Assistant To the Quote of the Day

"I’m not comparing my situation to the gulag, but I speak truth to power. You’d think liberal baby boomers would support me. Isn’t that what the ’60s were all about? Do we really want political prisoners in America?"

-- James O'Keefe, indirectly comparing the terms of his probation which keep him in New Jersey unless otherwise authorized to the confinement of Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn

You just knew that O'Keefe would have a persecution complex and that he'd express it in the most melodramatic terms possible. Read the New York Times article this quote came from -- his laugh-out-loud silliness doesn't stop there.

Course now that I think about it he may have a point. At least in the gulag you're not surrounded by this.

Clown Car Derby

I've said before -- to the point of being pretty much blue in the face, in fact -- that I don't make a habit of mercilessly mocking the current incarnation of the GOP because I happen to stand staunchly against every tenet of conservatism. That's not it at all. On the contrary, there are quite a few issues on which I've traditionally leaned to the right.

No, I can't in good conscience allow myself to be aligned with the Republicans these days because -- well, let's take a look at a couple of news items from just the last 24 hours.

Sideshow Bobby

Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is the latest and possibly brownest Republican leader to hop on the birther bandwagon, announcing that he'll sign into law a bill requiring presidential candidates to produce their long-form birth certificates before being included on the ballot in Louisiana, should such an idiotic piece of legislation ever reach his desk. To her credit, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer discovered some vestige of good sense deep within herself and vetoed a similar bill, calling it too intrusive.

The shameless pandering of a guy whose background is more than vaguely foreign to the most bigoted within his own party proves delightfully the little point I made yesterday -- that the perpetually frightened white, Christian lummoxes who dominate the GOP don't necessarily insist on ethnic or racial purity within their party, they just demand that the minorities know their place and do what they're told.

Donald McDonald

Speaking of birthers, Donald Trump now has his own special segment every Monday on Fox News's morning comedy show starring Steve Douchey, the guy whose eyes are too close together and one of the 112 cackling blonde dumb-asses on the network, Fox and Friends. The promos for the regular spot tout Trump as someone who's "brash" and who will make his voice heard "loud and clear" at the start of every workweek, which admittedly has a better ring to it than calling Trump a fucking megalomanical nut-job who will basically say anything to get attention. The interesting thing about Fox's current love affair with Trump, though, is how quickly and absolutely it's forced guys like Karl Rove into the role of the desperate, pathetic ex vying for attention from the former paramour which was once couldn't keep its hands off him. Fox has a shiny new lover, one who shares the network's worship of bombastic stupidity and who dispenses with anyone who dares to criticize him with a level of frat boy dickishness that Fox News all but trademarked. It's a match made in self-obsessed heaven.

And Then There's This...



I rest my case.

Attack of the Ad Hominem Attacks

I like to imagine that somewhere out there is a dead languages fanatic who thought to copyright the term "ad hominem" years ago and who's suddenly wondering why only now, with the rise of our perpetually outraged political discourse, he's seeing royalty checks pour in. When it comes to partisan debate these days, especially on the internet, accusing someone of making an "ad hominem attack" is, ironically, as cliché as calling somebody a Nazi.

So it's not surprising that Andrew Breitbart's misnomered "Big Journalism" site is howling at anyone and everyone who's given up trying to debate the actual arguments of its illustrious founder, claiming that they're engaging in ad hominem warfare. Among that anyone and everyone: yours truly.

From a piece written by Alexander Marlow and posted late last month on the site:

"Here are some examples of these emotive, anti-intellectual smears against Breitbart himself published at… the Huffington Post itself. I did a good-faith search through the (AOL/)HuffPo archives to isolate ad hominem they have published against Breitbart... Chez Pazienza, Editor of Deus Ex Malcontent, Author, in his piece 'ABC News to Redeem Guy With No Redeeming Qualities':

'[Breitbart] is... a serial liar and a scam artist. [...] he’s a raging maniac [...] he’s ignored facts, knowingly created phony scandals, willfully aided, abetted and perpetuated hoaxes engineered by irresponsible con-men like himself [...] He’s a pompous schoolyard bully [...] jackass..."

The point Marlow's trying to make is that I and those like me who no longer bother to debate issues with Andrew Breitbart and by now simply consider the source and reference that source in our criticism of him make statements that should be immediately dismissed -- all because we're employing what's widely considered to be an argumentative fallacy. Here's the thing, though: It's possible for someone to damage his or her reputation so profoundly that after a while it actually becomes acceptable to hammer the person rather than the argument he or she is making. In the case of Breitbart it works something like this: It isn't even necessary to fight with him anymore -- to try to refute his arguments and to debate him like he's an actual adult -- because he's fucked his credibility so entirely, over and over again, that for the most part his views don't even merit consideration. I didn't dislike Breitbart to begin with and now verbally beat up on him because of it; he's earned my derision over time and through a whole lot of inexcusable behavior, and that's made any viewpoint his name is attached to almost instantly suspect.

