Breitbart Fail

It looks like my old nemesis Andrew Breitbart is going to fail on his attempt to smear another well-meaning black person, in this case Shirley Sherrod. Breitbart's group, Whites for Getting Scary Black People Fired, or WGSBPF, keeps trying to prove how terrible all of these various black people are through misleading, selectively edited videos.

This time, though, it looks like Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is backtracking on her ouster and she is becoming a symbol of the victims of hateful Tea Party gotcha operations against respectable black people.

Oh, and we're supposed to believe that these Tea Party types aren't racist? Bullshit.

Tea Party wackos holding a "Woodstock for conservatives"

"There will also be musical entertainment, from acts that have toured the Tea Party circuit, such as Lloyd Marcus. In addition to Palin, other speakers include Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher, former Saturday Night Live actress Victoria Jackson, Andrew Breitbart and others."

I'm sorry, Lloyd Marcus?

Ah, yes, Lloyd Marcus the black Tea Partying singer! Yee haw!

Oh and look, he's also a talented artist.

Andrew Breitbart supporting fucking racists

I kind of suspected that Breitbart was crazy as well as angry, but Salon blows the lid off of his whole despicable charade this morning. Turns out Breitbart's golden boy James O'Keefe is just a little bit (a lot) white supremist-ey! Fuck you James O'Keefe. Fuck you Andrew Breitbart.

James O'Keefe's race problem

One People's Project Report

Daily Kos' O'Keefe Blog Capture

Breitbart tells off Gawker

So our favorite crazy right wing extremist Andrew Breitbart left Gawker a voicemail fuming at them for calling the D.C. Holocaust Memorial killer a "right wing extremist". What an interesting world one must live in to defend that term. Whatever.

Andrew Breitbart: Holocaust Museum Killer Was a 'Multiculturalist'

Breitbart flips off protest against forcing children to be soldiers

At least I find the title of his piece agreeable:

Breitbart: I Jerk

Crazy cult leader creates "Potato Day"

Oh hello, Andrew Breitbart. Remember me? We went to that rich, preppy high school together and you came and saw my band once and you turned into a crazy internet neocon and I said some nasty things about you and you had all of your commenter minions threaten me on this blog. I kind of thought we were done with one another after our little dustup in February, but you keep showing up on my TV screen.

First I caught you on Real Time with Bill Maher where you performed the thankless service of defending George W. Bush's legacy. The national near-consensus that Dubya was the Worst President in U.S. History could not dissuade you. I have to say I sort of admire your perserverance in ideological pursuits, unburdened as it is by facts or truth or common sense.

This week, Jon Stewart took notice of you and your (surely entirely true) televised complaint that your son's liberal pussy Obamatard school no longer recognizes St. Patrick's Day, but instead refers to it as "Potato Day". Haha that's funny because that would be like liberals deciding to rename Cinco de Mayo to Sleeping Dude Under a Sombrero Day.

Andrew, you dissemble, you demagogue, you divert. You've chosen to use your apparently vast inherited wealth to create a cult of wingnut internet wackos. You're not wasting your life. Even worse, you are using it to fuck up the world as much as your trust fund will allow.

We're still waiting for your evidence on the whole "Potato Day" thing. I've searched the internet high and low and all I can find is people commenting on your TV appearance. Then the comments turn into rants about how stupid "Potato Day" is. God you're good.

The Battle for the Conservative Soul

There is a highly entertaining battle going on in conservative circles and the Republican party over the Soul of Conservatism. In one corner you have mostly east coast conservative intellectuals and moderate Republicans like David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, George Will and Olympia Snowe arguing that the last eight years have been a nightmare for average people and that's why the voters are heavily trending Democrat. These sensible conservatives recognize that the Bush tax cuts did exactly nothing for working people, the Iraq war was and is an avoidable boondoggle, global warming is a real threat, and gay marriage is a non-issue for people under 30. They understand that their party has been on the wrong side of these issues for the last decade and that their party has lost these battles.

In the other corner we have the unhinged, blathering, tone-deaf extremists like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sarah Palin and my old classmate Andrew Breitbart, seeming to think we are in some sort of Lost time loop that won't let us out of 2003. To them tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy have saved the economy, the mission in Iraq has been accomplished, environmentalists are wimps, and gay marriage is an outrage. All we need is Four More Years! This camp has apparently learned nothing from the last two elections. They imagine some sort of hidden constituency that will only show its face if the party goes more retrograde and extremist. Hey why not try to repeal civil rights legislation and women's suffrage while we are at it? Perhaps we could restore the Colonial era death penalty for homosexuality? That oughtta bring out the voters!

