Saturday 2 July 2011
Dr. Cynthia Boaz, Truthout
http://www.truth-out.org/14-propaganda-techniques-fox-news-uses-brainwash-americans/1309612678
There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship - the society characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded.
It is ironic that in the era of 24-hour cable news networks and "reality" programming, the news-to-fluff ratio and overall veracity of information has declined precipitously. Take the fact Americans now spend on average about 50 hours a week using various forms of media, while at the same time cultural literacy levels hover just above the gutter. Not only does mainstream media now tolerate gross misrepresentations of fact and history by public figures (highlighted most recently by Sarah Palin's ludicrous depiction of Paul Revere's ride), but many media actually legitimize these displays. Pause for a moment and ask yourself what it means that the world's largest, most profitable and most popular news channel passes off as fact every whim, impulse and outrageously incompetent analysis of its so-called reporters. How did we get here? Take the enormous amount of misinformation that is taken for truth by Fox audiences: the belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and that he was in on 9/11, the belief that climate change isn't real and/or man-made, the belief that Barack Obama is Muslim and wasn't born in the United States, the insistence that all Arabs are Muslim and all Muslims are terrorists, the inexplicable perceptions that immigrants are both too lazy to work and are about to steal your job. All of these claims are demonstrably false, yet Fox News viewers will maintain their veracity with incredible zeal. Why? Is it simply that we have lost our respect for knowledge?
My curiosity about this question compelled me to sit down and document the most oft-used methods by which willful ignorance has been turned into dogma by Fox News and other propagandists disguised as media. The techniques I identify here also help to explain the simultaneously powerful identification the Fox media audience has with the network, as well as their ardent, reflexive defenses of it.
The good news is that the more conscious you are of these techniques, the less likely they are to work on you. The bad news is that those reading this article are probably the least in need in of it.
1. Panic Mongering. This goes one step beyond simple fear mongering. With panic mongering, there is never a break from the fear. The idea is to terrify and terrorize the audience during every waking moment. From Muslims to swine flu to recession to homosexuals to immigrants to the rapture itself, the belief over at Fox seems to be that if your fight-or-flight reflexes aren't activated, you aren't alive. This of course raises the question: why terrorize your own audience? Because it is the fastest way to bypasses the rational brain. In other words, when people are afraid, they don't think rationally. And when they can't think rationally, they'll believe anything.
2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. Fox does not like to waste time debating the idea. Instead, they prefer a quicker route to dispensing with their opponents: go after the person's credibility, motives, intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity. No category of character assassination is off the table and no offense is beneath them. Fox and like-minded media figures also use ad hominem attacks not just against individuals, but entire categories of people in an effort to discredit the ideas of every person who is seen to fall into that category, e.g. "liberals," "hippies," "progressives" etc. This form of argument - if it can be called that - leaves no room for genuine debate over ideas, so by definition, it is undemocratic. Not to mention just plain crass.
3. Projection/Flipping. This one is frustrating for the viewer who is trying to actually follow the argument. It involves taking whatever underhanded tactic you're using and then accusing your opponent of doing it to you first. We see this frequently in the immigration discussion, where anti-racists are accused of racism, or in the climate change debate, where those who argue for human causes of the phenomenon are accused of not having science or facts on their side. It's often called upon when the media host finds themselves on the ropes in the debate.
4. Rewriting History. This is another way of saying that propagandists make the facts fit their worldview. The Downing Street Memos on the Iraq war were a classic example of this on a massive scale, but it happens daily and over smaller issues as well. A recent case in point is Palin's mangling of the Paul Revere ride, which Fox reporters have bent over backward to validate. Why lie about the historical facts, even when they can be demonstrated to be false? Well, because dogmatic minds actually find it easier to reject reality than to update their viewpoints. They will literally rewrite history if it serves their interests. And they'll often speak with such authority that the casual viewer will be tempted to question what they knew as fact.
5. Scapegoating/Othering. This works best when people feel insecure or scared. It's technically a form of both fear mongering and diversion, but it is so pervasive that it deserves its own category. The simple idea is that if you can find a group to blame for social or economic problems, you can then go on to a) justify violence/dehumanization of them, and b) subvert responsibility for any harm that may befall them as a result.
6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. This is more of what I'd call a "meta-frame" (a deeply held belief) than a media technique, but it is manifested in the ways news is reported constantly. For example, terms like "show of strength" are often used to describe acts of repression, such as those by the Iranian regime against the protesters in the summer of 2009. There are several concerning consequences of this form of conflation. First, it has the potential to make people feel falsely emboldened by shows of force - it can turn wars into sporting events. Secondly, especially in the context of American politics, displays of violence - whether manifested in war or debates about the Second Amendment - are seen as noble and (in an especially surreal irony) moral. Violence become synonymous with power, patriotism and piety.
7. Bullying. This is a favorite technique of several Fox commentators. That it continues to be employed demonstrates that it seems to have some efficacy. Bullying and yelling works best on people who come to the conversation with a lack of confidence, either in themselves or their grasp of the subject being discussed. The bully exploits this lack of confidence by berating the guest into submission or compliance. Often, less self-possessed people will feel shame and anxiety when being berated and the quickest way to end the immediate discomfort is to cede authority to the bully. The bully is then able to interpret that as a "win."
