Last week, Miami New Times Blogger Kyle Munzenrieder accused Matt Drudge of trying to stroke racial flames for reporting the facts in the news.
Mr. Munzenrieder is upset because Drudge linked to stories that reported the violence surrounding the Miami Beach Urban Weekend as part of a larger collection of links covering multiple incidents of youth related violence that gripped such cities as Boston, Nashville, Charlotte, and Rochester over the Memorial Day weekend.
Munzenrieder decried Drudge because some of the incidents in question involved Blacks and gangs, stating in his blog that he thought that covering such story was “kinda racist.” Munzenrieder went as far as to offer a quote a racial Gawker conspiracy theory: “since the president of the United States is a black man, and since black voters tend to align with his party, it is to the advantage of the Republican Party and its allies to inculcate fear and apprehension about people who look like him. Hence the top stories on the Drudge Report today.”
Mr. Munzenrieder is entitled to his opinions and theories–no matter how farfetched they may be–but to accuse an editor of racism for reporting the facts in the news is the sign of a sick mind. (more…)
If you tuned in to Rush Limbaugh yesterday, you probably caught El Rushbo talking about Andrew’s new book. Rush reminds us that Andrew, yes, Andrew Breitbart, “was a big lefty until he heard me.” Me, meaning…Rush Limbaugh.
By the way, great news! Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World has been hovering between #1 and #2 on the Amazon Bestseller’s List in Non-Fiction, and between #10 and #12 Overall. Congratulations, Andrew!!!
Andrew Breitbart sits down with FOX News’ Sean Hannity on April 18, 2011 to discuss his new book, “Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World,” released April 15, 2011. It wasn’t all just book conversation though…you’ll have to watch it and see!
John Hawkins of RightWing News recently interviewed Andrew Breitbart about his new book. It’s a fun interview and a great read!
I always find it fascinating when people who used to be liberal say they turned to the right. That happened with you. Can you tell us about it?
Well, it’s a cliché from the left to the right. And it’s usually a story of opportunism in those few cases where the people move from the right to the left. It’s almost embarrassing to go back into my liberal background because it was about as shallow a belief system as humanly possible. It was go-along to get-along social. It was living in Los Angeles, being young, and single, and flowing with the trendy liberal crowd.
When I started to work in Hollywood at a fairly low level delivering scripts around town, listening to AM talk radio, I at first listened to it as a novelty. But I started to have certain things in my life going on such as living in a rent controlled apartment, having listened to the Clarence Thomas hearings, the OJ Simpson trial — I just started to see trends in my personal experiences that ran so contrary to what the media narratives were. At first I was flummoxed by it and then I just started to listen to certain people on the radio who were more clear thinking than the professors that I had in college.
I remember thinking when I was in college that a lot of these known Chomsky-like, verbose high lefty thinkers made absolutely no sense but I thought that was my problem. So when I started to listen to conservative thinkers and to read conservative thinkers, there was a clarity of thought. It wasn’t muddled. It wasn’t confusing. It started to make sense at an intellectual level and tie into the values that my parents gave me when I was a young kid that I diverted from when I was in high school.
So it was basically a reconnecting with everything that my parents attempted to instill in me in my youth. It has made me sleep a lot better at night, being centered and oriented with human nature as opposed to living in a world of self loathing nihilism, trying to undo human nature, and trying to create a path towards an unrealistic utopia.
Now, you were recently banned from the front page of The Huffington Post….
Oh, the tragedy of my life.
(Laughs) It is, it is. Apparently you made some sort of ad hominem attack on Van Jones and The Huffington Post has a policy against that. It must have been in place for at least two minutes or so before you were banned. Can you talk about that?
It’s always disheartening to see someone from your own camp take a bad hit as Dave Weigel has. The Washington Post blogger, who was hired to provide coverage “inside the conservative movement and the Republican Party,”resigned over recently leaked emails from the Journolist listserv, in which he used some less than flattering language in his personal commentary about many of the people he was covering.
While I’ve always been respectful of Weigel’s insights and his writing, I would be being less than honest however if I’d said there wasn’t something about his posts that I’d also found worrisome. The revelation of the Journolist emails only strengthened my gut feeling, especially when I saw how nasty the rhetoric was in the emails. Frankly, that part surprised even me.
It’s not that I wasn’t open-minded to the views that Weigel has always presented; I could appreciate that he has criticisms of the right. But as someone assigned to provide conservative insight, his commentary sometimes struck me as being penned more from a liberal viewpoint than that of a conservative or libertarian one. It almost seemed more targeted to pleasing Media Matters’ readers. And since I already follow a number of liberal journalists to balance out the material I read from conservative and libertarian leaning authors, Media Matters’ tone isn’t exactly what I’m usually looking for. But perhaps there was a reason his posts sometimes seemed that way to me. (more…)
It’s like a doctor who smokes. You’d think the last person to be done in by his own words would be a journalist. Shouldn’t a purveyor of words know better?