For the record -- and I've said this before, ironically in the very piece Marlow quoted from the Huffington Post -- I couldn't care less if Andrew Breitbart has an opinion different from mine. Not only is he entitled to believe whatever the hell he wants, he has every right to shout his beliefs from the highest rooftop and to poke those who disagree with him with a stick if that's what gets him off. Being a provocateur isn't a sin and, to his credit, Breitbart's very good at it. Just about everyone who does the online political pundit thing these days is partially in show business; it's the nature of the game. What separates Breitbart from the rest of the pack, though, is his blatant disregard for the facts and his willful lack of shame when it comes to perpetuating hoaxes that take a real-world toll on the innocent. I've said before that as a guy who makes a habit of pissing people off, I actually have a kind of fondness for him; I can certainly identify with that, even though I think Breitbart takes it to truly silly and juvenile depths and tends to behave like a cheap bully. But the crap he's pulled and perpetuated -- for me it began with his refusal to admit his complicity in James O'Keefe's ACORN tape fraud and culminated with the Shirley Sherrod lie -- tarnishes his ability to be taken seriously to the extent that it doesn't even make sense anymore, when addressing him and his behavior since, to waste your time dredging it all up.

It's easier to just say that he's full of shit -- and saying so is no longer an ad hominem attack or an argumentative fallacy, it's just reality. And I wasn't the one who made it that way. I didn't screw Breitbart's credibility -- he did.

Related: DXM: The Notorious "Big"/2.4.10

"Hack" Journalist

Well here's something you never could've seen coming.

Media Matters: Serious Editing Questions Arise Following Taped Sting of NPR Employee/3.14.11

I swear to Christ, every time this little douche unleashes one of his "stings" into the establishment media bloodstream, just start the clock. It's guaranteed to be less than a few days before it's proven to be largely horseshit. This has become one of the most predictable news cycles around.

The King James Version

Never mind that James O'Keefe "exposed" the fact that one fundraiser at NPR thinks most self-proclaimed tea baggers are racist and xenophobic -- which is like pointing out that the sky is, in fact, blue; Simon Owens over at Bloggasm, in a roundabout way, asks the pertinent question, why does anybody give a shit about anything a roundly discredited little tool like O'Keefe has to say anymore?

For those who've forgotten, he runs down O'Keefe's ongoing Reign of Error.

Bloggasm: The New York Times Leaves Several Holes in Its James O'Keefe Reporting/3.9.11

Quote of the Day, Jr.

"Let the word go forth that today, March 8, 2011, is the day America was forced to face up to the fact that some NPR executives are liberal elitists."

-- Gawker's John Cook, letting the air out of serial bullshit artist James O'Keefe's latest secretly videotaped "bombshell"

Tuesday Is Recycling Day

One of the more entertaining posts from last year:

"Her Mind Is Aglow with Whirling, Transient Nodes of Thought Careening Through a Cosmic Vapor of Invention" (Originally Published, 3.25.10)

You know, I have to admit, I sat up pretty late last night trying to come up with something clever to do with this item.

I thought maybe I'd do a "Hannah Giles Orders Take-Out Chinese" theme, which would feature the bikini-clad Princess Leia to Andrew Breitbart's Jabba the Hutt -- Hannah Giles -- using all sorts of flowery metaphors and generally ostentatious vocabulary in the pursuit of the most mundane of tasks. Or maybe a fake ad for the "Hannah Giles School of Creative Writing," which would ostensibly offer to teach the neophyte the kind of poetic mastery of the English language that Hannah makes seem so effortless.

But it was Simon Owens over at Bloggasm who made me realize that you really can't beat up on Hannah Giles and feel good about it. She's just a dumb kid who got in way over her head. Yeah, she played an all-too-willing role in pretend provocateur James O'Keefe's ridiculous "take down" of ACORN -- a toothless non-profit that could barely afford to keep its fucking lights on, much less act as some sort of left-wing mafia enforcer; and sure, she really seemed to enjoy riding the wave and bathing in all the warm encomia from the right that followed her and Jimmy's little sting. But in the end, what the conservative media did to her was, ironically, what you'd expect to see done to the character she played in the now famous videos. They used her -- like a prostitute. Everybody did, to some extent.

So no, I'm not gonna pile on. That said, she does at least deserve to have the piece she penned for Breitbart's Big Journalism site regarding the dismantling of ACORN as a national organization -- her humorously florid pep talk to Right America about the need to keep fighting the good fight -- circulated far and wide. It's, well -- colorful.

Here's a chunk of it:

"Let me tell you something: If you know what is right, if you know what is pure, and if you can but for a second imagine attaining and sharing those things, then you must will all your power seek it out. If you do not, then the memory of that moment you imagined will forever itch inside your head and ache inside your heart until you are ruled by fear and tormented by regret...

We live in a quick cruel world that demands we bolt out of dreamland and wipe nostalgia’s sweet kisses away. Principles and beliefs are ageless only so long as those who possess them see to it they are not forgotten. Societies will always tend towards all things bad if the powers-at-be do not lead wisely and are not held accountable by the people.

The future is a blank canvas, a giant glowing question mark held in place by eternity. This is something that would send most people into a tailspin of wonder ,anxiety and fear. But to others, this makes life a bit simpler, an unknown future ought allow us to fully operate and thoroughly enjoy the present moment.

Challenge: take a step back and look at life on the Grand Scale. We are but specks of dust, here today gone tomorrow. What kind of spec are you going to be: The kind that gets swept under the rug? Or the mote that flies into the eye of deceit, threatening to agitate it beyond repair and forcing it to submit to truths brutally thorough cleansings?"

So, yeah. See, here I am -- not piling on at all.

