The Buck Stops THERE

October 4th, 2010

Breitbart Calls Out Rogue News Organization Headed by Rival Breitbart

Am I the only one who noticed Andrew Breitbart piloting a bright yellow Greyhound over the remains of ACORN journopimp James O’Keefe?

I don’t even understand this story. It sort of looks like O’Keefe tried to mack on a CNN reporter, and if she came across, he intended to put the video on the Internet. That can’t be right. Can it? I don’t know if it’s good journalism, but it will definitely make it harder for O’Keefe to get dates with intelligent women.

It has the makings of a bad Matthew McConnaghey romance. Boy meets hot girl reporter. Sparks fly. Girl tries to sting boy on air to get ahead with her career. Boy finds out and tries to sting girl back. Boy gets fired. Girl quits job and starts working with retarded children in Vermont. Boy shows up in rented ultralight, towing “MARRY ME” banner in circles around yacht belonging to girl’s new beau.

Wow, that really DOES sound like a bad Matthew McConnaghey romance. Someone should work up a treatment.

You can see why I never go to movies.

Here is one thing I am sure of. The whole affair is an embarrassment. O’Keefe looks like an idiot, and since Breitbart spawned O’Keefe, the blood trail leads to his front door.

Breitbart has issued a statement condemning O’Keefe’s actions. Notably absent from his chaff field: any type of critical comment RE Andrew Breitbart.

I am reminded of a frightened squid taking off while expelling ink.

The weirdest part: Breitbart posted his statement on O’Keefe’s website, which is owned and operated by…Andrew Breitbart.

If you’re going to call for an explanation from someone who works for you, isn’t the normal thing to do it privately and then talk to the press in unison? And if you put a gun in a toddler’s hand, don’t you bear some responsibility when he shoots the nanny? It’s like Breitbart barely knows O’Keefe. Mr. Breitbart, if you want an explanation, walk across the hall. Are you seriously waiting for an employee to find out about your outrage by reading about it on the Internet? His number is programmed into your cell phone. Send him a text. Stand up and look into the next cubicle.

I understand the right’s desperate longing for heroes, but sometimes you have to take the long view and ask yourself how you’re going to feel about your new messiah in five years. Look at Arnold Schwarzenegger. Does anyone still think that was a good idea? Well, sure. Dope dealers who’ve taken their millions and gone legit. But other than them?

When a Republican candidate smokes dope in a movie and defends it during his campaign, you ought to realize he’s not mainstream GOP material. This is not rocket science. Is it? Am I being unfair? Am I a genius because I picked up on Schwarzenegger’s creepiness? I don’t think so. I know most people are slow, but I don’t believe this puzzle required a Ph.D. in applied math. This is a mean, selfish person who cannot identify with traditional American morals. Go back and watch Pumping Iron. See for yourself.

Wow, this is amazing. I just Googled the term “chaff field” and learned it actually exists. Lucky guess on that one.

You can’t generate heroes on command. We tried that with Sarah Palin, and our success was limited. If we had been more patient, we could have had Chris Christie and avoided the whole Bristol/Playgirl thing. It seems to me that the Big This and That.com team is like a half-baked cake. It seems okay when you poke around the outside, but when you get into the middle, runny disappointment awaits.

And Glenn Beck…don’t get me started. Sooner or later the moment of revelation will come, and we’ll all claim we knew he was nuts from the get-go. Maybe he’ll back Donny Osmond for President. I don’t know. The hemorrhoid video should have been adequate notice. A lot of people have said, “My hemorrhoids are killing me,” but Beck is the only one who meant it literally.

There is no reason the right can’t have actual pundits. We have George Will, don’t we? I’m not sure why we had to have Breitman and the Boy Wonder. If O’Keefe really has the stuff, shouldn’t he read a few books and go work as a real journalist before we rest our hopes on him? Am I the only one who remembers Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice?