8. Confusion. As with the preceding technique, this one works best on an audience that is less confident and self-possessed. The idea is to deliberately confuse the argument, but insist that the logic is airtight and imply that anyone who disagrees is either too dumb or too fanatical to follow along. Less independent minds will interpret the confusion technique as a form of sophisticated thinking, thereby giving the user's claims veracity in the viewer's mind.
9. Populism. This is especially popular in election years. The speakers identifies themselves as one of "the people" and the target of their ire as an enemy of the people. The opponent is always "elitist" or a "bureaucrat" or a "government insider" or some other category that is not the people. The idea is to make the opponent harder to relate to and harder to empathize with. It often goes hand in hand with scapegoating. A common logical fallacy with populism bias when used by the right is that accused "elitists" are almost always liberals - a category of political actors who, by definition, advocate for non-elite groups.
10. Invoking the Christian God. This is similar to othering and populism. With morality politics, the idea is to declare yourself and your allies as patriots, Christians and "real Americans" (those are inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone who challenges them as not. Basically, God loves Fox and Republicans and America. And hates taxes and anyone who doesn't love those other three things. Because the speaker has been benedicted by God to speak on behalf of all Americans, any challenge is perceived as immoral. It's a cheap and easy technique used by all totalitarian entities from states to cults.
11. Saturation. There are three components to effective saturation: being repetitive, being ubiquitous and being consistent. The message must be repeated cover and over, it must be everywhere and it must be shared across commentators: e.g. "Saddam has WMD." Veracity and hard data have no relationship to the efficacy of saturation. There is a psychological effect of being exposed to the same message over and over, regardless of whether it's true or if it even makes sense, e.g., "Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States." If something is said enough times, by enough people, many will come to accept it as truth. Another example is Fox's own slogan of "Fair and Balanced."
12. Disparaging Education. There is an emerging and disturbing lack of reverence for education and intellectualism in many mainstream media discourses. In fact, in some circles (e.g. Fox), higher education is often disparaged as elitist. Having a university credential is perceived by these folks as not a sign of credibility, but of a lack of it. In fact, among some commentators, evidence of intellectual prowess is treated snidely and as anti-American. Education and other evidence of being trained in critical thinking are direct threats to a hive-mind mentality, which is why they are so viscerally demeaned.
13. Guilt by Association. This is a favorite of Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart, both of whom have used it to decimate the careers and lives of many good people. Here's how it works: if your cousin's college roommate's uncle's ex-wife attended a dinner party back in 1984 with Gorbachev's niece's ex-boyfriend's sister, then you, by extension are a communist set on destroying America. Period.
14. Diversion. This is where, when on the ropes, the media commentator suddenly takes the debate in a weird but predictable direction to avoid accountability. This is the point in the discussion where most Fox anchors start comparing the opponent to Saul Alinsky or invoking ACORN or Media Matters, in a desperate attempt to win through guilt by association. Or they'll talk about wanting to focus on "moving forward," as though by analyzing the current state of things or God forbid, how we got to this state of things, you have no regard for the future. Any attempt to bring the discussion back to the issue at hand will likely be called deflection, an ironic use of the technique of projection/flipping.
In debating some of these tactics with colleagues and friends, I have also noticed that the Fox viewership seems to be marked by a sort of collective personality disorder whereby the viewer feels almost as though they've been let into a secret society. Something about their affiliation with the network makes them feel privileged and this affinity is likely what drives the viewers to defend the network so vehemently. They seem to identify with it at a core level, because it tells them they are special and privy to something the rest of us don't have. It's akin to the loyalty one feels by being let into a private club or a gang. That effect is also likely to make the propaganda more powerful, because it goes mostly unquestioned.
In considering these tactics and their possible effects on American public discourse, it is important to note that historically, those who've genuinely accessed truth have never berated those who did not. You don't get honored by history when you beat up your opponent: look at Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln. These men did not find the need to engage in othering, ad homeinum attacks, guilt by association or bullying. This is because when a person has accessed a truth, they are not threatened by the opposing views of others. This reality reveals the righteous indignation of people like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity as a symptom of untruth. These individuals are hostile and angry precisely because they don't feel confident in their own veracity. And in general, the more someone is losing their temper in a debate and the more intolerant they are of listening to others, the more you can be certain they do not know what they're talking about.
One final observation. Fox audiences, birthers and Tea Partiers often defend their arguments by pointing to the fact that a lot of people share the same perceptions. This is a reasonable point to the extent that Murdoch's News Corporation reaches a far larger audience than any other single media outlet. But, the fact that a lot of people believe something is not necessarily a sign that it's true; it's just a sign that it's been effectively marketed.
As honest, fair and truly intellectual debate degrades before the eyes of the global media audience, the quality of American democracy degrades along with it.
Showing posts with label Andrew Breitbart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andrew Breitbart. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Friday, October 15, 2010
Inside the Sherrod spin job
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/10/07/shirley_sherrod_emails/index.html
Friday, Oct 8, 2010
Inside the Sherrod spin job
Internal emails show Obama officials' vain attempts to do damage control in the Shirley Sherrod case
Justin Elliott
Internal emails show the panicked thought process of top Department of Agriculture officials who hastily pressured Shirley Sherrod to resign in July after a misleadingly edited video was released by Andrew Breitbart that purported to show her admitting to racism. Sherrod was quickly vindicated -- and the Obama Administration apologized -- when the full video was released and showed her arguing against racism.