Incidentally, the responses to the piece in the comment section are what you might expect:

"This lady can write. This has to be some of the most profoundly stirring prose I've read in some time."

-- impeach them all

"Great writing Hannah! You are truly an inspiration to me! I'll do what I can to be that "fly in the eye of deceit" from this end. I know you'll hold up yours! God bless you. God bless James. I have every confidence that we will win this war against this President of 'God damn America' Barack Hussein Obama and his comrades who are trying to enact a coup d'etat on America. Darkness is always overcome by the light."

-- Once always a marine

And with that, I'm doing what anyone in my position would do -- taking my laptop outside and ceremonially setting it on fire. Just not sure I'll ever be able to reach the lofty standards set by Cormac Giles there, so I don't see why I should even bother anymore.

Wait, does that count as piling on?

Quote of the Day

"It's clearly a PR statement for damage control. It's clearly not true but what can you do."

-- Former, ahem, "Project Veritas" Executive Director Izzy Santa, responding to James O'Keefe's long-winded line of bullshit denying that he ever planned to get CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau aboard a boat and pretend to seduce her with champagne, fuzzy handcuffs and sex toys

The most noteworthy thing about this story isn't frat boy O'Keefe's lamebrained attempt at getting Abbie Bourdreau in an uncomfortable and compromising position on camera -- it's that he planned to feed CNN a phony scoop, then notify "friendly networks and media outlets" (read: Fox News) so that they could call the network on it. Granted, this is James O'Keefe and CNN we're talking about -- meaning that the latter thoroughly vets any potential news item it receives and would absolutely be suspicious of anything it got from a discredited prick like the former. But it does go a long way in proving how, in the current Wild West-like media landscape, there's always the possibility that the information being passed off as fact could very well be nothing but some asshole's idea of a joke.

Of course, if O'Keefe wanted to expose CNN for being dumb enough to fall for a fake news item -- taking the story to Fox might not be the best idea. Then again, maybe it would.

And it does beg the question: What if this entire thing -- the phony seduction, the turncoat producer, all of it -- has been completely engineered to produce a fake story?

A Lesson She'll Never Forget

I'm not generally the type to play the misogyny card, and not simply because I happen to be a man; I believe that there are far fewer true misogynists in this world -- men who really do seethe at the notion of a woman in a position of authority and feel that it's their job to put those who are in their rightful place -- than there are accusations of misogyny.

With that in mind, though, I can't find one thing to argue about in the piece now posted at HuffPo by Alex Leo which paints James O'Keefe as a flat out hater of women. Not one damn thing. O'Keefe has always been the worst kind of arrogant frat boy cliché; someone whom you could totally imagine laughing his ass off as he heaves a can of Coke out the window of his BMW at a black guy begging for change at a stop light or bragging about how he was at the front of the train the brothers ran on that passed-out girl at the house last night. All of his little pranks have been aimed at those he considers beneath him: freeloading minorities who mooch off the taxes of white people instead of getting jobs of their own and, now, that insolent bitch who dares to think she can ask him questions or hold him accountable for his actions.

I'd go further with this, but trust me, Alex says it better and with more justified indignation than I ever could.

The Huffington Post: James O'Keefe, the "CNN Caper" and Men Who Hate Women/9.29.10

Quote of the Day

"My name is James, I work in video activism and journalism. I've been approached by CNN for an interview where I know what their angle is: they want to portray me and my friends as crazies, as non-journalists, as unprofessional and likely as homophobes, racists or bigots of some sort… Instead, I've decided to have a little fun. Instead of giving her a serious interview, I'm going to punk CNN. Abbie has been trying to seduce me to use me, in order to spin a lie about me. So, I'm going to seduce her, on camera, to use her for a video. This bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five will get a taste of her own medicine, she'll get seduced on camera and you'll get to see the awkwardness and the aftermath. Please sit back and enjoy the show."

-- Breitbart buttboy and perennial captain of the Failboat James O'Keefe, in a script he'd planned to read on camera after he "punk'd" CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau by inviting her onto a boat and attempting to seduce her with champagne and sex toys

Needless to say, like every other scam James has pulled, this one, while relatively amusing on paper, ended in disaster. Really, you need to read this from start to finish to believe it.

CNN: James O'Keefe Tries To "Punk" CNN by Seducing Reporter on Boat/9.29.10

(Update: Cord Jefferson at The Root puts this whole thing in perspective.)

Tape Worms

In terms of real world impact, this won't make a dent in the Adamantium biases of the Fox News crowd -- the people who think James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles should have elementary schools named after them.

But if antiquated notions like the truth matter to you, those two -- as well as Fox and the right's answer to P.T. Barnum, Andrew Breitbart -- are sucking down a giant load of fail this morning.

Tuesday Is Recycling Day

In spite of my newly minted status as one of Andrew Breitbart's internet punching bags, I haven't bothered to go after him in the wake of the revelation that the James O'Keefe videos he publicly championed are largely horseshit. I guess I kind of figure that everyone else is doing the heavy lifting for me on this one and for whatever reason I just don't feel like joining in the pile-on (which isn't to say that Breitbart's glaring journalistic errors and willful misdirection don't warrant it).

