Betty’s been covering the BIG Breitbart left-behinders’ desperate and hilarious attempts to recover from being scooped by BuzzFeed with the BIG revelation that President Obama spoke at a demonstration to introduce Professor Derrick Bell back in 1990.
As some commenters both here and on Balloon Juice have noted, since similar footage has appeared in documentaries in recent times, the only “scoop” is the spectacularly blatantly race-baiting spin Joel B. Pollak (“THE VETTING: OBAMA EMBRACES RACIALIST HARVARD PROF”) and Dana Loesch (“Andrea Mitchell Runs Defense for Obama, Derrick Bell”) are trying to feed their readers before Pollak’s appearance on the Hannity show this evening. The righty blogs are in medium cry about it right now (though I detect a hint of “OK, we’re on board. BOMBSHELL!!! Er, but is that all you’ve got?”, reading between the lines).
The whole thing’s as half-assed as you’d expect from this bunch of puffed-up amateur demagogues. BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith’s Twitter feed tells some of the story about the day’s developments if you’re interested. He deeply resented the BIG allegation that the video had been “selectively edited,” and since then, as Rumproaster Nellcote let us know on Betty’s last thread, PBS’s Frontline has issued the full video to prove there was no such editing:
Today, the website BuzzFeed published a clip of the speech along with an article explaining some past and current context for Obama’s remarks. The website claimed the clip was “not previously available online.” The editors at Brietbart.com responded that the video on Buzzfeed had been “selectively edited” and said that they would release the full footage tonight on Fox News.
But there’s nothing new about the clip or Obama’s role in the controversy at Harvard Law School. In 2008, as a part of our quadrennial election special The Choice 2008, FRONTLINE ran the same footage of the speech as a part of an exploration of Obama’s time at Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1991. It’s been online at our site and on YouTube since then.
Meanwhile, geek that I am, I’ve been checking out the Wikipedia article for Derrick Bell. We’ve caught conservatives desperately and clumsily trying to edit Wikipedia and even Conservapedia to suit their own purposes in the past. I don’t think this episode is quite as comical, but I’ll catalogue it after the fold just to add to the day’s daftness.
A package sent to Rush Limbaugh’s home that prompted a call to the bomb squad was nothing more than “a business opportunity,” WPBF 25 News’ Ari Hait reported Thursday night….
The package came from Pennsylvania, and investigators there already have interviewed the man who sent it, Hait reported. The man, whose identity was not released, said it was just a business opportunity and that he was sorry for causing the alarm.
Police said inside the package was an electronic plaque that had something to do with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln….
More specifically:
The package contained an electronic plaque commemorating the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, authorities said.
O ... K. A self-link about that “DAILY CALLER INVESTIGATION” that revealed David Brock to be a drug-crazed maniac who still manages to run rings around right-wingers on a daily basis. His indulging in “this sort of thing” by inciting a daft Wexford man to send novelty items through the post is a new twist, but you’ve obviously got to go with the lemons you have.
there’s no denying responsibility now.
Says the Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee.
I call upon the President to denounce his supporters’ hateful violent rhetoric, to promise not to engage in or encourage it again, and to apologize to Limbaugh for stirring up this cesspit of hatred among his followers. A President is supposed to lead, not incite violence
I’m sure he’ll get right back to you about that.
Maybe we should start posting Obamicons with “HATE” instead of “HOPE” until he does. . . .
UPDATE: Reader Paul Stinchfield writes: “Is it time to remind folks again that Dutch libertarian Pim Fortuyn was murdered by a Green Party member, and that this murder was incited by the European Left? Or to recall the American Left’s open and unashamed fantasies of assassinating George W. Bush?” Yes, I think it is.
Silly question, Paul. In INSTAPUNDITland, It’s always time to blah blah blah blah blah.
Neither man is noted for his speaking abilities, so why would anyone want to “marry Rick Santorum’s and Mitt Romney’s speeches into a single address,” knowing that the result of that unholy alliance would either be pablum delivered in angry tones or grievances recited robotically?
What Goldberg actually longs for is a candidate who combines Santorum’s Torquemadan zeal to root out and reprove wickedness with Romney’s droid-like mien. But Goldberg begins with the reference to the speeches because suggesting a marriage of the men would be so, well, gay.
However, with typical sloth, Goldberg goes ahead and screws that metaphorical pooch anyway: “If you married the best parts of both men, you’d have something pretty impressive.” Married man parts—on NRO! Heckuva job, Goldy.
