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General News    H2'ed 3/2/12

Andrew Breitbart and Olympia Snow:An Eerie Synchronicity

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For some like Snowe, the question is, why bother? The prospect of running hard to win another term -- particularly a six-year Senate term -- is less and less attractive for folks who came to Washington to make things happen only to find out there's no common ground to get things done, only partisan point-scoring that leads to paralyzed politics."

Some years ago when I was making the film In Debt We Trust, I spent a long night in Congress waiting to interview Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee who was then speaking on the floor against Republican demands that the United States seal both our Southern and Northern borders with a fence or East Berlin-like high wall to stop illegal immigrants.

She very calmly challenged the idea with facts and figures that seemed very rational and to the point.

But when the vote came, all of the Republicans were looking down at their blackberries where they were being instructed on how to vote by their leadership.

Despite some agreement in the debate with her some of her points, the GOP voted as a block, no deviations! That was before the Tea Party fanatics moved in and frequently rejected the advice of their whips because it was not obstructionist enough.

That was Breibart's world in action. The LA Times praised him for turning media manipulation into an art:

"Breitbart was a revolutionary eager to overthrow a media establishment that he viewed as a front for left-wing social causes. Always brimming with righteous indignation -- before he died, his final tweet offered an explanation for why he'd called an adversary a "putz" -- he had contempt for anything that smacked of liberal do-gooderism or hypocrisy."

In his last known conversation in an LA bar he blamed liberals for forcing the GOP to debate social issues so they could challenge them.   To him like generations of anti communists before him, there was always a liberal (his version of communist) under every bed.

Noted writer Patrick Goldstein, "Breitbart would've been a marginal figure if he had simply been a media gadfly. His genius was rooted in the realization that in the new media universe, being outrageous often gets far more attention than being authoritative. After Ted Kennedy died in 2009, when everyone else was lionizing the great liberal crusader, Breitbart ripped him as a "duplicitous bastard" He also called him a "prick" and "a special pile of "human excrement."

Personally, he went from a liberal family to join a reactionary community. He helped found Huffington Post. Appearances on Bill Maher's shows and Fox News programs helped build his national celebrity even as he co-wrote a book criticizing the celebrity culture that propelled him into national visibility. 

Many on the left lacked his sophistication and skill at being taken seriously, were unprepared to respond to his attacks. Organizations like ACORN, known for grass roots organizing and voter registration, were destroyed by Breitbart's   calculated shock tactics, partly because his undercover gang with video cameras understood its vulnerabilities and played on its naivetà ©. Rather than defending them, many Democrats rushed to distance themselves and in the process defunding an important organizing force.

He was less effective in his campaign against Occupy Wall Street but what he lacked in invective, local police forces more than made up for with spying, surveillance and physical attacks on Occupy.   He was a cheerleader for this repressive response.

He did seem to have some loose screws, according to Wikipedia, " At the Conservative Political Action Conference convention in Washington, D.C., on February 10, 2012, a belligerent Breitbart was captured walking with a glass of wine, screaming a diatribe at protesters, including repeatedly calling them "filthy freaks" and "murderers," demanding that they "stop raping the people." He was restrained by convention hotel security, resisting as they physically pushed him away from the demonstration."

He wanted his enemies to hate him, and, no surprise, many reciprocated in kind.

"Wikipedia also noted, "Breitbart often appeared as a speaker at Tea Party movement events across the U.S. For example, Breitbart was a keynote speaker at the first National Tea Party Convention at Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville on February 6, 2010.

Whats the lesson for the left?  

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News Dissector Danny Schechter is blogger in chief at Mediachannel.Org He is the author of PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books) available at Amazon.com. See Newsdisssector.org/store.htm.
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