Obtained by Salon via the Freedom of Information Act, the internal emails and other documents fill out a picture of USDA officials scrambling to first get rid of Sherrod, and then, once they realized their error, to do damage control. Throughout there is an overwhelming concern with managing the media stories on the flap.
The Los Angeles Times, which also obtained the documents, has a good timeline here. Here are some tidbits from the emails and other documents, which we've posted in full below and which total nearly 400 pages. The page numbers in parantheses refer to the source of the quote, and the document from which it came:
•In her resignation letter, Sherrod wrote: "I feel so disappointed that the Secretary and President let a misrepresentation of my words on the part of the Tea Party be the reason to ask me to resign. ... I submit my resignation but in doing so want to put the administration on notice that I will get the whole story out. My whole life speaks for my conmitment to Fairness whether white or black." (pg. 15, Vilsack)
•In an internal timeline of events produced by the USDA, it's reported that Deputy Ag Secretary Kathleen Merrigan on Tuesday at 2 p.m. "expressed concern that Sherrod was attacking the Administration on TV and that our jobs as political appointees is to protect the President." (pg. 1, Merrigan)
•On that Monday, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was "absolutely sick and mad over the S Sherrod issue," acccording to Krysta Harden, assistant secretary of agriculture. "He wants her immediately on Adm leave." (pg. 49, Cook)
•USDA officials thought it important to reach out to black members of Congress to help on damage control. John Berge, deputy assistant secretary for congressional relations, wrote Vilsack's chief of staff on Tuesday, July 20: "Can S[ecretary] call Clyburn today? It'll be a while, but we may need him to. We need his help with CBC outreach." The CBC is the Congressional Black Caucus. (pg. 133, Jett)
•Denise Wilson, special assistant to the president in the office of legislative affairs, wrote to a few USDA officials on Wednesday, July 21, about the fear that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who has been a thorn in the White House's side, would seize on the story and "play the race card" (pg. 53, Ross):
"Just had a conversation with Ron Stroman of the Oversight committee. [Rep. Ed] Towns is very worried that USDA took action against Ms Sherrod w/o learning the facts which resulted in her being directed to resign. He has directed his staff to prepare a letter to Vilsak along this line. Ron said that Ranking Member Issa is expected to play into the media accounts that the WH was behind the move to take action against a black woman--and that Issa will play the race card against USDA and the NH -h1gh1ighting the Fact that we took action before the Facts were in. According to Ron, [who is in touch with her) Ms Sherrod does not appear to plan on coming back to USDA because she feels so unfairly treated."
•The USDA press shop apparently reads Wonkette, with Chris Mather, public affairs director, taking note of the site picking up a statement they sent out on Sherrod on Monday, July 19 (pg. 9, Vilsack).
And here are the documents as released by the USDA. They are mostly emails and are labeled by the name of the official involved (usually either the sender or recipient of the email). Tom Vilsack, secretary of agriculture, here. Kathleen Merrigan, deputy secretary of agriculture, here. Cheryl Cook, deputy under secretary (and the woman who called Sherrod and asked her to resign), here. Karen Ross, chief of staff to Vilsack, here. Dallas Tonsager, under secretary for rural development, here. Carole Jett, deputy chief of staff, here and here.
Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin
Friday, Oct 8, 2010
Inside the Sherrod spin job
Internal emails show Obama officials' vain attempts to do damage control in the Shirley Sherrod case
Justin Elliott
Internal emails show the panicked thought process of top Department of Agriculture officials who hastily pressured Shirley Sherrod to resign in July after a misleadingly edited video was released by Andrew Breitbart that purported to show her admitting to racism. Sherrod was quickly vindicated -- and the Obama Administration apologized -- when the full video was released and showed her arguing against racism.
Obtained by Salon via the Freedom of Information Act, the internal emails and other documents fill out a picture of USDA officials scrambling to first get rid of Sherrod, and then, once they realized their error, to do damage control. Throughout there is an overwhelming concern with managing the media stories on the flap.
The Los Angeles Times, which also obtained the documents, has a good timeline here. Here are some tidbits from the emails and other documents, which we've posted in full below and which total nearly 400 pages. The page numbers in parantheses refer to the source of the quote, and the document from which it came:
•In her resignation letter, Sherrod wrote: "I feel so disappointed that the Secretary and President let a misrepresentation of my words on the part of the Tea Party be the reason to ask me to resign. ... I submit my resignation but in doing so want to put the administration on notice that I will get the whole story out. My whole life speaks for my conmitment to Fairness whether white or black." (pg. 15, Vilsack)
•In an internal timeline of events produced by the USDA, it's reported that Deputy Ag Secretary Kathleen Merrigan on Tuesday at 2 p.m. "expressed concern that Sherrod was attacking the Administration on TV and that our jobs as political appointees is to protect the President." (pg. 1, Merrigan)
•On that Monday, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was "absolutely sick and mad over the S Sherrod issue," acccording to Krysta Harden, assistant secretary of agriculture. "He wants her immediately on Adm leave." (pg. 49, Cook)
•USDA officials thought it important to reach out to black members of Congress to help on damage control. John Berge, deputy assistant secretary for congressional relations, wrote Vilsack's chief of staff on Tuesday, July 20: "Can S[ecretary] call Clyburn today? It'll be a while, but we may need him to. We need his help with CBC outreach." The CBC is the Congressional Black Caucus. (pg. 133, Jett)
•Denise Wilson, special assistant to the president in the office of legislative affairs, wrote to a few USDA officials on Wednesday, July 21, about the fear that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who has been a thorn in the White House's side, would seize on the story and "play the race card" (pg. 53, Ross):
"Just had a conversation with Ron Stroman of the Oversight committee. [Rep. Ed] Towns is very worried that USDA took action against Ms Sherrod w/o learning the facts which resulted in her being directed to resign. He has directed his staff to prepare a letter to Vilsak along this line. Ron said that Ranking Member Issa is expected to play into the media accounts that the WH was behind the move to take action against a black woman--and that Issa will play the race card against USDA and the NH -h1gh1ighting the Fact that we took action before the Facts were in. According to Ron, [who is in touch with her) Ms Sherrod does not appear to plan on coming back to USDA because she feels so unfairly treated."