Yet as today’s forced resignation by WaPo columnist David Weigel proves, “Physician, heal thyself” is one piece of advice that seems to be ignored by wordsmiths of just about all stripes these days. On the heels of Helen Thomas—or are they flats?—Weigel is just the latest to join the Oral Suicide Club.
What was Weigel’s offense? Unfortunately for him, the man hired by WaPo to write about the conservative movement couldn’t resist showing his true anti-conservative colors on what he thought was a “private” journalist email list called Journolist — which was disbanded today by its creator, Ezra Klein. In a June 24 Betsy Rothstein story on Fishbowl DC, Weigel in his own emailed words reveals what Weigel unplugged sounds like:
This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire.
I’d politely encourage everyone to think twice about rewarding the Examiner with any traffic or links for a while. I know the temptation is high to follow up hot hot Byron York scoops, but please resist it.
Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller has unearthed other examples of Weigel’s bias, including a macabre death wish for Rush Limbaugh and other injudicious anti-conservative remarks. (more…)
The Washington Post’s David Weigel has resigned in the wake of a series of leaked emails, in which the blogger disparaged various figures in the conservative movement he was “covering” in his official capacity as the Post’s point man on the right. His resignation came less than a day after he posted this apology on the Post’s website:
I’m a member of an off-the-record list-serv called “Journolist,” founded by my colleague Ezra Klein. Last Monday, I was deluged with angry e-mail after posting a story about Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-N.C.) that was linked by the Drudge Report with a headline intimating that I defended his roughing-up of a young man with a camera; after this, the Washington Examiner posted a gossip item about my dancing at a friend’s wedding. Unwisely, I lashed out to Journolist, which I’ve come to view as a place to talk bluntly to friends.
Below the fold are quotes from me e-mailing the list that day — quotes that I’m told a gossip Web site will post today. I apologize for much of what I wrote, and apologize to readers.
There follows some choice Weigelisms:
“This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire.”
“Follow-up to one hell of a day: Apparently, the Washington Examiner thought it would be fun to write up an item about my dancing at the wedding of Megan McArdle and Peter Suderman. Said item included the name and job of my girlfriend, who was not even there — nor in DC at all.”
“I’d politely encourage everyone to think twice about rewarding the Examiner with any traffic or links for a while. I know the temptation is high to follow up hot hot Byron York scoops, but please resist it.” (more…)
Here’s my problem with NBC political correspondent Chuck Todd’s blast against “Drudge driven journalism:” the alternative that Todd attempts to defend isn’t actually journalism. If Chuck Todd’s network and the rest of the MSM really had been practicing journalism all along, there would never have been a vacuum for people like Matt Drudge, Andrew Breitbart, etc. to fill.
Many people would like to define the term “journalism” as the unbiased dissemination of information, but it’s never been that. For a very long time publications made no secret of their political points of view. Historically, America had Whig newspapers, Republican newspapers and Democratic newspapers. All of them spun the news in a particular direction and readers knew it. The situation has not changed, except that the legacy media desperately and unconvincingly clings to the notion that it is detached from any ideology and therefore the sole arbiter of truth. No matter where they fall on the the political spectrum, Americans know better. That’s the reason the Drudge Report, Breitbart’s “Big” sites and, to put a point on it, liberal outlets like Huff Po and the Daily Kos thrive.
My own field of expertise provides an object lesson in why legacy journalism is fading into irrelevance as “Drudge-driven journalism” fills the void in a world hungry for knowledge. The MSM’s coverage of science in general and environmental issues in particular has been abysmal for years. Journalists are, by training and inclination, generalists. How many times have members of the old media tried to explain away slanted coverage of the non-existent global warming crisis by declaring that they of course are not scientists and can not be therefore expected to personally understand the issue? Instead, they insist that they must rely on experts and if you have a problem with the way they’re covering the issue, go talk to the experts. (more…)
NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd is a neo-Luddite and he doesn’t even know it. In a brief impromptu video clip, Todd said that, “there is no worse crime in journalism these days than simply deciding something’s a story because Drudge links to it.”
So forget plagiarism, intentional misinformation, news fabrication -– remember the New York Times’s Jayson Blair? –- intentional shilling for a political philosophy or politician, and just plain incompetence. None, according to Todd, are as journalistically “criminal,” in the non-judicial sense, as taking a story cue from Matt Drudge.
Todd is replicating the two-hundred years old whine of the early 19th-century Luddites. Here’s a brief reminder of the movement of British textile workers led by General Ned Ludd between 1811-1816: (more…)
One must at least credit NBC’s Chuck Todd with one virtue. He is utterly transparent.
When real “journalist” Todd – Chief White House Correspondent for NBC News and the co-hose of The Daily Rundown — gave this impish put down of what he calls, “Drudge-Driven Journalism,” his resentment, fear and school-boy petulance could not have been clearer to any sentient observer.