I laid off writing about the untimely demise of Andrew Breitbart last week, partly because it was being covered wall-to-wall pretty well everywhere else and I had nothing much to add to that, partly because my own sadness was entirely to do with the unfinished business it left in its wake, such as the Sherrod vs. Breitbart et al. court case, and despite appearances, I still try to retain a tiny bit of class regardless of how folks on the right of the political spectrum choose to beHAAAAVE!!! Sorry.
But since Breitbart’s ex-employees and devotees, and his (possibly shortlived) legacy of BIG sites now seem dedicated to mounting his stuffed corpse as an entrance lobby hatstand to scare young children and liberal commie assholes, I see no reason to maintain my silence, and they’re more than fair game in my book.
Grief was understandably thick on the ground at the various outlets he’d set up last week. The comments sections were full of people pledging to follow his example in life and double down on the roaring and lying at teh dreaded lefties. The first signs of a death cult emerged as a viral campaign of posters and T-shirts, and in time no doubt mugs and other paraphernalia, for sale hit the tubes, the proceeds to go to Breitbart’s family. Residents of DC and elsewhere may have already been mildly mystified to see flyposters such as this decorating odd corners of their city streets.
Dastardly situationists (and there could even be a few reading this) may already be rubbing their hands and anticipating the Photoshop and sticker amendments that might improve the image, others may just wish to let them stand to prompt passersby to ponder deep questions, such as “Who the fuck is Breitbart?”, “Who defaced that property with that daft poster?”, or if they’re more au fait with blog lore, “Jeez, call the refuse department. If it’s true, that could be a public health hazard.”
Like me, you’ve probably been witnessing the last few days of Post-Breitbartocalypse Rightwingsexscoldslutslutslutblowhardgate with jaw agape alternating with teeth clenched grindingly shut.
It’s been quite the sight to behold, even marked in my homeland by the appearance of fiery balls in the sky (which I sadly missed through inattention/embarrassment/partial cloud cover).
I haven’t felt the urge to blog about it since innumerable bloggers have been writing up a storm about the libeling and attempted shaming and silencing of Sandra Fluke, not least John Cole on the sane side of the kerfuffle, countered in inimitable fashion by too many lying rightwingnut scribblers to mention, all singing from the songsheet Rush was yodeling from till he saw the writing on the wall and backtracked just a tad.
One I will mention is Colonel, a.k.a. Professor, “Cnut”* Mustard, who this morning staggered through the detritus of discarded Cheeto wrappers, soiled underwear, and scraps of the Constitution that litter his lair to hammer out on his keyboard a call to arms to his loyal followers:
Liberal groups have seized on a strategy I didn’t think would be effective, but has had some success, to go after advertisers of prominent conservative media personalities.
Media Matters explicitly seeks to bring down Fox News and investigate its executives, and Fox News advertisers have been targeted by groups like Color of Change, which has targeted Glenn Beck, Eric Bolling, Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan and Andrew Breitbart.
Now Rush Limbaugh advertisers are the target because of an analogy he used. As Jimmie Bise points out, Rush’s comments were overblown if one listens to what he actually said, but nonetheless, the use of “slut” or “prostitute” even in an analogy was inappropriate, as Rush has acknowledged. It also distracted from the attack on religious freedom which is the heart of the controversy.
As has become the pattern, Rush’s advertisers immediately were attacked and threatened, and several gave in quickly, like Quicken Loans and Sleep Number, pulling their advertising.
No advertiser was more associated with Rush than Carbonite, an online computer back up company. Rush often would read Carbonite’s ads himself, and would tout their service.
Remember that atrocious “rap” video from CPAC I posted a couple of weeks ago? The one with Dana Loesch’s hubby and Fox “comedian” Steve Crowder cavorting around in wigs as their captive audience made out like the worst Mexican wave you’ve ever seen? Yeah, that one. You’d probably tried to obliterate it from memory with the aid of whatever drugs you could lay your hands on. I know I did.
I have to say, at this point I am convinced that no one on the left really hates racism. In fact, they love it as it is their most important tool with which to control gullible voters. Cry racism and their mind-numbed acolytes dutifully echo the charge whether it is true or not — and it’s usually not. Well, they’ve done it again, cast the race card at conservatives. But this time they fell into a trap laid for them purposefully, set in order to prove their hatemongering, stupidity, cynicism, and lies.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last weekend a humorous video debuted during the TheTeaParty.net blogger awards hosted by John Hawkins of RightWingNews.com. It was a rap video created by comedian Steven Crowder and his pal Chris Loesch. They called themselves the “Powdered Zombies” and the song was meant to highlight the wrong turn this country has made and how we’ve drifted away from the founder’s ideas.