•The USDA press shop apparently reads Wonkette, with Chris Mather, public affairs director, taking note of the site picking up a statement they sent out on Sherrod on Monday, July 19 (pg. 9, Vilsack).
And here are the documents as released by the USDA. They are mostly emails and are labeled by the name of the official involved (usually either the sender or recipient of the email). Tom Vilsack, secretary of agriculture, here. Kathleen Merrigan, deputy secretary of agriculture, here. Cheryl Cook, deputy under secretary (and the woman who called Sherrod and asked her to resign), here. Karen Ross, chief of staff to Vilsack, here. Dallas Tonsager, under secretary for rural development, here. Carole Jett, deputy chief of staff, here and here.
Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin
Thursday, August 5, 2010
The Sherrod affair and American social reality
http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/sher-j27.shtml
The Sherrod affair and American social reality
By David Walsh
27 July 2010
The Shirley Sherrod affair, the case of the black US Department of Agriculture (USDA) official fired July 20 because of an allegedly racist remark, is profoundly discrediting to every wing of the American establishment.
What happened last week is indisputable: the extreme right media organized a provocation and a spineless White House fell for it hook, line and sinker.
The attempt by sections of the liberal media to turn this now into a new chapter of “the national discourse on race” or an additional “teachable moment”—phrases that should be put out of commission forthwith—is simply a hypocritical diversion.
On July 19, Andrew Breitbart, an ultra-right commentator, posted a deliberately misleading excerpt from a speech Sherrod delivered this past March. She appeared to be explaining how, 24 years earlier, while working at a non-profit organization, she had not exerted herself on behalf of a white farmer because of her own racial preconceptions. Sherrod’s father was murdered by a white man in 1965 and his killer was never punished, despite the testimony of witnesses, because of endemic racism in rural Georgia.
Breitbart’s posting, and the threat that other right-wing media outlets, especially Fox News, would take up Sherrod’s remarks, threw the Obama administration into a panic. An official from the USDA harassed Sherrod as she was driving back to her office with several phone calls, finally insisting that she pull over to the side of the road and send in her resignation on the spot, “because you’re going to be on Glenn Beck tonight.”
Beck hosts a right-wing program on Fox, where he regales his audience nightly with his unhinged, anti-communist conspiracy theories.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, former Democratic Party governor of Iowa and a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, immediately accepted Sherrod’s resignation, denouncing her remarks and citing a “zero tolerance” policy against discrimination. The NAACP chimed in, adding its own excoriation of Sherrod, rushing a press release out late at night.
A reading of the full transcript of Sherrod’s remarks March 27, along with the well-publicized comments of the white farm family involved in the incident two-and-a-half decades ago, makes clear the absurdity of the accusations. Sherrod used the occasion of the speech to advance her view that racism was deliberately fomented by the American elite to divide blacks and whites, and to explain how she had devoted her life to helping poor people of every color.
Everyone had egg on his or her face. The Department of Agriculture apologized and offered Sherrod a new job. Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, acknowledged July 21 that “everybody involved made determinations without knowing all the facts and all the events.” The following day, President Barack Obama telephoned Sherrod.
What do these facts demonstrate?
The Obama administration and its hangers-on rushed to judgment on the basis of a two-minute video clip posted by a thoroughly disreputable source.
Breitbart functions in the foul world of ultra-right blogs and web sites. This is a disoriented and deranged petty-bourgeois layer, which identifies any criticism of American free-market capitalism with Bolshevism. They will say and do anything, no matter how unprincipled or violent, to achieve their ends.
Fox News, owned and operated by billionaire Rupert Murdoch, is a source of never-ending political provocation. Lying and distortion is a way of life for its stable of slick reactionaries, engaged primarily in whipping up the basest and most backward sentiments. Racism and anti-Semitism simmer just beneath the surface.
Breitbart, his attempted set-up of Shirley Sherrod exposed as a fraud, was entirely unapologetic. These bullying, neo-fascistic elements are not held back by any of the internal constraints that once operated within the American political system and the mainstream media. They have been set in motion by the immense social and economic crisis, and nurtured within an official environment in the US over the past several decades pervaded by ideological reaction.
This extreme-right element represents the views of a small portion of the American population, yet it dominates at Fox News, major newspapers and has important representatives at virtually every media outlet.
The Obama administration closely monitors the right-wing web sites and cable television programs and reacts more sensitively to their thrusts than to any other single source of political criticism. The watchword of this administration is that it will not be outflanked on the right. Meanwhile, it is impervious to mounting popular economic distress and opposition to the Wall Street pay bonanza, government inaction over the Gulf oil disaster, and the war in Afghanistan.