The fact of the matter is that the Lost Decade, or the first decade of the 21st Century, is already over. We handed it to the neocons and in return they took everything we had and ran. The next decade (the Teens I suppose) belongs to us socially liberal/fiscally responsible types, the Democrats and moderate Republicans.

(And don't pay any attention to revisionists who would paint the Republicans as fiscally responsible: they demanded hundreds of billions to dump into Iraq and handed the drug companies more billions in the form of Medicare Part D. These people don't invest in our country, they hand out our money as gifts to their friends and corporate allies.)

Personally, I would just as soon see the delusional, backward conservatives take over the Republican party and nominate Rush for the presidency in 2012. This would free the moderates in their party to become Democrats.

Then the Party of No becomes the Party of Nothing :-)

The Lost Decade

It seems to be a perfect accident of history that we had the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s and then the whatever-this-is-s. In the late 90s there were a bunch of clever clever folks who wanted to call this decade the Naughties. You see, "naught" is some sort of ancient British term for zero and this decade was going to be so very naughty, what with all the gay sex and subversive theatre and such. Thank God that term didn't stick.

What we got instead was a horrifying waste of time and resources, a stupid unwinnable war in Iraq in which we are only now recognizing Iran as the beneficiary, and a whole bunch of counterproductive bloviating by the Ann Coulters, Rush Limbaughs and Andrew Breitbarts of the world.

It was as if the 20th Century threw up on the 21st Century.

And here in 2009, with no one able to do so much as find a job, we are finding that the last 10 years, so full of new century optimism in the beginning, was entirely lost to Bush/Cheney and the like.

Only now do we realize it has been a Lost Decade. May we never surrender another ten years to such malevolent, incompentent assholes.

In which we review what just happened here

Well it seems that Andrew Breitbart (the founder of the right wing blog Big Hollywood) and his band of goons have left me now, and I have to say it is not without some wistfulness on my part.

As you know, it all started with my now disputed recollection that Breitbart hung with a druggy crowd and was a bully in high school. This attracted the ire of Signore Breitbart and his crew of internet sycophants, leading to the most traffic I have ever had on this blog (!) and a whole lot of lawsuit threats/general right wing thuggery in the comments. All of those comments remain on this blog for all to see. The only one that I deleted throughout this whole thing was one that I wrote.

Let us now pause to review the lofty rhetoric that took place last week in the comments:

My personal favorite came from Annie Hamilton. Let me introduce her by quoting from her Blogger profile:

"After undergoing brain surgery everything about life changed for me, including the way I think. I've had to rethink, relearn and reprocess much information over the course of several years and I've learned that I'm not as liberal as I thought."

Okay, now come with the hate:

"So, back to the anonymous Pussy Obamatard - keep sucking down that koolaid, idiot. but don't think for a second that it makes your 'leader' an admirable person. 47 % of the country didn't vote for your New Muhammed. and your doofus Kenya born Black Jesus took the third biggest payout [blah blah blah]"

Annie, if you're out there, please come back and provide us more details about your brain surgery!

It turns out that I'm not the only one who is "anonymous" on the internet. From Anonymous #1:

"Stick to manual labor, bro. You do not belong in a thinking man's world. Your writing is pure emotionalism that speaks more of your embarassing lack of intellect than it does of your deep, grand insights. Seriously, see a shrink and leave all this hateful petty masterbation [sic] to your sad lonely private time with porn."

Plees leev my masterbation habuts out of this.

From Anonymous #2 (or more from Anonymous #1, we can't tell!), the first of many calls for the conservative, trial-lawyer-hating Breitbart to sue me:

"Wow glad I'm not you dude .. hope Andrew is a forgiving guy and doesn't ring his lawyer after that rant."

I'm kind of hoping he does.

From J.W., more lawsuit threats:

"I wish him and his lawyers well.
(Hey Annie- your comments were great- I couldn't even start to compete!)"

I wholeheartedly agree. Her comment was my favorite too! But our dear Annie is a humble sort:

"J.W., you did just fine! and there's plenty of us 'crazy' conservatives out here in southern california! some of us know how to say 'no' to koolaid!! I quit abusing chemicals a long time ago! lol...once you grow up, have a family and figure out that there is a 'world' beyond your 'hair' products and the day after tomorrow, you wake up quickly. that was...oh, twelve years ago?"

Annie, I am 'glad' that you are 'no longer' a drug addict and had brain surgery. It's all fixed now! But notice in the second paragraph the self-congratulatory "I work so hard and that's why I'm a conservative" bullshit we see in so many of the Breitbartian posts:

"truly don't understand the mentality of liberals - it's so self serving and hypocritical. If people focused more on working their asses off, focused on responsibility, accountability, traditional values and social compassion - none of it would even be a point."