For those who haven't been following the story, O'Keefe, his partner-in-crime Hannah Giles, and Breitbart are facing some very legitimate questions now that it's been revealed that O'Keefe never wore an outrageous pimp costume during his "sting" of ACORN offices late last year and in fact was dressed very conservatively and behaved very politely. What makes the distinction important is that it shoots a pretty large hole in one of the most effective accusations ostensibly conveyed by the video: that ACORN employees were so fucking stupid and gullible that they couldn't even see through O'Keefe's obviously phony get-up. The other problem this creates is a much more daunting one: Given that O'Keefe, Giles and, yes, Breitbart have spent months hyping the pimp costume angle to death, either out-and-out lying about its existence and efficacy or simply failing to correct anyone who reached the wrong conclusion -- which was pretty much everybody -- their credibility is now shot. Why should anybody believe anything they have to say about ACORN or anything else?

The latest twist comes in a video posted by Mike Stark over at Stark Reports which shows Breitbart seeming to throw O'Keefe under the bus by admitting that he had no idea what was on the ACORN videos when he began touting them as the bombshell they now apparently aren't.

Salon: Acorn Tape Fraud: Does Andrew Breitbart Care?/3.2.10

Not long after the scandal first broke, I posted a quickie piece that kind of took aim at the outrage and indignation over the ACORN scandal. My issue was never that it wasn't a story -- only that it wasn't as big a story as the right wanted it to be. Even at its absolute worst -- a worst that seems to be eroding day by day -- it was never more than a couple of people at an underfunded and strangely inconsequential non-profit being caught doing something very dumb and potentially illegal. The idea that ACORN was somehow symbolic of grand scale tyranny and corruption on the left is laughable. ACORN, a group whose taxpayer subsidy was a drop in the proverbial bucket, was basically put in place to help underprivileged communities and was having trouble doing even that. In other words, it was always a small potatoes target to go after.

I can't help but wonder if Breitbart still thinks it was worth all the trouble it's brought him. Of course, as I've said quite a bit lately, the people who live and die by Breitbart's site -- and Fox News and talk radio, for that matter -- probably won't be swayed by contradictory facts anyway.

What's interesting about rereading the following piece is that the same media once accused by the right of not picking up the ACORN sting story when it was first breaking are now accused by the other side of not correcting and retracting the false claim that O'Keefe was dressed as a pimp.

"Nutcrackers" (Originally Posted, 9.17.09)

Let's just address something and get it out of the way. The ACORN story, while worth reporting, isn't anywhere near the "bombshell" Fox News is portraying it to be. Not even close. And there certainly isn't some nefarious far-reaching plot to cover it up by America's reputable news organizations.

First, on the "controversy" itself: It's largely overblown; the latest in a seemingly neverending cavalcade of right-wing conspiracy theories created and perpetuated in the hope of making some legitimate scandal stick to Barack Obama and the supposed liberal agenda in general. Yes, a few people in a very large group were charged with voter fraud during the 2008 campaign and were promptly fired. And absolutely, two conservative activists -- kids now being unsurprisingly hailed as folk heroes on the right -- posed as a pimp and prostitute and proved on tape that they could game the system by getting a few dumb-ass ACORN employees to suggest they hide their illicit income from the federal government. Is this illegal? Sure is. But even if you understand and accept that fact, what is this whole "scandal" really about? Supposedly, at least according to Glenn Beck and his myrmidons, it's about ACORN getting money from the government to push a so-called "liberal agenda" while ripping off the taxpayers. Well, let's see -- the "liberal agenda" part of the argument comes from the fact that ACORN exists solely to help the poor, which of course makes it evil and Un-American; the tax cheat part, meanwhile, hinges on ACORN having received $53 million in federal money since 1994. While this sounds like a small fortune, keep in mind that during the last eight years, $170 billion worth of pork projects were added to various pieces of legislation by some of the very Republican lawmakers now hypocritically feigning righteous indignation over the minimal slice of the pie ACORN's gotten. Does this make what ACORN's employees did right or mean that the organization shouldn't be held accountable for its actions? No, not at all -- but it helps to put the horseshit outrage into perspective.

Speaking of which, second, the big debate over the mainstream media's coverage of the ACORN story: I posted this earlier this morning in a comment, but it's worth getting into here. There's no doubt that one of the unfortunate truths about most news organizations is that they have a kind of group-think filter that will occasionally blind them to stories. I've seen all kinds of items slip through the cracks when a room full of journalists should've caught something (yet no one did). That's certainly at play here. But there's something else that needs to be kept in mind. Fox News has been on such a single-minded crusade to bring down Barack Obama (and anyone who argues with this really needs to have his or her head checked) that in theory it's worked against them, in the sense that other news outlets look at what Fox is doing -- what they're harping on and running into the ground -- and just figure it's more of the same from them. That it's not something any reputable organization would want to lend credibility to. I say "in theory" because the reality is that Glenn Beck's complaints about the "mainstream media" are thoroughly dishonest anyway. He doesn't really want the rest of the media going after Obama because then he loses the very personally profitable ability to point out as much to his legion of angry followers.

The problem, though, is as simple as the Boy Who Cried Wolf. Beck and his ilk have dragged out one insane conspiracy after another to the point where, to anyone with a brain, it's become little more than a constant drone. Nothing stands out. If Beck and Fox hit on a genuine argument, who the hell can hear it?

