DeMint is picking up the torch for at a federal level.
North of the Cheese Curtain resides the TrogloPundit-and he exceeded the million hit mark on his blog earlier today.
Congratulations!
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ThinkProgress filed this report from the Conservative Principles Conference in Des Moines, IA.
As the Republican presidential nomination process begins, one GOP candidate is making a name for himself as the Islamophobia candidate: Herman Cain.
Earlier this week, Cain gave an interview to Christianity Today in which he declared that, “based upon the little knowledge that I have of the Muslim religion, you know, they have an objective to convert all infidels or kill them.”
ThinkProgress caught up with the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza today at the Conservative Principles Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, to discuss his comments further. We asked him, in light of his statements on Islam, would he be comfortable appointing any Muslims in his administration. Rather than skirting the question or hedging his answer, as most presidential aspirants are wont to do, Cain was definitive: “No, I would not”:
KEYES: You came under a bit of controversy this week for some of the comments made about Muslims in general. Would you be comfortable appointing a Muslim, either in your cabinet or as a federal judge?
CAIN: No, I would not. And here’s why. There is this creeping attempt, there is this attempt to gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government. It does not belong in our government. This is what happened in Europe. And little by little, to try and be politically correct, they made this little change, they made this little change. And now they’ve got a social problem that they don’t know what to do with hardly.
The question that was asked that “raised some questions” and, as my grandfather said, “I does not care, I feel the way I feel.” I was asked, “what is the role of Islam in America?” I thought it was an odd question. I said the role of Islam in America is for those that believe in Islam to practice it and leave us alone. Just like Christianity. We have a First Amendment. And I get upset when the Muslims in this country, some of them, try to force their Sharia law onto the rest of us.
Watch it:
Cain should check his understanding of the U.S. Constitution, which states in Article 4:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
Cain’s apparent rationale for refusing to even consider a Muslim nominee for any position in his administration is as simple as it is abhorrent: he believes all Muslims would try to “force their Sharia law onto the rest of us.” This type of bigotry has been promoted by conservative figures like Frank Gaffney and Brigitte Gabriel for years. Now, it appears to be seeping into the presidential race via Herman Cain.
Conservatve publisher Andrew Breitbart told NewsBusters Friday his less than two week stint as a Huffington Post front page contributor was abruptly terminated as part of an ongoing scheme by liberal media members to depict the Tea Party as racist.
After caving to pressure from the far-left to have Breitbart dumped, HuffPo spokesman Mario Ruiz issued the following statement Thursday:
The Huffington Post is committed to fostering a lively and often provocative debate about the issues of the day and encourages a wide range of voices from all perspectives to participate. Andrew Brietbart’s [sic] false ad hominem attack on Van Jones in The Daily Caller violates the tenets of debate and civil discourse we have strived for since the day we launched. As a result, we will no longer feature his posts on the front page.
He is welcome to continue publishing his work on HuffPost provided it adheres to our editorial guidelines, as the two posts he published on HuffPost did — guidelines that include a strict prohibition on ad hominem attacks. Our decision today recognizes that placing posts on the front page is an editorial call that elevates some posts over others, and is an indication of how seriously we take these judgment calls.
According to Breitbart, the idea for him writing for HuffPo’s front page came directly from the website’s founder, Arianna Huffington herself.
While he was at her house a month or so ago, Huffington floated the idea of her conservative friend writing some more prominent pieces for her site. After thinking about it for a few weeks, Breitbart agreed and published “NPR Is Collateral Damage in Battle to Brand Tea Party” on March 11.
Not surprisingly, the Left pitched a fit. Color of Change, the organization founded by President Obama’s former green czar Van Jones, quickly published a petition to get Breitbart removed from HuffPo’s front page:
Notorious liar and race-baiter Andrew Breitbart poses as a journalist and then uses his position to gin up race-based fears, protect racists, and demonize Black political leaders and institutions. And the Huffington Post has given him a prime space on its platform to do so.
Please join us in demanding that Arianna Huffington and the Huffington Post stop elevating and legitimizing Andrew Breitbart and please ask your friends and family to do the same.