But I like my ass. I'm not interested it "working [it] off". I would rather work less hard, rely on reasonable social programs and still have an ass.

But now Annie gets dark on me:

"you're an idiot. don't you have a freeway to play in?"

I'm sorry, but we mainly have parkways and turnpikes here.

I don't really understand whose side Anonymous #3 is on:

"Andrew is right about you. Your observational skills are sorely lacking.

He is NOT a bully. He is in fact a pathological narcissist, himself long victimized by left-leaning West-Los Angeles elitists who failed to enshrine him with the proper attention while he was growing up.

Once again, liberal tyranny has failed to see past itself."

Woah, you just blew my mind!

From Anonymous #4, the dark hat who supposedly tracked my IP address for some reason even though it would take about 5 minutes of reading my blog and following my various music links to figure out who I am. Good work!:

"Who needs a lawyer when you have someone (like me) who is a geek- and can capture IP addresses and find out who idiots are?
I love my work!

Thanks Nic Fic- have a joke, smoke and a TOKE-
And expect a knock on the door shortly.
You cannot think the internet will let you get away with this- there are laws.
And YOU have been caught!"

There are laws. I'm just not sure which one I have been "caught" violating or who would bother knocking on my door.

Anonymous #5 is advocating caution:

"Question for anonymous lawyer guy: Is it cool for ol' Andy to sick his followers on this person the way he has? Might that be considered bullying? I mean, we're spending 100 large to on that stupid Matt Damon dare. Andy's rich, even though he was adopted, but legal costs kind of add up. Should we just stand down on this one and go back to thinking up names to call Obama?"

Answer: it's completely fine for ol' Andy to sick his followers on this person. This person kind of misses them. But yes, it is kind of bullying. Now what about this "100 large to on that stupid Matt Damon dare"? Please provide details.

But now Robot #5 has rebooted and is awaiting orders:

"I'll stand down now until Andy tells me what to do next."

You do that.

Anonymous #6 wants to "prosecute":

"Probably should take the page down- from what I have read.
What a jerk!
I am sure that Breitbart has all he needs to prosecute."

Hey, don't bother. One of those Obamatard liberal prosecutors would probably just plea bargain down to probation.

At this point the commenters turn on each other and start recommending various cleanse therapies and colonics because they are so full of shit. I agree.

Thank you everyone. This has been fun.

-Bryan (aka Nic Fit)

Full comments

Rhetorical Knots

So John Nolte (presumably Nick Nolte's less successful son and editor of, you guessed it, Big Hollywood) has his knickers in a twist today over some LA Times film critic claiming that long-dead (and largely forgotten) actor Randolph Scott was gay. The nerve!

Apparently Scott lived with (long-rumored light-in-the-loafers) Cary Grant for 12 years in Malibu, though both were very well-paid stars and could easily have afforded their own Malibu homes. But, hey, Nolte tells us, it was their bachelor pad. Okay, bro. He then goes on to "defend" Randolph Scott from this scurrilous accusation. Oh, and of course those of us on the left aren't allowed to question the idea that one's sexual orientation can be the basis of an "accusation":

Defending Scott against such charges can only mean one is anti-gay, right?

Well, how about pro-truth and pro-fairness?

The truth is that (according to Nolte's own post) Scott's and Grant's sexuality have been under dispute for years. Both men denied being gay repeatedly, which is not surprising considering that the alternative at that time was never working in Hollywood again. But, who knows, maybe they just liked having unnecessary roommates, like Chace Crawford and Ed Westwick.

But why is Nolte so worked up about an offhand assumption (which many people share) in some article about some early 20th Century actor?

Oh I'm sorry. I can't say that it's because Nolte thinks that being identified as gay is a bad thing. That would mean that I think that Nolte's "defending" against such "charges" is inherently anti-gay.

Yes, it would.

---

And by the way, at what point did the American right become sensitive about being called anti-gay? Wasn't that their official position for most of the 20th Century? What are you, a pansy?

I lowered the debate

Okay, so I picked a fight with Andrew Breitbart over his Big Hollywood blog and it turned into a big, ugly mess. While I still revile the blog's premise (Hollywood makes people liberal/stupid) and the opinions expressed over there, I should not have used personal attacks against Andrew to make my point.

I wrote in an earlier post that Andrew used to hang with a "rich/druggy crowd" in high school and often seemed high. Breitbart has commented repeatedly on this blog that this is false. I take him at his word, and have amended that post with a notation that Breitbart disputes my recollection.

More important, none of this germane to the debate. While I certainly grabbed people's attention, I took the low road. And I regret it.