Cesca makes another decent point on this, one that doesn't absolve the press for neglecting the ACORN story but once again helps to put things in perspective. Fox News, for all its bitching and moaning about how the thieves and degenerates at ACORN are swindling average, ahem, employed Americans out of their voice and their hard earned cash, has been the biggest singular cheerleader for the very rich, very greedy, very white robber barons who've giddily high-fived each other while gang-banging the global economy and every single U.S. citizen -- to the tune of billions and billions of dollars -- in the process. I guess that that brand of greed is more "American" and therefore okay.

Keep something in mind: I've always believed that the press needs to keep an adversarial relationship with the White House. It's their job. But here's the thing: adversarial, yes -- but not unfairly so. George W. Bush was given more leeway and was overtly pandered to by the media more than any president in my lifetime. It was only after reality started becoming too grotesque to ignore that much of the press turned on him. In other words, Bush did something to garner his bad publicity. Fox and right-wing talk radio made a political and business decision immediately after the election of Barack Obama that they were going to represent the at-all-costs opposition. Hence, they've fomented a litany of complaints against Obama for no reason other than the fact that they fundamentally disagree with his politics. (Consider Beck ranting about "Oligarhies" and communist art, Limbaugh race-baiting under the guise of attacking "Obama's America," and crazed Birthers and Deathers marching through Washington, DC chanting about how the U.S. has "more Czars than the USSR" -- when that's true only because The USSR didn't have any fucking Czars.)

Can you understand why any news department with a reputation it values wouldn't want to be associated with that kind of lunacy in any way?

Yes, ACORN's a story. No, it's not a smoking gun -- against Obama or the media.

The Notorious "Big"

I have a new BFF.

This morning at 3:13am, I got an email from Andrew Breitbart.

Let's go to the video:

[Title] do you care that okeefe as racist meme is built on bed of lies?

less than a week after same media suffered devastating exposure that 'watergate jr' wasnt and the media that ignored acorn was at forefront of a preposterous rush to judgement?

yet, i have to be a one-man correction cudgel because the press grants james less fairness than any gitmo detainee or al qaeda pantybomber.

you're insinuation that james is a racist is equally egregious: does it ever dawn on you that we conservatives can't fathom how lefties can't see how horrible their social policies have turned out to be for poor and minorities. explore for one minute the implications of what are found on the acorn tapes: almost every employee is SKILLED at helping unqualified people hooked on complicated government run systems like welfare, creating 501C3s as fronts, explaining how to skirt the tax codes, even getting underaged illegal immigrant prostitutes set up as dependents.

james' planned parenthood tapes, similarly, attempt to show how the media narrative is a false one, driven by 'morally superior ' types who think the group is simply good and unquestionably benevolent. a simple google search will show that the group has a racist past and the amount of black fetuses killed since roe is far greater than that of whites.

can james at least not have the opinion that abortion and abortionists are bad and that the philosophy behind PP'a origin in the US is filled with Margaret Sanger and a racist and Eugenics background?

james fucks with liberal narratives. and they can't take it. i am gleeful he has found me. what an historic innovator. i'm sure you and the rest of the town elders will vote that he and his friends can't dance. but i promise you the futre won't be stopped by john lithgow & co this time.

ab

Got all that?

It's kind of unfortunate that it would be so easy to summarily dismiss Breitbart's jumbled words as nothing more than the poorly thought-out product of late-night exhaustion or, seemingly, a hell of a lot to drink. It'd be equally simple to go almost line-by-line and either refute his incoherent arguments -- beginning with the claim that I essentially called James O'Keefe a racist, which I didn't -- or point out how quite a few of them only hold water if you believe that the media have banded together to gang up on conservatives and ensure that they never get a fair shake, which I don't at all. Thing is, it's that very distinction in how the left and right view the media that led me to write yesterday's quickie piece about O'Keefe -- the one Breitbart was commenting on -- to begin with.

My point yesterday was that political coverage may still be important on the surface, because it's true that an informed electorate is a strong electorate, but the partisan voices have become so powerful that it's almost impossible to discern the truth above all the noise. What's more, tainted advocacy journalism has become prevalent to the point where no one needs to bother seeking out an opinion that differs from his or her own anymore. As a nation, we're so fucking divided politically, with each side in possession of its own bullhorn, that there's rarely any common ground for the two sides to meet on because there doesn't need to be any; the left and right have their respective sets of "facts" and that informs their intransigent worldviews. Now more than ever, it's possible to work backward from the conclusion you want to reach and make the details fit that end: Believe progressive America can do no wrong? Watch Olbermann. Think only the Tea Partiers can save this country but the liberal media refuses to report it? Watch Fox -- or read Breitbart.

The problem is that guys like Breitbart assume the role of angry paranoiacs; the entire reason for their entry into the media echo chamber is supposedly to be a single candle against the near-total darkness of the liberal press. Breitbart believes that just about all media are slanted to the left and therefore out to get conservatives in any way they can. This is a fun little parlor trick and justifies all kinds of lapses in logic: All Breitbart has to do to refute bad press about him or the political stances he happens to take is to ask his readers to "consider the source." It's utter horseshit as an argument, but it's music to the ears of the rabid partisan crowd, who go to his site specifically to have their biases confirmed and wouldn't accept a contrary assertion if it came wrapped up with a bow.

