Alternate Headline: “HuffPo Brass Admits Breitbart Not a Racist, Publishes Articles Portraying Him as One Anyway”
Andrew Breitbart was banned from the the front page of AOL/Huffington Post because he called the cop killer-supporting, racist, demagogic freak Van Jones a “cop killer-supporting, racist, demagogic freak.” In my background post from last week, I promised to provide examples of other Huffington Post bloggers unleashing ad hominem attacks. Here are some examples of these emotive, anti-intellectual smears against Breitbart himself published at… the Huffington Post itself
I did a good-faith search through the (AOL/)HuffPo archives to isolate ad hominem they have published against Breitbart. I went through a mere 150 or so of the hundreds of HuffPo articles that mention the Big Journalism publisher by name. All of these examples are published within the last two years up until the end of last year (there could be some fresher stuff I’ve missed). Here are some of the highlights of what I saw that are easily packaged into bite sized pieces; within the (AOL/)HuffPo archives there are even more examples than what you see below.
For brevity’s sake, the attacks are light on context, so all the links are provided so you can jump over to (AOL/)HuffPo to see the hate foment in it’s natural habitat. After the list, I explain the alternate headline. And remember: these are (AOL/)HuffPo bloggers, not commenters.
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Chez Pazienza, Editor of Deus Ex Malcontent, Author, in his piece “ABC News to Redeem Guy With No Redeeming Qualities“:
[Breitbart] is, as Bob Cesca put it perfectly, a serial liar and a scam artist.
[…]
… he’s a raging maniac…
[…]
… he’s ignored facts, knowingly created phony scandals, willfully aided, abetted and perpetuated hoaxes engineered by irresponsible con-men like himself…
[…]
He’s a pompous schoolyard bully…
[…]
…jackass…
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Bob Cesca in his piece, “The Summer of Republican Race-Baiting“:
The far-right machine and a serial con-man named Andrew Breitbart…
[…]
… Breitbart discredited as an overzealous attention-whore, white rage and white resentment was successfully fueled by conservatives across the media spectrum.
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James Rucker, Executive Director of ColorOfChange.org, in his piece “Victory — ABC News Drops Andrew Breitbart”:
This is a huge victory against Breitbart’s brand of race-baiting propaganda and lies.
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Chris Kelly, Writer, Real Time with Bill Maher, in his piece “Why You Don’t Care About JournoList“:
And where Andrew Breitbart is Biko, and revolutionary political power doesn’t come from a gun, it comes, under TV lights, out of the puckered, anus-like mouth of a whining pink face.
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Craig Aaron, Managing Director, Free Press in his piece “Jon Stewart vs. the Perpetual Panic Conflictinator“:
…mainstream outlets are turning over their megaphones to charlatans like Beck and Andrew Breitbart…
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Jack Mirkinson in his piece “ABC DROPS Andrew Breitbart From Election Night Coverage“:
James Rucker, director of the African American political website ColorOfChange.org… praised [ABC] saying in a statement that the network had “taken a giant step in helping to wash our collective hands of the fear mongering and race-baiting that have no place in our political discourse.”
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Richard (RJ) Eskow, Consultant, Writer, Senior Fellow with The Campaign for America’s Future, in his piece “Our Historic Stand Against the Bank Cabal’s Coalition of Darkness“:
Right-wing fraud Andrew Breitbart…
[…]
[ACORN exposé] a level of racism worthy of the bigoted and violent white Southerners who fought the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Back in those days the news media rightfully condemned the bigots.
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Alexander Zaitchik, Southern Poverty Law Center, “Hatewatch”; Author, “Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance, in his piece “Does Robert Rodriguez’s “Machete” Advocate ‘Race War’?:
Breitbart is the Obama-bashing propagandist…
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Allison Kilkenny, Radio host, journalist, allisonkilkenny.com, in her piece “Alan Simpson: Totally Lucky He’s Not a Democrat“:
Conman and professional loudmouth, Andrew Breitbart…
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Mike Bonifer, Author of Gamechangers — Improvisation for Business in the Networked World in his piece “Breitbart’s Game“:
Impressively balancing a thick databook on a chunky thigh…
[…]
Breitbart’s “righteous indignation” is a performance pose — the character lurking behind the pose is vengeful, self-loathing and apparently easily aroused.