This was not the first time CoC pressured a media outlet to dissociate itself from Breitbart. When it was announced last October that Breitbart was going to be participating in ABC News’s online Election Day coverage, CoC issued the following:
Andrew Breitbart is a liar and race-baiter with a long history of pushing false stories to achieve his political ends. He was most recently exposed as a fraud after promoting selectively-edited video in an attempt to paint the USDA's Shirley Sherrod as a racist, smear the NAACP, and accuse the Obama administration of reverse racism.
For some reason, ABC News invited Breitbart to participate in their Election Day programming. It's a slap in the face to Shirley Sherrod, to Black America, and to everyone who believes in the value of telling the truth. Please join us in calling on ABC to drop Breitbart from their Election Day programming, now.
Much like the Huffington Post, ABC News sadly caved to this pressure, and Breitbart was unceremoniously booted on Election Eve.
Jones may not be working for the White House any more, but he still wields a lot of power.
As pressure mounted for HuffPo to similarly dump Breitbart, he was approached by the Daily Caller’s Steven Nelson to discuss the issue. The Caller published its interview with Breitbart Thursday:
“Van Jones is a commie punk,” Breitbart told TheDC. “He was exposed to a great extent because of the hard journalism that was done at my website, that exposed him as a guy who was an unvetted liability to the Obama administration. He was forced to step down because of my journalistic work.”
Breitbart said that he wasn’t surprised by the campaign. “This is what the left does, they don’t believe in free speech. They want to shut up Fox News, they want to shut up people that disagree with them, they want to shut up the Tea Party,” Breitbart said. “The number one reason why they want to bring up race is because I am the one who exposed the lie that the ‘N’ word was hurled at [Democratic] Congressmen [Andrew] Carson [of Indiana] and [John] Lewis” of Georgia at a Tea Party rally in front of the Capitol.
Within hours of this being published, Breitbart was canned from HuffPo’s front page.
“Arianna is a function of the Hollywood left,” Breitbart told me Friday morning. “This policy was crafted to silence a mainstream media critic.”
He continued, “There are people in the mainstream media with far more controversial positions than me, but the Left can’t tolerate someone trying to expose how they’re forcing their views on the public via academia, Hollywood, and the various news outlets.”
Breitbart likened himself to Upton Sinclair saying, “I’m pointing out the rancid meat in the media industry and they hate me for it.”
Ironically, this episode has acted to prove Breitbart’s point. As Salon’s Alex Pareene wrote Thursday:
Andrew has now gotten exactly what he wanted. He doesn't need to publish his idiocies at the Huffington Post. But getting banned from the Huffington Post proves his thesis about the repressive, anti-free speech liberal media.
Pareene also noted the absurdity of HuffPo claiming its decision was about ad hominem attacks:
A strict prohibition on ad hominem attacks! ("Against Arianna's friends," is the bit of that sentence that spokesman Marco Ruiz left out.) (Also there is apparently no prohibition on constant, practically obsessive race-baiting, but whatever.)
Slate’s David Weigel noticed another hypocrisy:
He didn't write or say any of that at HuffPo, a site he helped develop in 2005. Is the Huffington Post's standard that contributors can be to some modified limited hang-out if they use ad hominems in other forums? Boy, good thing Breitbart doesn't have an army of contributors who can comb HuffPo authors' published and spoken work to see if they've done that.
Indeed, for what HuffPo apparently found offensive was published at the Daily Caller. Are all HuffPo contributors from this point forward going to be held to this standard?
Not likely.
But even that doesn’t address all of the hypocrisy, for ad hominem attacks are at the very heart of the Huffington Post, and have been since its founding.
Mickey Kaus made this point at the Daily Caller Thursday:
If this rule is applied honestly, I suspect a whole lot of people are now banned from HuffPo’s front page. … The first name there right now, for example, is HuffPo writer Jason Linkins. You think Linkins is never ad hominem?
As Pareene alluded to, this is about ad hominem attacks on people Huffington agrees with. Such attacks are welcomed when they’re about conservatives especially if their last name is Bush, Cheney, or Palin.
Ironically, as Breitbart told the Daily Caller Friday, ad hominems are perfectly acceptable at the Huffington Post if they're directed at him:
“Their front page bloggers have made more ad hominem attacks at the Huffington Post against me, I thought I was being a big person going into a venue, accepting the premise that this was ad nausea de ad hominem,” Breitbart said in a phone interview on Friday morning.