One line of the song was an obvious satire on the left’s constant cries of racism. Remembering that these rap singers were evoking the founders, the line in question goes: “But I’m back from the dead now bringing back all my knickers.” The next line confirms what the reference meant: “I’m just talking about my short pants.”
Knickers, of course, were the short pants that ended at the knee, pants that everyone knows were the stereotypical male fashion statement of the founder’s era.
Naturally the geniuses on the extreme left were unable to understand the difference between the word “knickers” and, well, the “N” word. Two of the left’s leading (low) lights on the Internet, Gawker.com and Wonkette both made the quip somehow into a clear example of conservatives being raaacist.
Wankette claimed that a black man in the room was so disgusted by the racism that he “walked out” and Gawker claimed that “they use the N word” in the video. Neither is true. How do I know? I was there! You can see the top of my gray fedora (A Stetson Whippet from the 1940s, by the way) at about 1:40 into the video. I was sitting behind the guy in the green shirt holding up the cell phone who appears often at the left lower corner of the screen and right in front of the person making the video.
The fact is there was no racism in this song. Zip, zero, nada.
I haven’t written much about Trump’s adventures in our Highland fastnesses before (I think the sum total of it on Rumproast is in the comments here) because the story’s quite depressing, and much more our problem than yours, though it has garnered some media coverage in America over the years.
The New Clearances
In 2007, The Donald flew in, waved his checkbook around, and set about bribing, menacing, and armtwisting his way into building a mammoth new billion-dollar “world-class” golf resort at Balmedie, near the UK’s old oil capital of Aberdeen, initially slated to include “a 450-bedroom hotel, a golf academy, 950 holiday homes, 36 golf villas and a residential development”. One of his websites trumpets:
I have been actively looking for links land in Europe for the past few years, and of course my preference was Scotland over any other country because I am half Scottish. My Mother, Mary MacLeod is from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. She grew up in a simple croft until she landed in Manhattan at the age of 20 and her first language was Gaelic.
When I saw this piece of land I was overwhelmed by the imposing dunes and rugged Aberdeenshire coastline. I knew that this was the perfect site for Trump International - Scotland. I have never seen such an unspoiled and dramatic sea side landscape and the location makes it perfect for our development. Our site is close to two of the world’s most famous courses and is just 15 minutes by car from Aberdeen Airport.
The initial wrangles focused on his plans to stabilize sand dunes that comprise a Site of Special Scientific Interest that make up 40% of this coastal “unspoiled and dramatic landscape”. The dunes naturally shift with wind and tide, and form a rare environment hosting a vast range of bird and wildlife. Trump’s argument was basically that he’d stop them blowing away and tidy them up, which is surely a good thing all round.
People try to live in this area too. Trump chose to honor his mother’s memory and his Scots heritage by re-enacting the Highland Clearances on a smaller scale. This did not go unopposed, one major thorn in his side being the organization Tripping Up Trump:
The TUT campaign has been key to Donald Trump’s retreat from the use of compulsory purchase orders.
The threat of forced evictions was deliberately held over the heads of the Menie families for nearly two years. Donald Trump’s track record shows he cannot be trusted to behave reasonably towards his neighbours or act responsibly towards the environment. He has bullied and mislead from the start.
As the Republican primaries rumble on, the pivoting from “Anybody but Mitt” to “Anybody but this bunch of useless demogogic clowns” continues. Jeb Bush wades into the fray, only to be labeled “confused” by Jake Gibson of Fox News:
Jeb Bush seems a little confused by some of the rhetoric being tossed around by the GOP’s 2012 presidential frontrunners in debates and out on the campaign trail.
How so?
“I used to be a conservative ...
Uh-huh. I mean, Huh?
... and I watch these debates and I’m wondering, I don’t think I’ve changed, but it’s a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people’s fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective and that’s kind of where we are,” said the former Florida Governor.
No shit, Sherlock. I think that bird flew the coop a few decades ago, Jeb.
“I think it changes when we get to the general election. I hope.”
Insensitivity to escaping avians aside, he doesn’t sound very confused to me. In fact, the bulk of the comments over at Fox News right now seem to share his befuddlement, if that’s what it is.
