Day: 4/29/2011

Andrew Breitbart’s Latest Lie Attacks Labor And Academia

Posted by on April 29, 2011 at 5:15 pm. 8 Comments :

Andrew BreitbartJon Lovitz used to have a character on Saturday Night live known a the “pathological liar.” He would simply make up things to impress his associates and, as he settled on the perfect deceit, would exclaim, “Yeah, that’s the ticket.”

Andrew Breitbart has taken this notion to new levels. His capacity for dishonesty is boundless and entirely devoid of shame. The latest episode in his recurring series of video lie-fests takes place at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. The video posted at his BigGovernment blog shows a professor and a guest lecturer engaged in a discussion that includes statements that imply they are advocating violence on behalf of labor interests. “Yeah, that’s the ticket.” The only problem with this expose is that, like just about everything else Breitbart does, it isn’t true.

Judy Ancel, Director of Labor Studies at UMKC, is the professor in the video. She responded to Breitbart’s smear in an email with several examples of how Breitbart fiddled with the content to deliberately convey a meaning that did not exist in reality. For instance, she writes…

Breitbart is a master of taking quotes out of context, deletion of what doesn’t serve his purpose, and remixing to achieve totally different meaning. For example he has me saying:

o Breitbart’s version: “Violence is a tactic and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.”

o The real version: After students had watched a film on the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike and the assassination of Martin Luther King, they were discussing nonviolence. I said, “One guy in the film. . . said ‘violence is a tactic, and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.’. . . ” The class proceeded to discuss and debate this.

It is apparent that Ancel was quoting somebody in the film, not expressing her own views. This is typical of Breitbart and his ilk. It is the point I was making when I posted this video of Glenn Beck admitting that he idolizes Adolf Hitler:

Media Matters has some of the obviously manipulated video as well as the uncut versions that reveal Breitbart’s purposeful deception.

This project has all the earmarks of Breitbart’s modus operandi. It is precisely what he did to Shirley Sherrod. It is the very same tactics he used against ACORN, along with his protege, James O’Keefe. However, there are no credits for the video other than the name “Insurgent Visuals.” It’s odd that no one would want to take credit for what they must regard as a brilliant piece of investigative journalism.

However, after some investigation of my own, I discovered that Insurgent Visuals has a web site. Surely there would be some indication of who was responsible for this story. Nope. Just a short statement on their “About” page saying “We are a small collective of motivated political actionists intent on changing the world.” They are also intent on hiding their identity.

So I continued my investigation and discovered that Insurgent Visuals also had at one time a blog at BlogSpot. The blog was no longer available, but I was able to access it via Google’s cache. Once there I noticed that the blog’s contributors were Bruce Bronson, and some guy named — James O’Keefe! Who’da thunk it? So O’Keefe, a well-known lying video manipulator may have had an invisible hand in Breitbart’s new anonymous smear campaign. He’s certainly the guy I would call if I wanted to produce a phony videotaped assault on someone.

Prof. Ancel’s response to the video is worth reading in full. It outlines the dishonesty that Breitbart perpetuated as well as her outrage at having the privacy of her students violated and the forum for free expression in the classroom replaced with a chilling mood of fear and distrust. The email in full follows:
 
Contine reading →

Glenn Beck vs Glee/My Chemical Romance

Posted by on April 29, 2011 at 2:49 pm. 4 Comments :

We already know that Glenn Beck is a delusional paranoid whose analysis of world affairs is on a par with a lobotomized baboon (no offense intended to baboons). And we have already witnessed his hallucinatory ramblings about commie-infested art planted throughout Manhattan. But now Beck has assumed the role of music critic and the results are just about what you would expect.

On his program yesterday he set off on a tirade against an episode of Glee that featured the cast performing “Sing” by My Chemical Romance. Of course, he divined a meaning to the segment that could only exist in his decayed brain. His dementia was so complete that he kept going back forth from praising the show as brilliant to condemning it as a nightmare:

“I’ve watched it in stunned horror combined with a sense of admiring awe. It is a brilliant, brilliant show. Very, very, very well done. But it is a horror show.”

With his standard demeanor reeking of shock and fear, Beck attempted to convey the danger that he saw in this evil teenage music. He displayed a few of the lyrics on screen to illustrate the horror that these demonic rockers were imparting to our innocent children:

Cleaned up corporation progress, dying in the process
Children that can talk about it, living on the railways
People moving sideways, sell it till your last days
Buy yourself the motivation, generation nothing
Nothing but a dead scene, product of a white dream.

Reading those words, I couldn’t quite figure out what Beck was so worked up about. Was it the insinuation that corporations were involved in something nefarious? Was it the ambiguous reference to a “white dream?” Beck never really explained it himself. He simply said that…

“This is propaganda and it’s an anthem. It’s an anthem saying, join us. How can you and I possibly win against that?”

Win against what? An anthem calling for what? Joining what? Beck never says. So I went to the source. I looked up the song on a video that contained all of the lyrics. I’ll report, you decide:

So far as I can tell, this is song that inspires self-esteem and the determination to stand up for yourself in the face of critics and bullies and the martinets of conformity. It’s a call for pride in individualism and a rejection of corporate mandates of style and character. It’s a tribute to the honor of outcasts and those whom society regards as defective.

No wonder Beck is afraid. The more kids listen to this message, the harder it will be for them to be manipulated by commercial evangelists like him; the harder it will be to sow doubt and insecurity; the harder it will be sell useless crap that promises to make you popular and desirable. This song is an assault on the crass consumerism that fattens Beck’s wallet and those of his sponsors.

This song’s refrain is seemingly dedicated to Glenn Beck: “Sing it out for the ones that’ll hate your guts.”

[Update] My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way responded to Beck on his blog. My favorite part:

“I’m actually shocked that no actual fact-checking was done on the lyrics. I mean Fox is a major news channel, covering factual topics in an unbiased and intelligent – oh wait-“

Well said.

Priorities USA: More Of This, Please

Posted by on April 29, 2011 at 11:06 am. 6 Comments :

Prioroties USA just released this video exposing the dangers of the extreme (aka mainstream) Republican/Tea Party:

Transcript: The extreme right is aptly named. They are extremely powerful, extremely well-funded, extremely frightening, extremely paranoid, extremely hateful, extremely irresponsible, extremely ill-informed. And just plain extreme. Which makes them all extremely dangerous. It’s time to stand up and fight back. Join us at PrioritiesUSAAction.org. Taking on the politics of fear and smear.

This video addresses the cream of the rightist assault on America. It covers everything from the Koch brothers, to Glenn Beck to Karl Rove and more. The folks behind Priorities USA are familiar Democratic operatives like Bill Burton, former deputy White House spokesman. The group appears to be a lefty version of Rove’s CrossroadsUSA.

It’s about time. While these sort of groups are exploiting the onerous Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court that permits unlimited, anonymous donations by corporations, as long as that decision is the law of the land, the GOP should not be alone in benefiting from it. In fact, Democrats should exploit the hell out of it in the hopes that Republicans will eventually see the harm and join Democrats in drafting a legislative repeal.

So, as the video says, “It’s time to stand up and fight back.”