My Real Time With Bill Maher

To view video of Andrew Breitbart on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” taped Friday, March 13, 2009 click here.

This week’s Washington Times column:

Pretty much everyone I respect in media and politics recommended I not go on HBO‘s “Real Time With Bill Maher.” But on Friday night, I defied that wisdom and had the time of my life.

I sparred with Mr. Maher, Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson and a MoveOn.org audience from hell that booed my sentences before they were completed. Unfortunately, my wife and in-laws, who watched from the green room, were not as enamored with the experience as I was.

Since the salad days of ABC’s “Politically Incorrect,” which minted countless right-wing pundits and best-selling authors, conservatives have rightly assessed the HBO version of the Maher show as R-rated and shockingly hostile to their worldview. So most opt out.

I totally see why. But I think that’s exactly the wrong strategy.

The problem with the withdrawal approach is that it cedes the popular culture debate to the other side. We figure talk radio, a certain cable news network and some independent Internet venues will allow for us to get our ideas out to the masses. Well, those few outlets are greatly outnumbered. They are also isolated and targeted for destruction by the activist left. The sitting president (using taxpayer money) is now leading the charge.

In my neighborhood at least, this strategy of avoiding engagement with the other side isn’t working out so well.

People who have never turned on Fox News or tuned into Rush Limbaugh have strong and defiant negative opinions about those outlets. When one tries to reason with them or call them out when acknowledging they watch and listen to neither, they become emboldened by their admitted ignorance. “Why would I listen to that racist, sexist, homophobic, fill-in-the-blank claim of cultural prejudice?”

This army of the emboldened and gleefully ill-informed is growing. Groupthink happens, and we must take it on head-on.

One must get a copy of John Ziegler’s “Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted” to understand the extent to which the traditional media have become an organized enemy aimed at conservatism, its leaders and its institutions. It was the tag team of entertainment (Tina Fey) and news (Katie Couric) that worked to take Sarah Palin down.

We can’t win the political war until we take on the Hollywood and mainstream media battles.

You can read the column in full here.