Much as Tom Friedman gleans man-on-the-street wisdom from the cabbies who ferry him to and fro, I sallied forth from the Cracker Cloister yesterday to mingle with the common folk, securing priceless insights that I will share directly. Unlike Friedman, I didn’t board a G6 and fly to Aspen to pick up a $75,000 speaking fee.
Rather, I played hooky along with my teenage daughter to visit a couple of theme parks, including a park that has a section devoted to a fictional young sorcerer. The fiction-based city to which we traveled for this purpose should be renamed “Or-LINE-do” since visitors spend the majority of their day languishing in queues. There were lines to access the $15 parking lot. Lines to pay an outrageous sum to visit the parks. Lines to have our bags searched. Lines to hear a sales pitch before paying $29.95 for a plastic replica of a wizard’s wand.
There were even lines for lunch seating at The Three Broomsticks tavern and the privilege of paying $40.00 for a bagged salad that reeked of chlorine, a dollop of runny mac ‘n cheese accompanied by a sad cluster of grapes and souvenir tankards of “Butterbeer” (which turns out to be cream soda topped with an oilier incarnation of Cool Whip). Anyhoo, it was at The Three Broomsticks that I obtained “cabbie wisdom” by briefly eavesdropping on the conversation of a pair of 20-something women at the adjacent table.
As they consumed THEIR $20 bagged salads, the young women’s discussion turned to the upcoming Republican debate. They admitted to one another that they hardly pay attention to politics at all and hadn’t watched the previous debates, but both expressed interest in seeing that evening’s tussle. Why? Because they were alarmed about what they’d heard regarding the Republicans’ wholesale assault on women’s rights and birth control.
Santorum spoke Alice Stewart seeks to “explain” Ricky’s references to President Obama’s religion the other day. It doesn’t go well.
An honest misspeak? Direct line from unconscious to mouth? Undigested talking point burp? We report, you decide, but in view of Ricky’s dogfoghorn-blowing, you have to wonder.
There seems to have been little discussion in any media of recent developments in the long-running lawsuit between Shirley Sherrod and Andrew Breitbart.*
Big bullying right-wing hero that he is, you’d think that Breitbart would be absolutely desperate to see this case proceed so he can gain wider currency for his claim that the motivation behind the video was to expose Sherrod’s role in the supposed “Pigford Affair” and pursue the mythical discovery process that his followers were jumping with joy over when news of the suit first broke. But Breitbart’s legal team, which appears to have enlisted Orly Taitz as a consultant, has been trying to stall and have the suit thrown out on numerous grounds, most recently in April 2011 by invoking the Anti-SLAPP Act:
WASHINGTON (CN) - Former U.S Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod’s lawsuit against right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart survived a motion to dismiss, clearing the way for her to pursue the high-profile defamation suit she filed against him and a colleague last year.
Sherrod Sued Breitbart and associate Larry O’Connor in February 2011, charging the two men posted a heavily edited clip of her online that led to accusations of racism and ultimately got her fired.
Breitbart filed his motion under the D.C. Anti-SLAPP Act, which provides that if a defendant can show the claim at issue arises from an act in furtherance of the right to free speech - and if it is also related to an issue of public concern - he can file a special motion to dismiss.
But in a terse decision, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon tossed the motion, pointing out that the D.C. law that the motion was based on did not take affect until more than a month after Sherrod filed her defamation suit.
Rick Santorum is easily the most likable candidate remaining in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination.
Just dwell on that opinion for a moment.
Leaving aside the ecumenical matter of damning with faint praise, “likability” is obviously in the eye of the beholder. But even James Joyner, who dreamed that sentence up, typed it out, didn’t go “Nah” and hit delete, then decided to broadcast it to the world via Outside the Beltway, feels driven to qualify that “likability” in the face of a speech the New Not-Romney gave in 2008 at Domino Pizza’s “saint factory,” Ave Maria University (“Excellent. Affordable. Catholic.”) in Florida (mercifully audio only).
To summarize the Tanktop Torquemada’s address, unearthed by Right Wing Watch: You’re all—those of you “smart people” who’ve been exposed to academe, you Protestants, heck the whole damned lot of you—Hellbound Godless heathens in thrall to the “Father of Lies,” except Ricky and his ilk in the Catholic Church. And he’s not so sure about his ilk. (Transcript after the fold for the recently breakfasted.)