If you need proof of this, look no further than Breitbart's response to the Salon and Washington Independent pieces dealing with James O'Keefe's supposed attendance of a 2006 conference that hosted white nationalists. For the past 24 hours -- through his website, his Twitter page and, apparently, email -- he's been on a fucking talking points rampage. A post on Breitbart's amusingly misnomered "Big Journalism" site takes aim at Max Blumenthal, author of the Salon piece, for, among other things, being Max Blumenthal. The post's author identifies Blumenthal as the son of a "Clinton apparatchik", which is all Breitbart's readership needs to hear to understand that he's not to be trusted. The post goes on to call the stories about O'Keefe proof of "how the left distorts, invents and lies." Ad hominem attacks are par for the course in the ridiculous Kabuki theater that passes for political discourse these days, but what makes the Breitbart piece by Larry O'Connor especially flagrant in its lack of adherence to the basic standards of honest journalism is its acceptance of O'Keefe's own take on events as being somehow above reproach.

Read this and try not to laugh:

"...Here at Big Journalism we think it’s a good idea to actually seek the truth.

So we spoke with James O’Keefe today. This is what he tells us:

He was not 'manning a table' at the event
He was not involved with the organization or operations of the event.
He attended the event with many of his Leadership Institute co-workers since it was
right across the street from their building in Arlington, Va., and it was organized by other LI associates.
The organizer who is being called a 'White Supremacist' is half Jewish and half Korean.
One of the panelist was an African-American named Kevin Martin.
The event was forced to move to a Georgetown University building in Arlington, not at a cross-burning.

We know all this because we called Mr. O’Keefe and asked him. Which is more than other media outlets have done."

Well, that settles it then.

I'm by no means comparing James O'Keefe to a criminal, but imagine the police dragging the suspect in an investigation in for questioning, then upon hearing that suspect say, "Nope, I had nothing to do with it," releasing him, satisfied that he was telling the truth. In order for something like that to happen, you'd have to believe the guy wasn't guilty to begin with and reverse engineer your investigation -- which is exactly the stance Breitbart's site is taking and what it's doing. The problem is that true journalists are like police officers. They dispassionately pursue the facts. They may chase down leads they believe strongly in, but if those leads don't pan out they don't make shit up just to get a collar (at least not in theory). They have an obligation to the truth.

There's a difference between the brand of journalism trumpeted by Breitbart and O'Keefe -- "Big" journalism, I guess -- and that practiced by those who at the very least try to remain objective about the issues they're covering. Which do you think, just at face value, would be more trustworthy?

For the record, what Larry O'Connor was complaining about in the piece on Breitbart's site -- that Max Blumenthal supposedly didn't try to contact James O'Keefe for comment -- is being contested by Blumenthal himself today. He says he did in fact reach out to O'Keefe but got no response. Maybe if O'Keefe had been on Blumenthal's payroll he would've had as little trouble getting the subject of his article on the phone as Breitbart's people did after the fact. This may seem like a cheap shot, but it can't be a coincidence that O'Keefe has generally turned only to friendly outlets -- the ones guaranteed not to hardball him -- when he wants to make a statement or answer questions about his arrest or the various controversies surrounding him. Like Sarah Palin, he knows full well that these days there's no need to suffer through an adversarial interview when his side has its own state-approved media megaphone and all he needs is for the already apostolic to believe and support him for everything to be okay. Besides, any agent of the press who would ask him tough questions about his behavior is simply in league with the enemy anyway.

This is the way Breitbart thinks. The way he, not coincidentally, accuses the left of thinking (and which Eric Boehlert of Media Matters occasionally helps fuel by getting into ugly internet pissing matches with him). As it turns out, each extreme is right about how wrong the other is -- which makes each each extreme more than a little hypocritical. Where Breitbart goes completely off the rails -- besides simply his shoddy journalism, and that's a pretty objective assessment -- is in his demonization of almost all media, his belief in the giant liberal media conspiracy. That's just fucking crazy.

But not as crazy as ending a 3:30am email to a complete stranger with a Footloose reference.

Footloose? Really?

We Report, You've Already Decided

I'm not sure there's been a story in recent memory that's better illustrated the unnavigable divide between the perspectives of the left and right than the whole James O'Keefe controversy -- especially when it comes to each side's opinion of the media. As far as the right is concerned, O'Keefe is a modern day folk hero, the conservative press's answer to Michael Moore and Bob Woodward and a guy whose efforts to rage against the liberal machine by way of supposedly capital-J journalism is deserving of a Pulitzer. To the left, meanwhile, O'Keefe is a joke -- a rich, dumb kid whose irrational hatred of progressives has tainted and compromised every "investigation" he's ever undertaken, culminating, of course, with his arrest following what seems to be a failed attempt to tamper with the phones at a Democratic senator's office.

The battle lines over O'Keefe are just about set in stone. He's essentially the Elian Gonzalez of the perpetually stalemated left-vs-right media war: Anybody who takes an interest in his case isn't likely to be indifferent to how the whole thing turns out.

Maybe that's why a couple of new reports about James O'Keefe, while mildly eyebrow-raising at face value, don't really amount to much in the great scheme of things -- simply because they're just not going to change anyone's already made-up mind. Today both Salon and the Washington Independent are reporting that O'Keefe attended and played a hands-on role in a conference in 2006 that hosted leading white nationalists -- basically putting O'Keefe in the direct company of racists and anti-Semites and implying that he may be one himself (or that he at least had issues with those who weren't white, Christian, Americans during his time as a campus Republican activist).

