Maybe you've heard of Andrew Breitbart. The former Drudge #2 and Huffington pal has been on an absolute tear recently, exposing anti-Tea Party demonstrators as "thugs" and insisting that this group of patriots is "on the receiving end (of threats and intimidation) every single day, but haven't made anything of it because they know that the press isn't going to be sympathetic to their cause."
Breitbart's real bugaboo is the false accusations of racism against the patriotic Americans in the tea party. In his March 25 column "2010: A Race Odyssey," he writes:
"As I have said over and over and over, the left has one trick that it will use again and again when its back is in the corner: shout ‘racist' in a crowded country.... Are we going to allow the left to use its despicable acts of lies and intimidation to shut up legitimate dissent on a subject that has nothing to do with race?"
The crusader has even gone so far as to offer a $10,000 reward for proof that Capital Hill tea partiers used racial slurs prior to the health care vote.
Indeed. No racism anywhere near Breitbart and his crew.
Breitbart's wire services network, wittily named Breitbart, which also hubs his original content sites, recently ran an Associated Press story from New Jersey of a 15-year-old girl who prostituted herself and the 7-year-old stepsister she was responsible for watching:
"Trenton police Capt. Joseph Juniak said Wednesday that the older girl started by taking money to have sex with several men at the party of a high-rise apartment. The teen then gave some of the money she had collected to the younger girl to let the men start touching her, Juniak said. 'It went from touching to straight out assault and rape,' Juniak said. 'They threatened to kill her if she screamed or told anyone.'"
Heartbreaking.
Remembering that nowhere in the report was the race of anyone involved mentioned, let's look at the edifying comments from Breitbart's (racist-free) readership:
Wow. That guy got +13 Breitbart patriot thumbs for his (her?) bit of genius political punditry. Wonder what some of the others had to say?
Oh, my.
But hope! Here is a brave someone wading in to talk some non-racist sense into the not-at-all-racist discussion.
Ha ha ha! Stupid rape victim. Negative one Breitbart Patriot Thumb for you!
This country isn't crowded, people are just fat.
@skippy77a: actually, they're not laughable at all.
It's funny that's the first part that jumped out at me too. The US is rather uncrowded in fact. It is very easy for a racist to find an area where there is nary a person of different color.
Driving across the country in college (stereotype!) in Nebraska I was like "overpopulation!? there's PLENTY of room!"
Oh, man. This makes me sick to my stomach.
Although "rear end" instead of "ass" in that last comment represents an acknowledgement of the importance of civility in this type of dialogue.
Ugh. I'm surprised to see one of these folks take a jab at our founders, though. Mavericky!
I'm surprised they can work a computer.
Jesus fucking Christ
Breitbart has such a tiny mouth. How does it manage to make so much noise?
Maybe he actually has a serious injury to his jaw. All that braying could actually be a cry for help. If internet web sites really cared for him, they would send him to the vet to get it checked out.
People with that kind of mouth can't be trusted.
I bet all those people who left "racial" comments are white.
Except maybe this wacko:
http://www.lloydmarcus.com/
One of the hard things about reading this is that I have no idea how any of these people will ever change their thinking.
A baseball bat over the head?
Between this and the otters...
/haz sad
Goons, have you seen KiwiCam? The baby isn't there right now, but it is adorable wobbling around on its little legs, occasionally balancing itself with its gigantic pointy beak.
IT'S THERE! IT'S THERE!
(can you tell I'm alone in the office on a Friday with fuck all to do?)
The best is when he tries to get in his little basket!
Yay, so cute! Helping me forget that there are idiots out there who put down abuse victims.
OK, that made me sadder. He looks lonely!
Quick someone to the grocery store!
Oooh! Thanks!
Part of me wants to make stupid funny jokes, but mostly this makes me want to cry and break things. Sweet Jeebus is this all infuriating & helpless-feeling-producing.
This makes me wish for more knifecrime island posts. Or maybe a puppy cam?
there you liberals go, playing the race card again.
Breitbart is not objecting to the accusations of racism on the grounds that there is no racism. He's objecting on the grounds that accusations of racism are not fair, on the grounds of pure AM NOT YOU ARE. Like, Breitbart kills a cute puppy dog and then object to being a cute-puppy-dog-killer because YOU'RE DENYING OUR LEGITIMATE DISSENT.
This is Michele Bachmann level reasoning.
She didn't see any evidence of "racial activity" by tea partiers during the health care vote, so she doubts it happened.
But if it did happen, it was because Nancy Pelosi "was trying to incite" something by having the nerve to walk thru those patriotic Americans on her way to vote.
It's that type of thinking that leads to this....
I don't beat my wife, but if I did, she probably did something to deserve it, so it's her fault.
and then you will receive a lecture on personal responsibility
and tax cuts.
I hate Real America.
Blah. Breitbart is decrying what he sees an effort by some media outlets to damage the tea party movement by portraying it as predominately racially motivated and seizing on each and every report of racism, no matter how dubious, in order to do so.
If he had really done something so stupid as to deny the existence of any racist tea partiers or conservatives this post would've been merited. As it is its a bit tribal and silly.
No. If you actually read all his stuff lately and see him speak, he IS trying to demonstrate that there is no racist motivation within the tea party. He is insisting that racism within the tea party has been completely concocted by liberals and he is using the most extreme accusations that he can prove false (by not not proving real, BTW) to show that ALL accusations must be false (when they are clearly VERY far from). It's a wildly disingenuous argument of extension.
Somewhere, a right wing blog is dissecting all the lefty vitriol in this comments thread.
@Atencio - I don't think it requires much dissection.