On Monday evening, the political blogosphere was rocked by the unprecedented publishing of a 200-page opposition research book on Mitt Romney written by the John McCain campaign for the 2008 GOP presidential primary. Who decided to release this information to the public? It wasn’t ThinkProgress; it wasn’t Newsweek or the Washington Post or Mother Jones. It was by a website which currently features the headlines “Martial Artist Kicks Down Banana Tree,” “Baby Flummoxed By New Sound,” and “Jessica Simpson Wearing A Giant Deformed Penis Mask.” I kid you not.

BuzzFeed, the name of the site in question, is the latest venture for Politico’s JournoList-er Ben Smith, as previously reported by John Nolte. Smith is heading up the “Politics” section of BuzzFeed, and while he claims objectivity, the case of this leaked document reveals exactly how he plans to use the site to hurt the GOP and aid Obama’s reelection campaign.

Screenshot of BuzzFeed’s politics page

The “About” page of BuzzFeed presents the site as nothing more than a place where readers can find interesting and viral Internet content:

We feature the kind of things you’d want to pass along to your friends: an outrageous video that’s about to go viral, an obscure subculture breaking into the mainstream, a juicy bit of gossip that everyone at the office will be talking about tomorrow, or an ordinary guy having his glorious 15-minutes of fame.

The site’s niche naturally extends to its political page, headed up by Smith. The political news cycle is chock full of bizarre and hilarious information that normally doesn’t end up on NPR–Mitt Romney sparring with pop group LMFAO, Herman Cain singing “Imagine” with pizza-themed lyrics, or Rick Perry blasting a coyote while jogging, for instance. Thus, a site to present this kind of offbeat content (the categories on BuzzFeed include “LOL,” “WTF,” and “Fail”) sounds like a great place to unwind, to set aside all the partisan bickering and just check out posts “for the lulz,” as we whippersnappers say.

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Anders Behring Breivik’s manifesto, penned before his horrific mass murder in Oslo, contains 1,500 full pages of text, yet the New York Times has not asked readers to pore over it and help them find information relevant to their coverage of his terrorist attack. The Huffington Post has not posted a blog advertising “LIVE UPDATES” from those studying the writings’ minutiae. Neither has the Guardian, MSNBC, ABC News, Yahoo! News, nor has the Washington Times created a Twitter account to tweet live micro-updates of research on this document. What documents did prompt this fanatic scrutiny? If you guessed the emails of a private citizen during her tenure as Governor of Alaska, you’d be right.

Why the discrepancy? Two words: the narrative. Our J-school geniuses, the only people academically certified to act as gatekeepers for the widespread dissemination of information, needed more information to rebuild their narrative of Palin but don’t need more information to support their narrative of Breivik. None of the ethics lawsuits about Palin stuck while she was governor, so they needed to find something– anything– that proved Palin was as corrupt as they believed her to be (belief still maintained without a shred of evidence). And now, the narrative is Breivik = Tea Party/Bloggers/Conservatives/Christians, so his targets (Labour Party children), anti-Islamic and anti-Marxist statements, plus his Facebook profile stating he was a “Conservative Christian” is all the information they need.

But the champions of the “No Labels” movement are content to leave “Conservative Christian” completely unexamined. Where’s the nuance from the MSM? David Frum calls himself a “conservative,” and so do I, yet our positions on myriad issues couldn’t be more different. Nancy Pelosi calls herself a Christian, and so do I, yet our positions on even more issues couldn’t be more different. Where is their curiosity to find out what Anders Behring Breivik meant when he called himself a “Conservative Christian?” Are their content to merely stereotype his actual political and economic views with two undefined words? I’m sorry; that was rhetorical. Of course they are. It serves their agenda to smear people who had nothing to do with this travesty, and besides, it’s just so hard to read all those words!

But Breivik’s actual words completely contradict the “Conservative Christian” caricature. Below, you can see how, to save the environment, he wants the world to rid itself of oil consumption. You can see how he wants a one-child policy, government control of private industries, the breakup of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, the military support of Russia to prevent a possible U.S. invasion of Europe, and the removal of all U.S. military bases from European soil. Yes, the tea party platform through and through, folks!

First of all, many thanks to the anonymous blogger Sooper Mexican, who has unearthed this information from the giant screed and organized it in an easily understandable, concise manner. For those who would quibble that this is an untrustworthy source, his post consists of direct quotes from the manifesto with commentary– I repeat, direct quotes. I repeat them here with the blogger’s emphases.