Breitbart contends that HuffPo has let its left-wing bloggers make ad hominem attacks against him on its website, including Color of Change executive director James Rucker.
Yet Arianna can’t put up with negative comments about the former Grassroots Director of her campaign for California governor a few years back, even if they’re published somewhere else.
“Arianna has now given safe harbor to Color of Change to take out those that expose Jones,” Breitbart said.
But her personal hypocrisy is even worse. Breitbart considers himself a close personal friend of Arianna’s. He has a good relationship with her mother as well as her daughters.
“They give me hugs and kisses whenever I see them.”
Yet now she’s defacto claiming he’s a racist – one that she’s let into her home and be around her family for many years.
But this kind of hypocrisy is nothing new for Huffington. As former HuffPo contributor Lee Stranahan noted Thursday in his “Why I’m Quitting Blogging at the Huffington Post”:
One very loathsome aspect of this story is something that Huffington Post editor Roy Sekoff told me in a long phone call about Andrew Breitbart several months ago. Roy knows and worked with Andrew and when the issue of Andrew Breitbart being a racist came up, Roy told me “No, of course Andrew isn’t a racist.”
Roy went on to say that while both he and Arianna Huffington knew that the charges of racism being hurled at Andrew weren’t true based on their years of personal dealings with him that they were in a ‘bad position’ to say anything about it.
Politics is a contact sport, but not defending someone you know personally and know the truth about is pretty poor conduct. To stand by and watch their reputation ruined and do nothing when all you have to do is say ‘I know him and that’s not true” is shameful.
Asked about this, Breitbart responded, "Arianna can't lead the charge in undermining the false, manufactured 'race baiting' ad hominem against me housed countless times on AOL's Huffington Post pages. It's a business decision. I get it."
Some business decision.
Arianna knows her friend isn’t a racist, but isn’t willing to say that in public for fear that it will go counter to the Left’s desire to depict all conservatives as such, especially the Tea Party. And this to Breitbart is the key.
“It’s about making everybody in the Tea Party racist because they’re afraid the movement will increase the number of black conservatives.”
In Breitbart’s view, the Democrat Party can’t lose even ten percent of the black vote or it will have a lot of difficulty winning national elections.
Contrary to the media meme, the Tea Party has welcomed blacks whose views don’t necessarily fit with today’s liberalism. This is why for almost two years press references to this movement always castigate it as being racist. The hope is this will prevent blacks from taking the Tea Party seriously.
To support his premise, Breitbart told me that he has four videos of the infamous event at the Capitol last year when Tea Party members allegedly shouted racial epithets at black Congressmen before the vote on ObamaCare.
These videos in his view completely refute this assertion, but he hasn’t gotten one mainstream media outlet to air them.
Any wonder why?
For his part, Breitbart spent much of the day Wednesday trying to reach Huffington to discuss the situation with her. He was told she was traveling, and has still not heard from his friend about Thursday’s decision to boot him from the front page.
But there’s another side to this matter, for it demonstrates once again the kind of “conservative” that is welcomed by the mainstream media – and it’s not someone like Breitbart.
“I’m relentless in exposing the media’s war on American culture," he said as our telephone interview came to a close, "and will not play the nauseating marital tag team of David Frum and Danielle Crittenden’s capitulating role for these totalitarian-minded marms.”
Amen.
Conservatve publisher Andrew Breitbart told NewsBusters Friday his less than two week stint as a Huffington Post front page contributor was abruptly terminated as part of an ongoing scheme by liberal media members to depict the Tea Party as racist.
After caving to pressure from the far-left to have Breitbart dumped, HuffPo spokesman Mario Ruiz issued the following statement Thursday:
The Huffington Post is committed to fostering a lively and often provocative debate about the issues of the day and encourages a wide range of voices from all perspectives to participate. Andrew Brietbart’s [sic] false ad hominem attack on Van Jones in The Daily Caller violates the tenets of debate and civil discourse we have strived for since the day we launched. As a result, we will no longer feature his posts on the front page.
He is welcome to continue publishing his work on HuffPost provided it adheres to our editorial guidelines, as the two posts he published on HuffPost did — guidelines that include a strict prohibition on ad hominem attacks. Our decision today recognizes that placing posts on the front page is an editorial call that elevates some posts over others, and is an indication of how seriously we take these judgment calls.
