Breitbart on Breitbart
One thing you can say about the Shirley Sherrold flap is that it sure has gotten Andrew Breitbart some attention.
Actually, he’s gotten quite a bit of it ever since Obama took office. Breitbart is one of the few on the right who is willing to be just as confrontational as the left. Whatever else you might say about him, the man’s got cojones.
I criticized Breitbart the other day for undue haste in not having been careful enough in vetting the Sherrold video. But in an interview, he states he’s happy with the fallout from the incident:
He says he considers it a victory to have panicked the Obama administration and precipitated a public apology from the White House.
Breitbart is an internet maven, having worked for both Drudge and Arianna Huffington in the past. As the article puts it, he has “a genius for buzz” and is “a provocateur, a rabble-rouser, a master manipulator of the media’s appetite for controversy — real or fake.”
Breitbart’s hard-hitting theatricality would not be nearly as unique if he resided on the left, but as a man of the right he is very unusual. It is therefore not at all surprising to learn that Breitbart is a political changer. He grew up in Los Angeles, and dates his political transformation from the time of the Clarence Thomas hearings:
He was, he said, a typical West Coast liberal — until the Clarence Thomas hearings lit him up with the fires of conservative resentment against the liberal establishment…”It was the moment that I saw a glimpse of the matrix,” Breitbart said. “And I started to ask some very tough questions of myself, and my peer group, and my parents and their friends.”
I sometimes think of Breitbart as the modern-day, conservative (or libertarian?) version of fellow-provocateurs Hoffman and Rubin of Sixties Yippie fame. He shares with them a streak of wildness and a knack for publicity, and the ability to use the media to get a message across in creative and somewhat novel ways, as a well as an irreverence and a sense of humor—although just about everything else about Breitbart and the Yippies (political aims, specific methods, and substance) is very different.
Actually, he’s just taken a page out of Alinsky. Well, a half page: isolate; personalize. He is not a liar by trade or nature.
Neo – We are of an age and you may remember Breitbart’s father-in-law, Orson Bean, a frequent guest host for Johnny Carson. He has also acted for 5 decades in television and had several hits on Broadway.
Orson is hilariously funny and can be seen on several Youtube clips relating how to tell a joke. #5 is my favorite
My wife loves Breitbart because he is a scrapper. She disdains those on the right who are too gentlemanly to use Alinsky tactics.
He is getting out front of the stories instead of reacting to them, like conservatives have done for so long. And when the left strikes out, as in the NAACP accusation of racism by the TEA Party, he doesn’t hesitate to hit back. As he did in this case. He had been holding the Sherrod tape since April, waiting for a proper time to use it. Unfortunately, it bit him, and I now wonder if he was set up. Time will tell as the full story comes out.
I admire him as well, but wish we didn’t have to stoop to the level of the left to combat their smears and dirty tactics. I guess that makes me one of the gentlemanly members of the right. Meh.
Andrew is a sly genius. He did exactly what the left leaning main stream media elite have been doing at least since Nixon. They take a sound bite out of context and build a whole new story around it to fit their point of view. The exception in this case is that Andrew did this stunt with the express purpose of baiting the left into looking the fool. They are now Hoist on their Petard.
I love his passion. Watching his confrontation with that troll from Media Matters the other day I noticed his animated style versus the droll, preprogrammed remarks of the liberal opposite him. The canned leftist attacks sounded composed but rehearsed while Breitbart gesticulated, waved and illustrated with his hands and arms. That’s usually a sign of greater truthfulness to me. Perhaps it looks less controlled but more honest. Again, I hope the best for this guy. We desperately need more like him.
“He says he considers it a victory to have panicked the Obama administration and precipitated a public apology from the White House.”
=====================
And, when Ms. Sherrod was recounting the story about the phone calls from ?not-sure-who? urging her to pull her car over and call her office and resign THAT VERY MINUTE, the excuse she said was given was that “this will be on Glenn Beck tonight”. So, yes, Mr. Breitbart has them scared; so does Mr. Beck.
Bwaha-ha-ha-hahah!!!!!
(As my momma used to tell me: If you just plain DON’T DO IT, you’ll never have to worry who might find out about it and tell on you and get you into big, big trouble …)
bighollywood.breitbart.com always has something worth reading
He’s doing great things! 🙂
It really is quite hilarious to watch the Left react to getting “punked” by their own tactics, and to hear them howl in shocked outrage at something they would have been perfectly happy to have done to others. Go Breitbart!
when dan rather screwed up with the fake national guard docs, he deserved to be slammed, just as breitbart does for his misue of the sherrod video. shep smith got it about right on that ground – he’s simply not a reliable journalist.