From the Stark interview [emphasis added; full transcript here]:
Hello to anyone that thinks that I was misleading. I did not know that there was a discrepancy between the title sequence -- I didn't think it was significant. I saw the videos. I read the transcripts to make sure that there was continuity, and my only mistake -- and I've admitted it to Brad, I've admitted it, now that I now know about it -- is that there is a title sequence and it doesn't reflect what he was wearing when he was in there. But he still represented himself as a pimp.
In the interview, Breitbart also stressed that because O'Keefe is an "independent film producer," Breitbart couldn't "tell him what to put on these things." And to make his point clear, when Stark pressed further about the hoax, Breitbart responded, "Your problem is with James."
Breitbart may have tried to shift the blame, but the admission was a devastating one. After all, he's the guy who won't stop bragging about how he's going to reinvent online journalism, and how he and his conservative activists are going to shame the liberal media with relentless fact-checking. Yet it turns out that for the biggest story of his career, Breitbart didn't even know what was on the ACORN tapes.
Not only did Breitbart clearly fail Journalism 101 in this case, but the way he's refused to publicly accept responsibility for the blunder represents another body blow to his credibility. To date, Breitbart has made no effort to correct the record on his site, which helped launch the ACORN sting. Which means that, to date, Breitbart's sycophantic readers have not been told that, oh, by the way, that whole dressed-as-a-pimp thing was bogus.
With that in mind, what journalist would take seriously the next undercover video sting Breitbart might sponsor, when we find out that for the all-important ACORN caper he didn't even know what was on the tapes until observers pointed out a glaring discrepancy?
Meanwhile, should we believe Breitbart's pimp spin? Tough to say. It probably represents his only way out of this mess. If Breitbart actually confessed that he knew the pimp costume story was a fake, and that not only did he do nothing to try to stop the misinformation last year but actively helped to spread the hoax, then I think his credibility would be permanently demolished. At that point even mainstream journalists, who tend to turn a blind eye to Breitbart's mendacity, would have to acknowledge he is nothing more than a partisan propagandist.
So, searching for a face-saving move, it appears Breitbart has opted for Plan B: Blame the young "independent film producer" O'Keefe, who brought the videos to Breitbart, complete with the misleading pimp costumes shots already embedded. (Does Breitbart really expect people to believe that he never had a single conversation with O'Keefe about the pimp outfit prior to the release of the videos?)
The problem with Breitbart's alibi (i.e. it's O'Keefe's fault!) is that it means Breitbart has copped to the fact that he didn't know what was on the tapes that he relentlessly hyped and used as a weapon in his oddly unhinged attack on ACORN, an underfunded and somewhat adrift nonprofit that advocates for poor people. (In one disturbed dispatch from a pro-ACORN rally last year, Breitbart attacked the attendees as "common street thugs, the dregs of society.")
His new song and dance (literally -- see the 6:40 mark in the video below) is that none of this matters because it's irrelevant whether O'Keefe was dressed flamboyantly inside the ACORN offices. It's true, as I've stated many times, that the costume question does not negate what was captured on the ACORN videos. But the hoax certainly does matter in terms of the larger ACORN attack and how the press embraced it. Breitbart knows it, and that's why he's been so slow to clear up the confusion. (And it's why he seemed so eager last year to spread the confusion.)
As the blogger Digby recently explained:
But the less than obvious reason this is a big deal is that the pimp and ho costumes were a send-up of over-the-top racial stereotypes that both reinforced some very ugly notions about the African American community, but more importantly, made these ACORN workers look as though they were so dumb they shouldn't be allowed to cross the street, much less handle tax dollars. And this was done for a reason.
The pimp hoax is not some footnote that can just be dismissed. The glaring blunder goes to the heart of Breitbart's credibility as a wannabe journalist. The lie was absolutely central to the rollout of last year's ACORN attack campaign. And now, six months later, Breitbart claims he didn't know the first thing about the hoax because, truth be told, he didn't even know what was on the ACORN tapes.
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