What triggered my visceral response to Breitbart and his blog in the first place? I guess that when I connected the kid I knew in our privileged, predominantly white high school with the promoter of the me-first, screw-everybody-else-values of the internet right, I was stunned. What really pushed me over the edge, though, is the increasingly anti-Muslim bent on Big Hollywood. Although I realize that the Republican party as a whole is sort of devolving into fringe group united mainly by their animosity toward Arabs and "Muslins", bigotry really fucking bothers me.

So I lashed out. I took a cheap shot and started the net equivalent of a barroom brawl. And in the end I didn't like being in a personal war with some distant figure from my past.

So, Breitbart, while I still wholeheartedly disagree with the opinions expressed in your website, I am sorry I made it personal. That was an unnecessary distraction and a mistake that I won't repeat.

- Bryan

And what the fuck is this supposed to mean?

via (you guessed it) Big Hollywood

Democrats Have Bigger Teats

by Doug TenNapel

I’ve seen the old man make millions of dollars. He was resourceful, clever, thrifty and had the work ethic of an ant colony. This is the rich old man who passes on his life’s earnings to the next generation. The next generation didn’t learn to work, but lived in the comfort of the old man’s palatial estate. Giving the next generation money doesn’t multiply capital, because if they need it in the first place they don’t know how to make it.

That’s President Obama’s stimulus package and it’s also why the money borrowed from our children might as well have been burned…it’s the same tired spending of the last two years, eight years, thirty years, same-o same-o. (more…)

Okay, Dougey, is the rich old man giving to the next generation or borrowing from it? And if you hate spoiled inheritance brats so much, why do you conservatives oppose the inheritance tax? Big Hollywood is making my head explode every day!

The real reason I hate Andrew Breitbart's blog

Oh, hai! You probly know me because you've been threatening me for the last few days! Nice to meet you.

Now, I know you are a reasonable person, and I should love you. Let me explain to you why I hate what Andrew Breitbart does (via Big Hollywood):

Part of this is the ultra-PC mentality of Hollywood, which hates all religion but for Islam because so many Muslims share Hollywood’s hatred for America.

What The Fuck? I know that Andrew was a good, decent person at one time, so why do this? Why allow your name to be attached to this kind of nonsense? Andrew, we all used to listen to Prince together. Things were good. You don't have to do this.

Andrew Breitbart's big, angry "Big Hollywood" blog

Now that conservatives and Republicans are in full cry baby mode (they can't win elections, they can't influence policy, they can't hide their gay relationships...wait), the right is back huddled in the forest, talking to themselves and exploring new angles to answer the obvious question, "what went wrong?"

Enter Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood blog. Full disclosure: I went to high school with Breitbart and he was something of an oddball bully. He hung with a very rich, druggy crowd and always seemed mean-spirited but too high to really project it*. Later, I ran into him in New York in the early 90s and he seemed equally spaced out, but condescending and assholish.

Fast forward to a few years ago when he had become Matt Drudge's intern/bitch. Then he sets out on his own (doubtlessly with some of his rich parents' money) and starts a "news" website, breitbart.com, which seems to subsist on redirected traffic from the Drudge Report, presumably divvied up between him and Drudge. Fairly smart, actually. If all these know-nothing Republicans are going to look to intentionally distorted and misleading websites for their information, why not just make one up that gives them what they want? Why even bother redirecting to CNN or The New York Times, when you can paraphrase the stories with your own conservative slant and take the ad revenue?

Now the American right is in complete meltdown mode and scrambling for answers. Their worst nightmare has come true: average people (including people of color) are energized by politics. The country has shifted dramatically, the left has an enormously popular and charismatic leader in the President, and the Republicans look like a bunch of real-life Batman villains to most people. It's sort of over for them for a while.

But optimism (or whatever the right-wing version of that is) reigns and there are multiple silver bullet theories as to why they are so bad at winning elections lately. One of these is Breitbart's own: Big Hollywood (notice the blatant rip from the left's Big Tobacco label) is full of dumb liberals who influence an unwitting public through their wicked movie making. Never mind that celebrity endorsements in politics seem to have no discernible value and quite frequently hurt the people/causes they are meant to bolster. Never mind that issue films like "Fahrenheit 9/11", "Traffic" and "Syriana" completely failed to sway public opinion or subsequent elections. Ignore all that. It can't possibly be that the Republicans' ideas have utterly failed, damaged peoples' lives and hurt this country, finally leading people to vote differently. No it's just the fearsome influence of actors like Tim Robbins and Ed Begley, Jr. that has blinded the gullible American people.

You know what, Breitbart, you were always a bully, but I never thought you were particularly dumb. Things change, I guess.

* UPDATE: Breitbart has commented on this post and others and repeatedly denied doing any drugs in high school. I take him at his word.