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Well, here we go. Michele Bachmann’s impressive performance at Monday’s GOP Presidential debate, followed by her formal campaign launch, have kicked lefty smear merchants into gear, as evidenced by Michelle Goldberg’s latest piece in the Daily Beast.  Titled “Bachmann’s Unrivaled Extremism,” the 2500-word article seeks yo derail Bachmann’s deliberately moderate turn on Monday by revealing how she’s irrationally homophobic, speaks in Christian dog-whistle language, is hypocritical for being a working mother, is obsessed with gays, tainted public education by forcing partisan wedges into her foster children’s school boards, throws her family under the bus without a second thought, and, oh yeah– fears gays.

I first noticed the article on Twitter because of Roger Ebert’s takeaway: “Bachmann thought she was being attacked by an ex-nun.” He’s referring to the piece’s opening anecdote; Bachmann constituent Pamela Arnold went to a forum held by the Congresswoman in April 2005, and Goldberg dutifully parrots Arnold’s version of the meeting’s aftermath. After Bachmann ended the meeting early (because people dared to ask her about gay marriage, obviously), Arnold and an unnamed former nun followed her into the bathroom.

As Bachmann washed her hands and Arnold looked on, the ex-nun tried to talk to her about theology. Suddenly, after less than a minute, Bachmann let out a shriek. “Help!” she screamed. “Help! I’m being held against my will!”

Arnold, who is just over 5 feet tall, was stunned, and hurried to open the door. Bachmann bolted out and fled, crying, to an SUV outside. Then she called the police, saying, according to the police report, that she was “absolutely terrified and has never been that terrorized before as she had no idea what those two women were going to do to her.” The Washington County attorney, however, declined to press charges, writing in a memo, “It seems clear from the statements given by both women that they simply wanted to discuss certain issues further with Ms. Bachmann.” (more…)

“I hope he [Weiner] comes after me. Look up my IP. Nothing to hide here. I’d voluntarily hand anything they want over. Check me and my IP. Anything. I did not post that tweet.”

Twitter user Dan Wolfe (known as @patriotusa76) has clarified several details concerning his involvement in the “Weinergate” scandal, insisting that a thorough investigation of the tweets in question will prove he did not compromise the verified Twitter account of Congressman Anthony Weiner (D, NY-9). In a series of direct messages on Twitter, Wolfe explains how he found the offensive image sent from Weiner’s Twitter account, his previous tweets about accounts followed by the Congressman, and his desire for law enforcement to investigate his online activity that night.

Asked whether he followed Congressman Weiner or the recipient of the controversial tweet, Wolfe states he “wasn’t following either of them ever.” He named several other twitter uses who he regularly communicates with, explaining, “Our twitter group mentions him a lot because he appears in media a lot and says things we hate a lot. If he wasn’t saying anything, we wouldn’t comment.” Wolfe claims that on May 27th, the date the tweet went public, he navigated to the @RepWeiner account by clicking on Weiner’s username on a retweet in his Twitter stream. The tweet in question was the much-discussed one where Weiner announced the time of his upcoming appearance on the Rachel Maddow show with the hashtag #Thats545InSeattleIThink. “I found the 5:45 tweet weird,” Wolfe says.

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Have you ever heard someone say that a rape victim was “asking for it” by dressing a certain way, entering a certain place, or behaving a certain way? You’d rightly dismiss them as sociopaths or enablers or sociopaths. However, a growing number of media figures– Mediaite,  Time’s Joe Klein, and now even FNC’s Bill O’Reilly– would have you believe it’s a valid assertion, if we’re to apply their logic concerning Floridian Koran-burner Terry Jones.  Instead of framing the recent murders in Afghanistan as a shocking overreaction to an insensitive expression of free speech, these personalities and publications focused their ire and blame on Jones.

Terry Jones

“This Terry Jones idiot has blood on his hands;  he had to know fanatical Muslims would go crazy,” O’Reilly stated. Ah, yes, because as we all know, the only possible response from the Muslim world would be violence; that’s not an ugly, condescending stereotype at all!  I’m no fan of Sharia, but to insinuate Jones “should have known” that someone would take anger beyond any acceptable societal standard without personally knowing any of the individuals who killed is just like saying that a rape victim “should have known” that the sight of her would cause her assailants to fly into an uncontrollable lustful rampage.

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We’ve learned quite a lot about how loathsome a commentator Lawrence O’Donnell is from his “Rewrite” segment on James Hudnall’s and Batton Lash’s “Obama Nation” cartoon.  His hilariously uptight lecturing and blatant hypocrisy have already been documented, but one element of his “Rewrite” that needs more attention is his shocking violation of journalistic ethics.  Not only does O’Donnell make a fool of himself here, but he crosses several lines, going from pompous to downright menacing.