It's certainly true that more than a few of O'Keefe's stunts have seemed to specifically target minorities, but does that make him a racist or simply your average conservative -- given that issues like affirmative action and illegal immigration have traditionally been right-wing boogeymen -- and is there even a distinction to be drawn? There's just no way around the fact that a guy who refers to himself as "James O'Keefe III" on his Twitter profile and dresses in a faux-ghetto get-up -- what Real Time with Bill Maher's Chris Kelly humorously refers to as "Prescott, the Preppie Pimp" -- to dupe an urban outreach group is going to face some serious questions about his motives and mindset.

The problem, though, is that those who've already eagerly jumped to the defense of O'Keefe aren't going to be swayed from their beliefs; it would take the revelation that their hero wandered the streets of Lower Manhattan, Bateman-like, scooping homeless peoples' eyes out with a pen knife for them to possibly rethink their devotion -- and even then, the story would have to be reported by Andrew Breitbart himself for the right to even believe it was true. And that's the real point, and the real shame: The distrust between the two media factions is so toxic that each side simply discounts any negative press against it by the other as made-up mudslinging. The Fox and Breitbart people aren't going to give a good crap that Salon and the Washington Independent have uncovered what could be a history of racist behavior or sympathy on the part of James O'Keefe -- the same way the left was hardly willing to consider that O'Keefe may have been on to something when he targeted ACORN.

My opinion? Since he first entered the spotlight with a hell of a lot of fanfare, I've always pegged James O'Keefe as an arrogant and obnoxious little tool -- a modern young-conservative cliché in just about every way and damn sure not the brilliant investigative journalist he claims to be (for a whole host of very objective reasons). Much of this is why the notion that he has issues with minorities -- and that they seep liberally (no pun intended) into his advocacy -- doesn't faze me in the least because I can't say that I didn't expect it. But I'm willing to concede that the very fact that I feel this way is likely part of the problem.

I do my best to keep an open mind these days, but if they have their way, the echo chambers and spin merchants on both sides of any politically charged story will be happy to reach a conclusion for me -- do the heavy lifting so I don't have to. And the noise they're pumping out is so loud that you, literally, can't hear yourself think anymore -- which is probably the idea.

So James O'Keefe may have broken bread with racists and anti-Semites. The people who hate him won't be shocked and the people who worship him won't believe it or won't care. And if no one's really listening, it makes you wonder if it's even worth reporting at all.

A Matter of Opinion

Interesting little item coming out of MSNBC right now -- and by that I don't mean the network is reporting it, but rather that what MS is doing is the item.

Just a few minutes ago, David Shuster and right-wing web-douche Andrew Breitbart practically got into a fist fight over the whole James O'Keefe arrest during an on-air segment. What's interesting about this is that Shuster was reprimanded about 24-hours ago by MSNBC management for tweeting the following directly to O'Keefe on Tuesday night:

"@JamesOKeefeIII a) you are not a journalist b) the truth is you intended to tap her phones c) it's a felony d) you will go to prison."

Obviously, considering that Shuster is ostensibly a general assignment reporter for MS and not a prime time host-commentator, this goes quite a few steps over the line when it comes to both offering a very public opinion on a politically charged story and confronting (at least "virtually") the person at the center of that story. What's strange, though, is that MSNBC would rightly come down on Shuster for the comments, then turn around and let him interview another of the main players in the O'Keefe controversy. It's a clear conflict of interest, and one that most news organizations would try to avoid -- even MSNBC.

Unless of course MS wanted to see the inevitable on-air fireworks that a Shuster-Breitbart confrontation would surely provide, but if that's true then why bother disciplining him in the first place?

I swear, sometimes I really have no idea what the hell they're thinking over there.

Worth mentioning, though, is that this isn't the first time David Shuster's gotten in trouble with the suits at MSNBC. Remember the "pimping out Chelsea Clinton" comment? Believe it or not, that time around, I defended Shuster. What follows is the piece I wrote for the Huffington Post during that whole row.

By the way, there are quite a few people who believe that this was the column that alerted CNN to the fact that I was writing on the outside -- the one that essentially got me fired.


"Pimp My Riot: In Defense of David Shuster" (Originally Published in the Huffington Post, 2.10.08)

Go ahead and pick up those rocks and get into pitching stance, because I'm about to suggest something unthinkable.

As you must know by now, MSNBC's David Shuster has revealed himself to be the Anti-Christ by suggesting on-air that Chelsea Clinton's role in her mother's campaign smacks of opportunism on the part of Camp Clinton; his exact words were that the once-and-possibly-future First Daughter was being "pimped out" by Mom and Dad. Since most folks assumed Shuster wasn't alluding to the MTV brand of pimping out, which I imagine would've involved jacking Chelsea up on 24" rims, the wave of thoroughly bullshit outrage in response to his admittedly ill-advised comment began pushing across the land almost immediately. Over the past few days, Shuster's been excoriated in the press and the blogging media, suspended by NBC, and targeted for as public a shaming as possible by Hillary Clinton herself.