According to Breitbart, the idea for him writing for HuffPo’s front page came directly from the website’s founder, Arianna Huffington herself.
While he was at her house a month or so ago, Huffington floated the idea of her conservative friend writing some more prominent pieces for her site. After thinking about it for a few weeks, Breitbart agreed and published “NPR Is Collateral Damage in Battle to Brand Tea Party” on March 11.
Not surprisingly, the Left pitched a fit. Color of Change, the organization founded by President Obama’s former green czar Van Jones, quickly published a petition to get Breitbart removed from HuffPo’s front page:
Notorious liar and race-baiter Andrew Breitbart poses as a journalist and then uses his position to gin up race-based fears, protect racists, and demonize Black political leaders and institutions. And the Huffington Post has given him a prime space on its platform to do so.
Please join us in demanding that Arianna Huffington and the Huffington Post stop elevating and legitimizing Andrew Breitbart and please ask your friends and family to do the same.
This was not the first time CoC pressured a media outlet to dissociate itself from Breitbart. When it was announced last October that Breitbart was going to be participating in ABC News’s online Election Day coverage, CoC issued the following:
Andrew Breitbart is a liar and race-baiter with a long history of pushing false stories to achieve his political ends. He was most recently exposed as a fraud after promoting selectively-edited video in an attempt to paint the USDA's Shirley Sherrod as a racist, smear the NAACP, and accuse the Obama administration of reverse racism.
For some reason, ABC News invited Breitbart to participate in their Election Day programming. It's a slap in the face to Shirley Sherrod, to Black America, and to everyone who believes in the value of telling the truth. Please join us in calling on ABC to drop Breitbart from their Election Day programming, now.
Much like the Huffington Post, ABC News sadly caved to this pressure, and Breitbart was unceremoniously booted on Election Eve.
Jones may not be working for the White House any more, but he still wields a lot of power.
As pressure mounted for HuffPo to similarly dump Breitbart, he was approached by the Daily Caller’s Steven Nelson to discuss the issue. The Caller published its interview with Breitbart Thursday:
“Van Jones is a commie punk,” Breitbart told TheDC. “He was exposed to a great extent because of the hard journalism that was done at my website, that exposed him as a guy who was an unvetted liability to the Obama administration. He was forced to step down because of my journalistic work.”
Breitbart said that he wasn’t surprised by the campaign. “This is what the left does, they don’t believe in free speech. They want to shut up Fox News, they want to shut up people that disagree with them, they want to shut up the Tea Party,” Breitbart said. “The number one reason why they want to bring up race is because I am the one who exposed the lie that the ‘N’ word was hurled at [Democratic] Congressmen [Andrew] Carson [of Indiana] and [John] Lewis” of Georgia at a Tea Party rally in front of the Capitol.
Within hours of this being published, Breitbart was canned from HuffPo’s front page.
“Arianna is a function of the Hollywood left,” Breitbart told me Friday morning. “This policy was crafted to silence a mainstream media critic.”
He continued, “There are people in the mainstream media with far more controversial positions than me, but the Left can’t tolerate someone trying to expose how they’re forcing their views on the public via academia, Hollywood, and the various news outlets.”
Breitbart likened himself to Upton Sinclair saying, “I’m pointing out the rancid meat in the media industry and they hate me for it.”
Ironically, this episode has acted to prove Breitbart’s point. As Salon’s Alex Pareene wrote Thursday:
Andrew has now gotten exactly what he wanted. He doesn't need to publish his idiocies at the Huffington Post. But getting banned from the Huffington Post proves his thesis about the repressive, anti-free speech liberal media.
Pareene also noted the absurdity of HuffPo claiming its decision was about ad hominem attacks:
A strict prohibition on ad hominem attacks! ("Against Arianna's friends," is the bit of that sentence that spokesman Marco Ruiz left out.) (Also there is apparently no prohibition on constant, practically obsessive race-baiting, but whatever.)
Slate’s David Weigel noticed another hypocrisy:
He didn't write or say any of that at HuffPo, a site he helped develop in 2005. Is the Huffington Post's standard that contributors can be to some modified limited hang-out if they use ad hominems in other forums? Boy, good thing Breitbart doesn't have an army of contributors who can comb HuffPo authors' published and spoken work to see if they've done that.