In effect, the right-wing media, bankrolled by Murdoch and others, largely sets the agenda for the Obama White House. Their programs may not formally coincide, but they may as well. The initiative remains, for reasons bound up with the decline of American capitalism and the collapse of liberalism, with these aggressive reactionary types.
In this incident, as in every other one, the pundits reveal their own bewilderment. Maureen Dowd in the New York Times makes the point that “Obama lacks advisers who are descended from the central African-American experience,” and proceeds to cite the comments of a series of black Democratic Party politicians as privileged and as distant from American social reality as she is.
The Times’ Frank Rich argues, “This country was rightly elated when it elected its first African-American president more than 20 months ago. That high was destined to abate, but we reached a new low last week. What does it say about America now, and where it is heading, that a racial provocateur, wielding a deceptively edited video, could not only smear an innocent woman but make every national institution that touched the story look bad? The White House, the NAACP and the news media were all soiled by this episode.”
Well, what does it say?
Speaking of Vilsack, Rich comments, “an executive so easily bullied by Fox News has no more business running a government department than Ken Salazar, the secretary of interior who let oil companies run wild on deepwater drilling until disaster struck. That the White House sat back while Vilsack capitulated to a mob is a disgraceful commentary on both its guts and competence.”
Relatively strong words, but Rich draws no conclusions except that “While America’s progress on race has been epic since the days when Sherrod’s father could be murdered with impunity, we have been going backward since Election Day 2008.”
Implicitly at least, Rich identifies the fake populist demagogues on the right with popular opinion. What evidence can he muster to make such an assertion?
The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. insists that “The mainstream media and the Obama administration must stop cowering before a right wing that has persistently forced its propaganda to be accepted as news by convincing traditional journalists that ‘fairness’ requires treating extremist rants as ‘one side of the story.’”
But why do they cower?
None of the liberal columnists can answer that question, because it goes to the heart of America’s social reality. In the end, the human trash on Fox and the right-wing blogs are merely the most naked and brutal face of a crisis-ridden, predatory and essentially criminal American capitalism. The Obama administration and the Democrats serve the same social interests, but in an unconvincingly and half-heartedly liberal guise.
There is a division of labor. Fox News and company proceed to stir up whatever filth they can, while the White House and the pundits assert piously that the country must rise above its alleged preoccupation with race.
But the real story here says something very different. It speaks to the fact that there are two Americas, divided sharply along class lines. The political and media establishment could so seriously misread the Sherrod case in part because it is insulated by a hundred layers of wealth and privilege from the reality of the working class and the poor, and the sentiments of millions of working people about American life, even if they are not yet fully articulated.
Sherrod, married to a prominent figure in the civil rights movement, explained in March that working with Roger Spooner, the white farmer, “made me see that it’s really about those who have versus those who don’t, you know. And they could be black; they could be white; they could be Hispanic.”
She further attributed racism to the desire of “the people with money, the elite” to divide whites and blacks. “There is no difference between us. The only difference is that the folks with money want to stay in power,” she said.
Sherrod spoke about the experience of black and white indentured servants in colonial America, apparently referring to events in Maryland and Virginia in the late 1600s. She noted that the indentured servants “didn’t see any difference in each other. Nobody worried about skin color. They married each other, you know. These were poor whites and poor blacks in the same boat, except they were slaves. But they were both slaves and both had their opportunity to work out on the slavery.”
Then, she commented, the black and white servants began to organize and protest against their conditions. “Well, the people with money, the elite, decided, ‘Hey, we need to do something here to divide them.’… That’s when they put laws in place forbidding them to marry each other. That’s when they created the racism that we know of today. They did it to keep us divided.”
The history lesson is over-simplified, but it contains an element of profound truth. Racism is deliberately incited in America for the purpose of dividing the working class and tying each race or ethnicity helplessly to “its” fraction of the ruling elite. Of course, the lesson remains hollow unless it is translated into political action—the independent mobilization of the working class breaking free from both big business parties. This is something carefully censored and banned in public discourse.
The Sherrod affair and American social reality
By David Walsh
27 July 2010
The Shirley Sherrod affair, the case of the black US Department of Agriculture (USDA) official fired July 20 because of an allegedly racist remark, is profoundly discrediting to every wing of the American establishment.
What happened last week is indisputable: the extreme right media organized a provocation and a spineless White House fell for it hook, line and sinker.
The attempt by sections of the liberal media to turn this now into a new chapter of “the national discourse on race” or an additional “teachable moment”—phrases that should be put out of commission forthwith—is simply a hypocritical diversion.
On July 19, Andrew Breitbart, an ultra-right commentator, posted a deliberately misleading excerpt from a speech Sherrod delivered this past March. She appeared to be explaining how, 24 years earlier, while working at a non-profit organization, she had not exerted herself on behalf of a white farmer because of her own racial preconceptions. Sherrod’s father was murdered by a white man in 1965 and his killer was never punished, despite the testimony of witnesses, because of endemic racism in rural Georgia.
Breitbart’s posting, and the threat that other right-wing media outlets, especially Fox News, would take up Sherrod’s remarks, threw the Obama administration into a panic. An official from the USDA harassed Sherrod as she was driving back to her office with several phone calls, finally insisting that she pull over to the side of the road and send in her resignation on the spot, “because you’re going to be on Glenn Beck tonight.”