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Tina Dupuy, Nationally syndicated columnist and award-winning writer, in her piece “Living in a ‘Post-Racist’ Society:
Racial agitator Andrew Breitbart…
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Marty Kaplan, Director, Norman Lear Center and Professor at the USC Annenberg School, in her piece “The Best of All Possible Americas“:
Afraid of bad names like “lamestream” and “liberal,” our news media, rather than treating Andrew Breitbart like Lee Atwater — a partisan propagandist and smear-merchant — instead amplified his lies…
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William Bradley, California-based Political Analyst NewWestNotes.com, in his piece “Harsh Realm: The Post-Press Era and Meg Whitman“:
…far right Internet huckster Andrew Breitbart…
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Peter Dreier and Christopher R. Martin, in their piece “Why Does Anyone Take Andrew Breitbart Seriously?“:
Breitbart is a con artist…
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Mark Potok, in his piece “Shirley Sherrod and the Right: A Day That Will Live in Infamy“:
Andrew Breitbart, a particularly vile propagandist…
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Bob Cesca, in his piece “Fooled Again by Breitbart and the Wingnut Right“:
Breitbart has only succeeded in underscoring how much of a buffoon he is…
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David Fiderer, in his piece “How Reporters Provide Cover for Darrell Issa’s Lies on the Countrywide ‘Scandal’“:
…where professional liars — Andrew Breitbart, James Inhofe, Karl Rove — are given an unfettered platform…
BONUS: That post got removed because it “did not meet [Huffington Post’s] blogging guidelines.”
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Needless to say these twenty-plus examples from HuffPo bloggers employing ad hominem against Andrew Breitbart, who was the primary developer of the space they use to smear him, is the tip of the ice berg. We’ll leave it to the AOL/HuffPo team to see to it that these people are held to the same standards to which Andrew Breitbart was held and never get frontpage (digital) ink on the Huffington Post ever again.
Regarding the alternate headline: You probably noticed these attacks follow a certain pattern: a substantial portion of the examples above portray Breitbart as a racist. One refers to Breitbart’s “white rage and white resentment,” a couple more allege “race-baiting,” he’s called a “bigot” and a “racial agitator,” and the ACORN exposé for which he’s perhaps best known was “a level of racism worthy of the bigoted and violent white Southerners.” And believe me when I say there’s even more where these came from.
So the left is trying to marginalize a prominent conservative by portraying him as a racist… what’s the surprise? The surprise is that the Huffington Post bigwigs, i.e. Arianna and editor Roy Sekoff, know that Breitbart isn’t a racist and still have been AWOL when it comes to defending him publicly from these hideous charges. This week, Sekoff mentioned to the Daily Caller that he knows Breitbart isn’t a racist, and as for Arianna, would she have allowed Breitbart into her inner circle, much less into her home with her family, if she thought Breitbart was one?
Still, Sekoff and Huffington allowed for this narrative they knew to be false to play out on their high-value online real estate. Even Color of Change, the very organization that twice targeted Breitbart for blacklisting for his “right-wing racism,” was free to use the Huffington Post to try to forever stigmatize Breitbart as a racist.
Then there’s this one last eerie detail to the story: nowhere amongst all of the dozens of posts published on the Huffington Post that I read was Breitbart actually called a “racist.” “Race-baiter”? Sure. “Racial agitator”? Youbetcha. But “racist”? Now that apparently crosses the line. How could it be that each and every author who writes for this most vitriolic blog resist the temptation to deploy the most caustic descriptor in American life at their perceived enemy? Certainly the left didn’t abandon calling conservatives “racists” all of a sudden, did they? Clearly there’s an editorial policy in place which dictates that HuffPo bloggers are not to call Breitbart a “racist.” But of course, this editorial policy doesn’t protect Breitbart from being portrayed as one.
The phoniness, the monumental dishonesty in allowing bloggers to frame Breitbart as a racist so long as they don’t ascribe the specific word “racist” to him boggles the mind. But then again, there’s been a lot of duplicity going around AOL/HuffPo these days…
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