Let’s be fair. Maybe Ricky’s evolved a little from these extreme views? Ah. Here’s Ed Morrissey, twisting himself into semantic knots to blame President Obama for injecting theology into the public debate:
Normally, I would advise presidential candidates to avoid getting caught in arguments over the relative merits of the faith of their opponents. Americans typically don’t respond well to politicians claiming that they have a superior theology, especially when it comes to translating that into public policy. In this case, though, Rick Santorum didn’t start that fight yesterday in Ohio:
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum challenged President Barack Obama’s Christian beliefs on Saturday, saying White House policies were motivated by a “different theology.”
A devout Roman Catholic who has risen to the top of Republican polls in recent days, Santorum said the Obama administration had failed to prevent gas prices rising and was using “political science” in the debate about climate change.
Obama’s agenda is “not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your jobs. It’s about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology,” Santorum told supporters of the conservative Tea Party movement at a Columbus hotel.
Well, Satanism’s a theology, I guess. You wouldn’t want an atheist in the White House, would you?
James Poulos cranked a particularly stinky nugget into Tucker Carlson’s cat box Thursday, a column entitled “What Are Women For?” that was at once so offensive, pretentious, incoherent, clueless and just plain dumb that it attracted hoots of derision from every corner of the internet. Balloon Juice commenter Clark Stooksbury summed it up pithily as follows:
I think that English is his second language, and perhaps Earth is his second planet.
Yup. Stung by the “wave of anger and condemnation” occasioned by his column, Poulos apparently decided to spend Friday afternoon masticating and swallowing an unabridged thesaurus along with a freshman introduction to philosophy textbook and wash it down with a liter of Everclear. The resulting geyser of vomit was pixelated into a dripping rebuttal to his critics that contains half-digested chunks such as this:
It’s not very controversial to point out that sex and gender are foundational to the culture wars. But it is apparently extremely controversial to claim that we can’t make sense of how and why they’re foundational without acknowledging that the root of the battle is over reaching — and enforcing — a consensus about the relationship between what women do and who women are.
And…
The same [Meh, never mind; it doesn’t really matter what is allegedly “the same”—ed.] is true for the meaning of the relationship between women as sovereign individuals and as beings with female bodies.
But its conclusion may contain a kernel of truth that the incredulous and exasperated reader espies with wonder similar to that of a janitor engaged in mopping up a binge drinker’s pool of sick upon finding a single kernel of undigested corn, whole and recognizable, in the barf on the frat lounge floor:
Difference doesn’t presume or ordain inequality. I’m not alone in thinking that women are uniquely able to help humanity avoid becoming enthralled to the more sterile cultural creations of men. But this sort of insight is far more circumspect and modest than the central principles of virtually all social conservatives. If my claim is doomed to be met with an avalanche of contempt, it seems likely that in our lifetimes social conservatism as we know it will be mocked, despised, and shamed right out of existence. You might be deeply uncomfortable with that even if you do hope to see an America without a social conservative movement.
I think he means “Après moi, le déluge” or something. But I’m not sure why I’m supposed to be “deeply uncomfortable” with the extinction of social conservativism that Poulos’ blogular rogering is supposed to portend. Say bye-bye to all-male panels of sanctimonious, god-bothering pricks deciding women’s healthcare issues? Bring it on, I say.
This really might be the dumbest, most ill-conceived and poorly written Daily Caller opinion piece ever, which, lordamercy, is saying something:
Why, to serve as civilizing hose-bags and poop out babies, of course! Well, at the very least, the column puts paid to any notion that the GOP’s “woman problem” will end when dinosaurs like Foster Friess finally lumber into the tar pit.
This is Daisy, who is, as you can see, blessed with great physical beauty. She’s even got matching beauty moles. She is somewhat vain in consequence. I tell both my dogs that they’re smart girls, good girls, beautiful girls. But with Daisy, it is definitely the latter that resonates. She takes in the sun like a glamorous 50s-era movie star in San Tropez, even though she is only a dog in Florida.
The sun is one thing we’ve still got going for us in Florida. Otherwise, things are pretty shitty. We’ve got double-digit unemployment. Nearly half of our houses are underwater in the mortgage sense and will be among the first literally underwater if nothing is done about climate change. And nothing will be done because Republicans and Fox News have successfully demagogued that issue to their mouth-breathing audience, some of whom will eventually require snorkels to continue their mouth-breathing.