Indeed, for what HuffPo apparently found offensive was published at the Daily Caller. Are all HuffPo contributors from this point forward going to be held to this standard?
Not likely.
But even that doesn’t address all of the hypocrisy, for ad hominem attacks are at the very heart of the Huffington Post, and have been since its founding.
Mickey Kaus made this point at the Daily Caller Thursday:
If this rule is applied honestly, I suspect a whole lot of people are now banned from HuffPo’s front page. … The first name there right now, for example, is HuffPo writer Jason Linkins. You think Linkins is never ad hominem?
As Pareene alluded to, this is about ad hominem attacks on people Huffington agrees with. Such attacks are welcomed when they’re about conservatives especially if their last name is Bush, Cheney, or Palin.
Ironically, as Breitbart told the Daily Caller Friday, ad hominems are perfectly acceptable at the Huffington Post if they're directed at him:
“Their front page bloggers have made more ad hominem attacks at the Huffington Post against me, I thought I was being a big person going into a venue, accepting the premise that this was ad nausea de ad hominem,” Breitbart said in a phone interview on Friday morning.
Breitbart contends that HuffPo has let its left-wing bloggers make ad hominem attacks against him on its website, including Color of Change executive director James Rucker.
Yet Arianna can’t put up with negative comments about the former Grassroots Director of her campaign for California governor a few years back, even if they’re published somewhere else.
“Arianna has now given safe harbor to Color of Change to take out those that expose Jones,” Breitbart said.
But her personal hypocrisy is even worse. Breitbart considers himself a close personal friend of Arianna’s. He has a good relationship with her mother as well as her daughters.
“They give me hugs and kisses whenever I see them.”
Yet now she’s defacto claiming he’s a racist – one that she’s let into her home and be around her family for many years.
But this kind of hypocrisy is nothing new for Huffington. As former HuffPo contributor Lee Stranahan noted Thursday in his “Why I’m Quitting Blogging at the Huffington Post”:
One very loathsome aspect of this story is something that Huffington Post editor Roy Sekoff told me in a long phone call about Andrew Breitbart several months ago. Roy knows and worked with Andrew and when the issue of Andrew Breitbart being a racist came up, Roy told me “No, of course Andrew isn’t a racist.”
Roy went on to say that while both he and Arianna Huffington knew that the charges of racism being hurled at Andrew weren’t true based on their years of personal dealings with him that they were in a ‘bad position’ to say anything about it.
Politics is a contact sport, but not defending someone you know personally and know the truth about is pretty poor conduct. To stand by and watch their reputation ruined and do nothing when all you have to do is say ‘I know him and that’s not true” is shameful.
Asked about this, Breitbart responded, "Arianna can't lead the charge in undermining the false, manufactured 'race baiting' ad hominem against me housed countless times on AOL's Huffington Post pages. It's a business decision. I get it."
Some business decision.
Arianna knows her friend isn’t a racist, but isn’t willing to say that in public for fear that it will go counter to the Left’s desire to depict all conservatives as such, especially the Tea Party. And this to Breitbart is the key.
“It’s about making everybody in the Tea Party racist because they’re afraid the movement will increase the number of black conservatives.”
In Breitbart’s view, the Democrat Party can’t lose even ten percent of the black vote or it will have a lot of difficulty winning national elections.
Contrary to the media meme, the Tea Party has welcomed blacks whose views don’t necessarily fit with today’s liberalism. This is why for almost two years press references to this movement always castigate it as being racist. The hope is this will prevent blacks from taking the Tea Party seriously.
To support his premise, Breitbart told me that he has four videos of the infamous event at the Capitol last year when Tea Party members allegedly shouted racial epithets at black Congressmen before the vote on ObamaCare.
These videos in his view completely refute this assertion, but he hasn’t gotten one mainstream media outlet to air them.
Any wonder why?
For his part, Breitbart spent much of the day Wednesday trying to reach Huffington to discuss the situation with her. He was told she was traveling, and has still not heard from his friend about Thursday’s decision to boot him from the front page.
But there’s another side to this matter, for it demonstrates once again the kind of “conservative” that is welcomed by the mainstream media – and it’s not someone like Breitbart.