Someone help me understand what O’Keefe was up to. It sounds like he was trying to slap CNN down by marketing a sex tape featuring himself. I don’t get it at all. Maybe he’s been watching Kim Kardashian.

There are a lot of smart people in the blogosphere who could bypass the normal process and go right into big time journalism. Why Breitbart passed them up and bet on a kid is a mystery. Well, maybe it’s not. You want the people you hire to look good, but not TOO good.

Harry Truman would have loved this.

5 Responses to “The Buck Stops THERE”

  1. Guaman Says:

    Good, you’re blogging on politics. Thoughts go back to the ridicule of Rick Sanchez, so O’Keefe did something not readily understandable here. It was a little bit the same with the Senator from LA that he barely escaped prosecution for a meaningful crime. Breitbart is salvaging some credibility for the both of ’em and I’ll defer judgment to the end. It may not even be worth following there.

    O’Keefe succeeded with the ACORN thing and it was at least in part due to the assistance of Breitbart. No matter what, uncovering those ACORN behaviors and documenting them beyond denial was truly beneficial; it was something towards a responsible government and society.

    It still amazes me how utterly stupid those ACORN workers were to fall for the skinny whitebread passing himself off as a pimp; they must have been devoid of right and wrong, but filled with wanting to help. How could they not see through that phoney role playing? It was a crappy costume even for a suburban Halloween party.

  2. Steve B Says:

    So far he seems to be going with the tried but true,

    What? I was just KIDDING! It was all planned. And that plan? Yeah, we weren’t ever really going to do that. It was just a misunderstanding.

    And the sun was in my eyes. Is that my phone?

  3. Andrea Harris Says:

    I don’t get the O’Keefe thing either. It sounds like he wanted to make the mainstream media look bad by sexually harassing a female reporter. Sounds like a foolproof plan to me. Yeah.

    All I know about rightwing media websites is that they take forever to open on my elderly computers. And I refuse to watch their videos. I watched a video on PJTV just out of curiosity and it was a huge waste of time. It was all Roger Simon and some guy going back and forth about how today’s sitcoms aren’t about middle America like The Honeymooners was. Yeah, what this country needs is more husbands constantly threatening to punch out their wives on tv. And who watches sitcoms these days anyway? I stopped when Barney Miller ended its run.

  4. musical mountaineer Says:

    I’ll double-down on Guaman’s comment. O’Keefe made a bold and brilliant move against ACORN, exposing the fundamental lawlessness of the organization. Breitbart deserves much credit for releasing the videos one-by-one; that fooled a lot of cockroaches into coming out of their holes, and Breitbart squished a few before they got away.
    .
    O’Keefe apparently thought this meant anything he did would always be bold and brilliant, which is usually a mistake. Really, O’Keefe had to be a bit of a psych case to score with that ACORN sting in the first place, even if it was a good deal overall. I haven’t followed this latest business enough to know what’s going on, but my guess is O’Keefe just ran out of good ideas so he decided to try a bad one. Glory is not kind.
    .
    It makes sense that Breitbart would make public the ensuing conversation with his underling. Both these guys are in the business of attracting and directing public attention. They can’t get paid if they have no credibility. O’Keefe is looking pretty un-credible right now. Breitbart wants none of that stink on himself, so he’s using Sunlight: The Best Disinfectant. It’s plain there won’t be some backroom damage-control deal to help rehabilitate O’Keefe. O’Keefe will have to rehabilitate himself, by himself, if he can. The public can directly observe and decide whether he succeeds.

  5. Steve H. Says:

    The problem here is that Breitbart is reflecting the sunlight at O’Keefe so he himself can avoid contact with it.
    .
    A public discussion is completely wrong. No serious business would air this kind of silliness before the public. The proper thing to do is to come to an internal consensus and then go public.
    .
    And it doesn’t make sense to have a public discussion when the discussion is clearly contrived. No one wants to see Breitbart pretend to ask his creature for explanations. It’s like a puppet show.