Beck hosts a right-wing program on Fox, where he regales his audience nightly with his unhinged, anti-communist conspiracy theories.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, former Democratic Party governor of Iowa and a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, immediately accepted Sherrod’s resignation, denouncing her remarks and citing a “zero tolerance” policy against discrimination. The NAACP chimed in, adding its own excoriation of Sherrod, rushing a press release out late at night.
A reading of the full transcript of Sherrod’s remarks March 27, along with the well-publicized comments of the white farm family involved in the incident two-and-a-half decades ago, makes clear the absurdity of the accusations. Sherrod used the occasion of the speech to advance her view that racism was deliberately fomented by the American elite to divide blacks and whites, and to explain how she had devoted her life to helping poor people of every color.
Everyone had egg on his or her face. The Department of Agriculture apologized and offered Sherrod a new job. Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, acknowledged July 21 that “everybody involved made determinations without knowing all the facts and all the events.” The following day, President Barack Obama telephoned Sherrod.
What do these facts demonstrate?
The Obama administration and its hangers-on rushed to judgment on the basis of a two-minute video clip posted by a thoroughly disreputable source.
Breitbart functions in the foul world of ultra-right blogs and web sites. This is a disoriented and deranged petty-bourgeois layer, which identifies any criticism of American free-market capitalism with Bolshevism. They will say and do anything, no matter how unprincipled or violent, to achieve their ends.
Fox News, owned and operated by billionaire Rupert Murdoch, is a source of never-ending political provocation. Lying and distortion is a way of life for its stable of slick reactionaries, engaged primarily in whipping up the basest and most backward sentiments. Racism and anti-Semitism simmer just beneath the surface.
Breitbart, his attempted set-up of Shirley Sherrod exposed as a fraud, was entirely unapologetic. These bullying, neo-fascistic elements are not held back by any of the internal constraints that once operated within the American political system and the mainstream media. They have been set in motion by the immense social and economic crisis, and nurtured within an official environment in the US over the past several decades pervaded by ideological reaction.
This extreme-right element represents the views of a small portion of the American population, yet it dominates at Fox News, major newspapers and has important representatives at virtually every media outlet.
The Obama administration closely monitors the right-wing web sites and cable television programs and reacts more sensitively to their thrusts than to any other single source of political criticism. The watchword of this administration is that it will not be outflanked on the right. Meanwhile, it is impervious to mounting popular economic distress and opposition to the Wall Street pay bonanza, government inaction over the Gulf oil disaster, and the war in Afghanistan.
In effect, the right-wing media, bankrolled by Murdoch and others, largely sets the agenda for the Obama White House. Their programs may not formally coincide, but they may as well. The initiative remains, for reasons bound up with the decline of American capitalism and the collapse of liberalism, with these aggressive reactionary types.
In this incident, as in every other one, the pundits reveal their own bewilderment. Maureen Dowd in the New York Times makes the point that “Obama lacks advisers who are descended from the central African-American experience,” and proceeds to cite the comments of a series of black Democratic Party politicians as privileged and as distant from American social reality as she is.
The Times’ Frank Rich argues, “This country was rightly elated when it elected its first African-American president more than 20 months ago. That high was destined to abate, but we reached a new low last week. What does it say about America now, and where it is heading, that a racial provocateur, wielding a deceptively edited video, could not only smear an innocent woman but make every national institution that touched the story look bad? The White House, the NAACP and the news media were all soiled by this episode.”
Well, what does it say?
Speaking of Vilsack, Rich comments, “an executive so easily bullied by Fox News has no more business running a government department than Ken Salazar, the secretary of interior who let oil companies run wild on deepwater drilling until disaster struck. That the White House sat back while Vilsack capitulated to a mob is a disgraceful commentary on both its guts and competence.”
Relatively strong words, but Rich draws no conclusions except that “While America’s progress on race has been epic since the days when Sherrod’s father could be murdered with impunity, we have been going backward since Election Day 2008.”
Implicitly at least, Rich identifies the fake populist demagogues on the right with popular opinion. What evidence can he muster to make such an assertion?
The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. insists that “The mainstream media and the Obama administration must stop cowering before a right wing that has persistently forced its propaganda to be accepted as news by convincing traditional journalists that ‘fairness’ requires treating extremist rants as ‘one side of the story.’”
But why do they cower?
None of the liberal columnists can answer that question, because it goes to the heart of America’s social reality. In the end, the human trash on Fox and the right-wing blogs are merely the most naked and brutal face of a crisis-ridden, predatory and essentially criminal American capitalism. The Obama administration and the Democrats serve the same social interests, but in an unconvincingly and half-heartedly liberal guise.
There is a division of labor. Fox News and company proceed to stir up whatever filth they can, while the White House and the pundits assert piously that the country must rise above its alleged preoccupation with race.
But the real story here says something very different. It speaks to the fact that there are two Americas, divided sharply along class lines. The political and media establishment could so seriously misread the Sherrod case in part because it is insulated by a hundred layers of wealth and privilege from the reality of the working class and the poor, and the sentiments of millions of working people about American life, even if they are not yet fully articulated.
Sherrod, married to a prominent figure in the civil rights movement, explained in March that working with Roger Spooner, the white farmer, “made me see that it’s really about those who have versus those who don’t, you know. And they could be black; they could be white; they could be Hispanic.”