“I’m relentless in exposing the media’s war on American culture," he said as our telephone interview came to a close, "and will not play the nauseating marital tag team of David Frum and Danielle Crittenden’s capitulating role for these totalitarian-minded marms.”
Amen.
Nothing better for a Saturday morning than an unhinged leftist, except for an unhinged leftist climate moron
Can you get much more low-down than Scott Walker and his cronies? It’s not enough that the Wisconsin governor stripped collective bargaining rights from unions in pretty much the slimiest way possible, or that important people who support him have been advocating both violence and fake violence as a way to silence opposition. No, he also had to go and kill wind power.
Energy developer Invenergy has twigged to the fact that Walker is a scumbag in general and an anti-environment scumbag in particular, and has pulled out of its plan to build a new large-scale wind farm in Wisconsin. The farm would have had 100 turbines, 150 megawatts, and enough to power about 40,000 homes at peak output. But thanks to Walker’s bill to kneecap wind energy by imposing tight restrictions on where turbine farms can be built, Invenergy now thinks Wisconsin has an “absence of legislative stability,” which is corporate for “run by a dick.” Another 725 megawatts of planned wind installations from other developers — and $ 1.8 million in investments into the state economy — is also at risk.
See? What Walker did that was really bad was …… well, he’s the Governor, not part of the Legislature, which were the ones who implemented the new rules (though based on Walker’s property rights bill), partly due to people complaining about having wind farms near their homes and all the noise they generate
The Ledge Wind Energy Center project south of Green Bay would have generated 150 megawatts of electricity, but was the most controversial wind project proposed in the state, as local residents concerned about noise and shadow flicker from wind turbines mobilized in opposition to the project.
Residents in rural Brown County have been the most outspoken group in the state in support of Gov. Scott Walker’s property rights bill restricting wind farm development, and in opposition to rules developed last year by state energy regulators for where wind farms can be located.
And it’s a good thing wind turbines don’t freeze in cold weather. Anyhow, by Jess Zimmerman’s definition, Ted Kennedy was an “anti-environmental scumbag in particular” for blocking the Cape Wind Project for over 10 years. Thanks for the 411, Jess!
This is obviously how they really think.
American Thinker Blog
BINGAMAN: The starting point for the [Senate briefing by oil experts] was one fundamental truth: the primary driver of the price for gasoline at the pump is the price of crude oil. This chart [above] was one of the key ones used by EIA Administrator Newell. It shows the price trends since 2005 for gasoline (in yellow) and crude oil (in green)…. [F]or the last 3 years, gasoline price movements have exactly tracked global crude oil prices. The idea that our gasoline prices are high today because of some policy of the Obama Administration is just not supported by the facts….
The bulk of the discussion at the briefing that we held on Tuesday about high oil prices was about what is going on in the Middle East and North Africa. It should be obvious that this is the major force driving oil prices…. As you can see from this chart [below], oil prices are very sensitive to these kinds of developments….
But what can Congress do to help ease the burden of high prices for U.S. consumers, when oil prices are determined mostly outside our borders? I think a realistic, responsible answer has to be focused on becoming less vulnerable to oil price changes over the medium- and long-term. And we become less vulnerable by using less oil.
Senator Bingaman (D-NM), who is not known for his eloquence, gave a better speech on oil last week than President Obama ever has. Why? Why are Democrats so lame in talking about this potentially winning issue?
Grist’s Dave Roberts offers his answer in the repost that follows the chart.
Bingaman tells the truth about gas prices, is lonely in doing so
by David Roberts
So I’m reading in Politico about Democratic fecklessness. (Yes, half my posts begin this way.) The problem is, whenever gas prices go up, Republicans benefit. They have a simple, powerful message ready to go, right off the shelf: drill here, drill now, pay less. Not enough drilling: that’s why gas prices are high. Drilling more: that’s how to lower them.
If a Republican is president, congressional Democrats and hippie enviro groups are blocking new drilling. If a Democrat is president, he and his cronies in Congress are pandering to liberals by blocking new drilling. It’s the same every time, so it’s all but inevitable that as gas prices rise they’re trying to tag Obama the “pay more at the pump” president.