Such a pity, really. A grown man reduced to whining in front of the White House makes his viewers so embarrassed for him that it’s painful to watch. He should have saved all that peevish poppycock for Al Gore, the inventor of the internet. For, in reality, the saving grace of journalism today – the only thing that gives these leftist buffoons in the MSM even a tiny shred of credibility – is the internet’s check and balance on their politically driven narratives.
Their animus is usually aimed at the Drudge Report because of the number of hits. It’s Drudge’s numbers that drive the most powerful wedge between these MSM indoctrinated monkeys parading as journalists and their monopoly on the “truth.” And all it takes is a single flashback to know why all the hacks associated with the once-august MSM fear “Drudge-Driven Journalism” – down to their quaking toes in their manure-muddied Gucci’s.
Flashback: Dan Rather, 60 Minutes Wednesday, September 8, 2004. (more…)
In a recent interview with Tommy Christopher from Mediaite, NBC’s Chuck Todd was asked, “To what degree do you think the opinion media influence the questions that are asked here?” “Here” refers to the White House press room.
Todd replies that “there is no worse crime in journalism these days than simply deciding something’s a story because Drudge links to it.” Apparently it’s “an obsession” of his because he doesn’t think “that’s the proper way for us to decidewhat’s news.” (emphasis added)
And there you have it, folks: the legacy media no longer control the narrative and knowledge of that fact is causing more itching and chafing amongst “professional journalists” than a truckload of baby powder could cure.
Journalism isn’t just about facts, even though getting the facts right is obviously important. It’s also about what people know and from what perspective it’s told. For literally decades, ABC, CBS and NBC – along with partners-in-crime the New York Times, Washington Post et al. – have had a stranglehold on what the people know and when they know it. Journalists who cover the national scene created an exclusive club, deciding what would be covered and how. They lunched together and gave each other prestigious awards, basking in the limelight of their own making and smiling down at the little people from their pedestals on high. They’re still doing it, in fact. (more…)
President Obama’s State of the Union address last night was notable for many reasons. First, it is not often that you hear such petulance from a sitting president of the United States – complaining about not receiving applause from your political opponents is simply ridiculous. Second, it is not often that a president directly lectures the American people – it failed when Jimmy Carter tried it in his infamous “malaise” speech, and it failed last night when President Obama told us that we needed to man up and follow him to glory. Comparing his agenda’s stall to Bull Run, Omaha Beach, Black Tuesday and Bloody Sunday, and calling on Americans to “again … answer history’s call” is foolish and self-aggrandizing.
What’s worse is telling us that he is the spiritual embodiment of our collective strength:
And what keeps me going – what keeps me fighting – is that despite all these setbacks, that spirit of determination and optimism – that fundamental decency that has always been at the core of the American people – lives on.” I couldn’t help but shake my head in amusement when he told us that “It lives on in the struggling small business owner … it lives on in the woman … it lives on in the 8-year-old boy in Louisiana … it lives on in all the Americans … [it] lives on in you, its people.
Quoting the Broadway version of The Lion King is not profundity. It is silliness: (more…)
2009 was the breakout year for the irrepressible Andrew Breitbart, 40, a conservative firebrand operating deep in enemy territory in Los Angeles, and the sky will be his limit in 2010. A regular presence on Fox News and a Washington Times columnist, Breitbart cut his teeth working for Matt Drudge’s eponymous website and also had a spell with the Left-wing Huffington Post. He took on Hollywood in his group blog site BigHollywood and broke the ACORN scandal when the young unknown filmmakers Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe approached him with undercover footage of employees of the Left-wing community organising group condoning under-age prostitution by illegal immigrants. The mainstream media were slow to pick the story up but eventually they could not ignore it.
The public editor of the New York Times eventually conceded that his newspaper needed “to be alert” to such stories “or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself”. Outspoken and fearless, Breitbart has extensive contacts throughout journalism and revels in partisan combat, venturing onto shows like Real Time with Bill Maher which most conservatives steer clear off because they view it – accurately – as a hostile, liberal forum. Has also founded BigGovernment and BigJournalism sites while his Breitbart.com is a major driver of web traffic. Deeply versed in the potential of the internet and an accomplished talk radio host, Breitbart has issued a clarion call for conservatives to seize back the media. ““I want to be the kingmaker,” he said recently. “I want to find the best voices so that ideas and truth that have been suppressed for too long can find their way to a mass audience.”
I woke up this morning to an email from Gillian Reagan, the reporter who had slammed me in a hit piece for Business Insider, defending her work and mitigating her sins, while not seeing how they all added up to an obvious hit job. Thus began a war of words that’s continued all day. Honest journalistic enterprise or partisan attack piece? You be the judge:
Yesterday, we published a story about Andrew Breitbart’s new site, Big Journalism. The story contained numerous quotes from Breitbart, including this one, in which the right-leaning Breitbart was describing sites operated by the left-leaning Arianna Huffington:
On my Twitter account, I follow a few hundred mainstream media-types (keep the enemy closer, right?), and unless I've missed it (and I hope I have), not a single one has spoken out in defense of Roland Martin. Not one. How scary is that. The politically correct Groupthink...
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