She further attributed racism to the desire of “the people with money, the elite” to divide whites and blacks. “There is no difference between us. The only difference is that the folks with money want to stay in power,” she said.
Sherrod spoke about the experience of black and white indentured servants in colonial America, apparently referring to events in Maryland and Virginia in the late 1600s. She noted that the indentured servants “didn’t see any difference in each other. Nobody worried about skin color. They married each other, you know. These were poor whites and poor blacks in the same boat, except they were slaves. But they were both slaves and both had their opportunity to work out on the slavery.”
Then, she commented, the black and white servants began to organize and protest against their conditions. “Well, the people with money, the elite, decided, ‘Hey, we need to do something here to divide them.’… That’s when they put laws in place forbidding them to marry each other. That’s when they created the racism that we know of today. They did it to keep us divided.”
The history lesson is over-simplified, but it contains an element of profound truth. Racism is deliberately incited in America for the purpose of dividing the working class and tying each race or ethnicity helplessly to “its” fraction of the ruling elite. Of course, the lesson remains hollow unless it is translated into political action—the independent mobilization of the working class breaking free from both big business parties. This is something carefully censored and banned in public discourse.
Anderson Cooper Gives Breitbart Cover
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/anderson-cooper-gives-breitbart-cover-paint
Media Criticism
Anderson Cooper Gives Breitbart Cover by Painting the Left With the Right's Insane Brush
By karoli
Friday Jul 23, 2010
Anderson Cooper needs to stick to oil spills and hurricanes because when it comes to political commentary he's as lame as the Fox journalists. There's only one story to be told when it comes to the Shirley Sherrod fiasco: Andrew Breitbart lied. That's all. Andrew. Breitbart. lied.
But this is what journalism is today. There is no one with enough of a moral compass to just come out and say that in the media. This is why, by the way, Robert Gibbs and the Obama Administration won't say it either. I'll get to that toward the end of this post, but first let's have a look at Anderson Cooper's Invented America.
COOPER: But we begin with a political storm that nearly destroyed Shirley Sherrod. President Obama spoke with her on the phone today. And we will speak to her in a moment about that conversation.
But first the blogger who slammed Shirley Sherrod, we're "Keeping Them Honest." He is the only actor in this dismal drama that has not apologized to Ms. Sherrod. And, in fact, he says he is the victim and that the Obama administration and mainstream media are out to destroy him.
He told Politico today -- quote -- "I am public enemy number one or two to the Democratic Party, the progressive movement and the Obama administration based upon the successes my journalism has had."
Now, calling what Mr. Breitbart does journalism is hard for those of us who actually check and try to be fair. I'm certainly not perfect, and have made mistakes, and have apologized for them. But journalism shouldn't be about left and right. It should be about the truth.
Up to this point, I'm right there with him. Yes, journalism shouldn't be about left and right. It should be about truth. And facts. And full telling of the truth and facts. If Anderson Cooper had stopped here, I'd be applauding. Andrew Breitbart wouldn't know the truth if it reared up and breathed hot fire in his face.
But this is not what journalists do. We don't live in an age where they actually call it what it is and move on to the next story. No, instead they have to create that false "balance", or equivalence that just doesn't exist.
The single reason that Robert Gibbs and other Obama administration officials, including the President himself, will not call out Fox News and Breitbart is because of stupid assertions like the ones Cooper is about to make. If Gibbs had pointed out that the entire story was the product of a lie manufactured by Andrew Breitbart for attention and giggles, the narrative would have shifted to "Mean President Obama Whines and Picks on Andrew Breitbart".
The administration would have been painted as "petty", "blaming", "ducking the issue". It would have just obfuscated the truth of the matter, which is simple, and which I will repeat a few more times: Andrew Breitbart lied.
What Mr. Breitbart does and what others on the left and the right do may very well be what journalism has become, but it isn't certainly not what it should be. Mr. Breitbart also Politico -- quote -- "The desire here is to make it about me and not the Democratic establishment and the NAACP vs. the Tea Party."
That's been Mr. Breitbart's excuse since it was revealed that his video was not what he said it was. He claims this was never about Shirley Sherrod. In fact, he said to Sean Hannity -- quote -- "I could care less about Shirley Sherrod, to be honest with you."
That is the one thing he has said that is indisputable. He does not care about Shirley Sherrod, doesn't care about making false allegations against her or ruining her career. Andrew Breitbart has his ideology. He believes he is right. And in his mind that justifies any action he takes.
I'm still good with it through this point, even. Cooper has clearly named the villain in the plot and called it non-journalism, which it is. He could have even said Andrew Breitbart just lied, but we all know that would be too good to be true. His next segment is where he falls off the edge of the planet into Outer Journo space:
And that's how ideologues think on the left and on the right. Post a video clip that's misleading? No problem if it helps you make your argument, if it helps boost visitors to your Web site. Make false claims about a person? Why not, if it gets you more Web traffic?
That is where we are today. Andrew Breitbart is conservative. But, as I said, there are liberals online and on TV who do the exact same things. They cherry-pick the facts that prove their arguments, not the facts that reveal the truth.
Oh, really? If you know of any liberal blogger who has intentionally edited a video clip to mislead and cause entire organizations serving poor folks to crumble, post a comment with a link, please. Anderson Cooper's equivalence sounds oh, so lofty until you sit down and ask yourself where exactly are these misleading video clips posted from the left that destroy people?