First of all, check out how O’Donnell introduces Batton and Lash to his audience.  The “Rewrite” segment usually includes a comic-style graphic with the title of the segment and, if he’s talking about a right-winger, an unflattering picture of his target next to the word (no picture when it’s a left-winger).  However, this particular instance of “Rewrite” went a step further, pasting each author’s picture in the “Rewrite” graphic as well as their names.  The formatting turns the graphic into a phrase/sentence: “Rewrite James Hudnall” and “Rewrite Batton Lash.”  Am I splitting hairs?  Not as finely as those who called for a “New Tone” because of Palin’s target map.  From the deluge of death threats these men have received in the wake of O’Donnell’s show, these graphics (and the uniqueness of their layout in this instance) clearly violate the rhetorical standards that pundits like O’Donnell haughtily demanded in the wake of Gabrielle Giffords’ horrendous shooting.

The New Tone at work.

Furthermore, O’Donnell divulges the name of Batton Lash’s wife– not once, but twice.  She is a private citizen who had no role in the creation of the cartoon.  That fully constitutes an unwarranted breach of privacy on its own, but he goes even further by naming the city in which she and Lash live, directly asking his viewers to confront them in public about Lash’s cartoon– in effect, commanding them to personally harrass a private citizen.

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Within hours of the release of Lila Rose’s shocking and dismaying Planned Parenthood video, the leftist media trotted its favorite phrase for shutting out citizen journalists: “selectively edited.”  I suggested jokingly that it would happen, but sadly, the left is all too predictable.

Of course we see that smear from all the usual suspects:  Media Matters’ initial knee-jerk reaction was to dismiss the video merely for being “abridged,” then put in an update with a link to “what [Live Action] say[s] is” the full video.  The New York Times’ blurb coverage of the event repeated Planned Parenthood’s claim that the video was questionable because it was “edited.”  CBS News uses the phrase twice, first trying to associate the video with the discredited and unrelated allegations of selective editing levied against James O’Keefe, then as weasel-word insinuation: “Seemingly in response to criticism that it may have selectively edited the video, Live Action on Tuesday afternoon made public what it says is the full video of the New Jersey Planned Parenthood sting.”

First off, I would love to see what kind of “context” can justify recommending that a pimp have his post-abortion underage sex workers only perform sex acts “above the waist.”  Progressive commenters, please let me know what sort of ancillary statement can put that comment into perspective.  Second, it’s time to take that “selective editing” phrase and shove it back in the face of the MSM.

Editing, by its very nature, is selective and subjective.  You have too much video/audio for the time you believe your audience will pay attention to your message, so you select which footage you want to include.  “Selective editing” is as redundant as saying “jacket coat” or “blowhard Olbermann.”  But if the MSM believes that the very act of editing video immediately destroys its credibility, then we need to hold them to the same standard.

Take this recent news package from CBS:

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Any time someone commits an act of violence that grabs headlines, journalists scramble desperately for a scapegoat, some person or social force to crusade against and extend the story’s expiration date (and thus ratings).  While it appears that Jared Lee Loughner’s motivation for shooting Gabrielle Giffords was nonpartisan (aka mental illness), there have already been reports from CBS, CNN, and the Associated Press attempting to pin Loughner’s motivations to Sarah Palin’s gun-target map, Giffords’ opponent Jesse Kelly using an M16 at a campaign event, and a general atmosphere of fear and animosity created solely by Republicans in Arizona.

As long as they’re bringing this subject up, I believe it’s a good time to discuss what the media could do if they really wanted to prevent future violence.  The answer is not to force conservative speakers to be “more careful” with their rhetoric.  In fact, I believe that the greater responsibility to prevent violence lies on the shoulders of journalists themselves; the media must stop suppressing conservative voices and increasing the ire of the nation.

This is not what makes us angry.

Only a literalistic idiot could find Palin’s “target” map something that would inspire violence, and only a partisan idiot could think that Loughner, a fan of flag-burning, would be a big enough Palin fan to have ever seen that map.  I find it extremely unlikely that someone can be inspired to violence through the words of a political leader unless it’s a direct order, which neither Palin nor Beck nor Rush have come anywhere close to saying.  The people who claim that these three use “coded language” to incite violence are as paranoid as Loughner; only crazy people see calls to violence in innocuous speech, such as John Lennon’s shooter claiming The Catcher in the Rye as his inspiration.

Indeed, when these conservative media personalities talk about removing politicians through the power of one’s vote, that is actually a deterrent to violence.  For Palin fans, her political speech gives them joy and hope, a cathartic reminder that someone out there is speaking for them.  Her defining political contribution has been giving hope to all the flyover country-dwellers deemed subhuman and unworthy by the elites in the media — hope that their votes mattered and that they could change things through their speech and political involvement. (more…)