In response, Democrats … flail. Every time. They say “we can’t drill our way out,” but they pretend like we can get out by punishing commodity speculators, opening the strategic reserve, or implementing “use it or lose it” gimmicks. They accept the fundamental falsehood at the root of the conservative position — the way to lower gas prices is increase supply of U.S. oil — and then reject the most obvious implication of that premise, i.e., we should drill more.
The result is hesitant, incoherent, poll-driven mishmash. In other words, vintage Democratic messaging.
Into this fog last week came a beam of light in the form of an extraordinary speech from Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), which didn’t get the attention it deserved. Bingaman is not normally a talky guy. He’s not a McCain or Lieberman, on Sunday talk shows so often they keep toothbrushes in the green room bathrooms. Nor is he given to grand political gestures. He’s cautious by temperament (to a fault, I’d argue). Despite his reticence, though, he is among the very few senators who actually understand energy.
Apparently, he finally had enough of the overheated, unmoored ideological fantasies that pass for public discussion of gas prices. So he dropped some knowledge.
First, he explained that the price of gas follows the price of oil. Then he explained that the price of oil is set on the global market. It is largely unaffected by domestic policies like EPA carbon restrictions and Gulf oil permitting. It is only barely affected, and only at the margins, by U.S. supply, which flows from just 2 percent of the world’s reserves. (After all, U.S. production has been rising even as oil prices rise too.) The price of oil is shaped by supply constraints in petrostates, demand growth in developing countries, OPEC policy, and unrest in the Middle East. None of those, you’ll note, take place in America.
What follows is an inescapable conclusion (my emphasis):
But what can Congress do to help ease the burden of high prices for U.S. consumers, when oil prices are determined mostly outside our borders? I think a realistic, responsible answer has to be focused on becoming less vulnerable to oil price changes over the medium- and long-term. And we become less vulnerable by using less oil.
That’s it. That’s the crux of the matter. If we want to solve our problems with oil, we have to use less of it. That simple truth is what centrist Democrats generally refuse to tell their constituents. [NB: I took out a chunk of the original post that was here; I botched some facts making an inessential point.]
Why? Because Democrats are always running scared. They’ve been scared off of the demand-side message by pollsters who tell them voters don’t like conservation, and by conservative concern trolls who invoke Carter, and by Beltway media CW drones who tell them that the message will lose the morning.
But in the end, you cannot out bullsh*t a bullsh*tter. Dems are never going to win a war of id-driven manipulation against the Frank Luntzes of the world. The Luntzes and the Gingriches will always be more shameless. They’ll always go farther, lie bigger, pander more. Voters may not like extremists (and they sure hate congressional Republicans), but no one, not even much-heralded (if largely mythical) independents, likes prevaricating poll-watchers. At least Republicans mean what they say!
The only thing Dems have going for them is that the demand-side message is correct. The truth is on their side. Domestic oil drilling will create some jobs and pump temporary economic stimulus into certain areas (as any heavily subsidized industry would), but it will not meaningfully affect global oil prices or the price of gasoline. The only way to be safer from oil shocks is to use less oil.
Rather than the Republican Lite message they’re using now, centrist Dems should follow Bingaman’s lead and tell the truth, calmly, without hype or partisan rancor, but firmly. The American people might even appreciate being treated like adults.
– David Roberts
Hear! Hear!
Related Posts:
Washington (CNN) – As coalition planes cleared ground threats to support a no fly zone over Libya, the Obama administration briefed a bipartisan group of congressional aides Tuesday on the mission.
According to one official who attended the briefing in the Capitol Visitors Center Auditorium, the panel (recently removed Ambassador to Libya, two military, two intelligence and one treasury official) made clear that the U.S. is “not at war” with Libya.
During the question and answer session where 17 or 18 questions were asked, the official described “deep skepticism from both sides of the aisle, both sides of the capitol.” The official said that concerns about the mission were expressed and that while some spoke of support for “what the president is doing,” they were seeking guidance on how to answer their constituents when they ask “what’s next.”
According to the official who spoke to CNN but did not want to be quoted on the record, the panel could not provide a clear answer and instead said they’re focused on implementing the UN Security Council resolution.
When the panel was asked to define “success” in Libya, they told the congressional aides “preventing attacks on the Libyan people and handing off control to a coalition force.”
However they “would not talk about cost, whether they would send up a supplemental or if they would like congressional authorization,” the official said.