Most of those now engaging in the obligatory and all-too-gratifying pile-on claim Shuster's offense to be two-fold: He insulted the child of a particular presidential contender for behavior most politicians' kids engage in -- the cynical would say that all candidates pimp their children in one manner or another -- while cavalierly flaunting the depth of anti-Clinton group-think that supposedly permeates MSNBC.

Hillary, though, has taken the argument one step further.

Her campaign is insinuating that Shuster's comment is a slight against all women, more proof that MSNBC -- the special-needs child of the NBC News family -- is essentially one big frat house. They cite a 12-month period that's seen the dismissal of Don Imus for making a crude but, let's face it, somewhat innocuous joke about the Rutgers womens' basketball team, an on-air mea culpa from Chris Matthews -- not to mention his inability to talk to Erin Burnett without little hearts dancing over his head -- and now Shuster's indiscretion.

In other words, the Clinton camp seems to be recasting this in exactly the kind of terms that are likely to motivate women voters; the fact that the Clintons are so adept at this sort of misdirection is precisely the reason their critics consider them little more than political profiteers who will say or do anything to make points at the polls.

This is why it's become second nature to question their motives, no matter how genuine or innocent those motives might seem at first glance. While there's no doubt that Chelsea Clinton simply wants to see her mother elected president, the campaign's own "handling" of her makes Chelsea look like just another weapon in the Clinton arsenal, and Hillary's indignation reek of calculated insincerity.

Understand something, I'm certainly not claiming that what David Shuster said wasn't incredibly stupid and somewhat unfair, nor am I saying that Hillary Clinton wouldn't make a decent president. However, it's not as if a journalist's decision to question the motivations of the Clintons is happening in a vacuum; the press has seen the Hillary and Bill PR machine in action for quite some time now, and maybe for that reason is apt to regard the Clintons' actions with slightly more suspicion than it otherwise might. I'll be the first one to say that this is unfortunate.

Did David Shuster deserve to be disciplined?

Yes, but not for the reason his detractors might think and not by the one charged with doling out the punishment.

Shuster raised a relevant point in an unquestionably crass and injudicious manner, and there's no doubt that he wouldn't challenge, say, Michelle Obama, in the same way -- lest he risk having Al Sharpton amass a torch-wielding mob at NBC's front door before the opening credits of the 5 O'clock news even hit the air. Now, though, a different group is demanding satisfaction for what it feels is a personal slight, and, for starters, it wants that one ineffectual gesture aggrieved parties invariably want in times like this: a public apology. I'll never understand why an obviously insincere show of genuflection acts as some kind of panacea to the perpetually pissed-off, but a good rule of thumb is this: If someone's apology has to be demanded, he or she probably doesn't really mean it. When you look at it like this, suspending Shuster is probably justified since he knows exactly what he said and meant every word of it -- making any apology an act of ass-kissing theater. Still, factor in the comical twist that Shuster's official reprimand is being self-righteously administered by NBC News President Steve Capus -- the same man who tied himself in an ethical slipknot on national television last year to justify his network's shameful decision to air the video manifesto of Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho -- and you have to wonder what's really wrong over there at 30 Rock.

Maybe Shuster got off easy.

He gets to spend some time away from the Clintons and the peacock for awhile.

Quote of the Day/Listening Post

"I am a journalist. The truth shall set me free."

-- James O'Keefe III, via Twitter last night

Behold the surreal Escher painting of a practical joke that is this kid's entire existence. He's a white upper-middle-class brat from New Jersey who identifies himself, in Thurston Howell-esque fashion, as being "the third"; a guy who dressed like an exaggerated version of what he figured a pimp looked like from watching TV and tried to bring down an organization that ostensibly is in place to help the underprivileged people he felt completely comfortable mocking; and somebody who co-opts Bible verses like an oppressed commoner when one of his scams blows up in his face due apparently to his own amusing incompetence.

Seriously, Andy Kaufman couldn't have come up with something like this.

Here's Dynamite Hack's Boyz in the Hood.

Friends in Low Places

A little while ago, I kind of wondered aloud what sort of response conservative web-turd Andrew Breitbart would have now that his young Padawan is under FBI arrest, accused in what seems to be an amusingly Keystone Cops-ish plot to bug Mary Landrieu's office.

Well, so much for honor among ideologues.

"No, I have nothing to do with what James O’Keefe does. James O’Keefe is an independent filmmaker."

-- Andrew Breitbart in an interview this evening

Enjoy the underside of that bus, James.

(The picture above, by the way, shows Breitbart sitting beside O'Keefe and his "prostitute" in the ACORN sting operation, Hannah Giles, during a press conference to tout O'Keefe's undercover video last October.)

Tap Out

Oh, James, you little douche. They're gonna love you in prison.

Make sure to wear your white-guy pimp costume. That'll go over huge.

TPM: Conservative Filmmaker Behind ACORN Video Arrested Along with Three Others for Attempted Bugging of Mary Landrieu's Office/1.26.10

The big question now is whether O'Keefe's still on the payroll of right-wing web-turd Andrew Breitbart. Regardless, this is gonna be damn entertaining over the next few days.

By the way, the best comment on all of this comes from Lizz Winstead, co-creator of The Daily Show, via Twitter: "'I never made it all the way through All the President's Men. What happens?' -- James O'Keefe."

Related:

The Village Voice: Sting Trick 2: The Wrath of ACORN/9.24.09

(One last thing: Where have I seen O'Keefe before? Hmmm...)