Where are they? Where is the left saying that an entire organization on the right loaded up voter registrations with bogus Republicans? I've only seen proven allegations with a criminal record to back them up.
Where ARE those lefty videos? Please, show them to me.
Of course, you can't. Because there are none. Huffington Post, which is probably the closest thing to Breitbart's sites, has nothing like that video. This site doesn't. Daily Kos? FireDogLake? I don't see any there. So please, tell me where are these videos?
Of course, Anderson doesn't stop with that. He invokes one of the 'reasonable right' (and I use the term guardedly) to back his assertions.
David Frum, a conservative, said on this program last night the problem is not liberalism or conservatism. It's factionalism, seeing the world through your own limited political lens and never admitting when you have made a mistake, never admitting the other side may be right some of the time, never doing anything that damages your faction.
Funny, I've been known to hammer on those to the left of me about hammering on our own, because they are all too willing sometimes to flog OUR side at the expense of the bigger picture, in my opinion. Whether I hammer or not, there's always someone in the liberal blogosphere willing to take OUR side to task without regard to what the rotten Right might be up to. So again, I'd really like to see the evidence of that. Show us. Quit saying it and show me the goods.
It's a game for people like Mr. Breitbart and others. They don't go out into the field and meet the people they're supposedly reporting on. They don't go out and challenge their assumptions. They stay behind a desk and see the world as black or white, left or right. And it's a lot more complex than that.
Actually, Anderson, here's a news flash for you. I've met Andrew Breitbart and he doesn't sit behind a desk all day. He sits in a bottle a lot, though. Why not call him what he is? A bully, an idealogue, a liar and a likely lush.
This isn't a question of "both sides do it." What Breitbart did, by his own admission, was use a government employee as a weapon to stir racial tension. The fact that it worked at first is another issue entirely. He lied to get a reaction. Andrew Breitbart lied. Repeat after me: Andrew Breitbart lied.
Where I come from, that's dishonest antagonism. Not journalism.
Media Criticism
Anderson Cooper Gives Breitbart Cover by Painting the Left With the Right's Insane Brush
By karoli
Friday Jul 23, 2010
Anderson Cooper needs to stick to oil spills and hurricanes because when it comes to political commentary he's as lame as the Fox journalists. There's only one story to be told when it comes to the Shirley Sherrod fiasco: Andrew Breitbart lied. That's all. Andrew. Breitbart. lied.
But this is what journalism is today. There is no one with enough of a moral compass to just come out and say that in the media. This is why, by the way, Robert Gibbs and the Obama Administration won't say it either. I'll get to that toward the end of this post, but first let's have a look at Anderson Cooper's Invented America.
COOPER: But we begin with a political storm that nearly destroyed Shirley Sherrod. President Obama spoke with her on the phone today. And we will speak to her in a moment about that conversation.
But first the blogger who slammed Shirley Sherrod, we're "Keeping Them Honest." He is the only actor in this dismal drama that has not apologized to Ms. Sherrod. And, in fact, he says he is the victim and that the Obama administration and mainstream media are out to destroy him.
He told Politico today -- quote -- "I am public enemy number one or two to the Democratic Party, the progressive movement and the Obama administration based upon the successes my journalism has had."
Now, calling what Mr. Breitbart does journalism is hard for those of us who actually check and try to be fair. I'm certainly not perfect, and have made mistakes, and have apologized for them. But journalism shouldn't be about left and right. It should be about the truth.
Up to this point, I'm right there with him. Yes, journalism shouldn't be about left and right. It should be about truth. And facts. And full telling of the truth and facts. If Anderson Cooper had stopped here, I'd be applauding. Andrew Breitbart wouldn't know the truth if it reared up and breathed hot fire in his face.
But this is not what journalists do. We don't live in an age where they actually call it what it is and move on to the next story. No, instead they have to create that false "balance", or equivalence that just doesn't exist.
The single reason that Robert Gibbs and other Obama administration officials, including the President himself, will not call out Fox News and Breitbart is because of stupid assertions like the ones Cooper is about to make. If Gibbs had pointed out that the entire story was the product of a lie manufactured by Andrew Breitbart for attention and giggles, the narrative would have shifted to "Mean President Obama Whines and Picks on Andrew Breitbart".
The administration would have been painted as "petty", "blaming", "ducking the issue". It would have just obfuscated the truth of the matter, which is simple, and which I will repeat a few more times: Andrew Breitbart lied.
What Mr. Breitbart does and what others on the left and the right do may very well be what journalism has become, but it isn't certainly not what it should be. Mr. Breitbart also Politico -- quote -- "The desire here is to make it about me and not the Democratic establishment and the NAACP vs. the Tea Party."
That's been Mr. Breitbart's excuse since it was revealed that his video was not what he said it was. He claims this was never about Shirley Sherrod. In fact, he said to Sean Hannity -- quote -- "I could care less about Shirley Sherrod, to be honest with you."
That is the one thing he has said that is indisputable. He does not care about Shirley Sherrod, doesn't care about making false allegations against her or ruining her career. Andrew Breitbart has his ideology. He believes he is right. And in his mind that justifies any action he takes.
I'm still good with it through this point, even. Cooper has clearly named the villain in the plot and called it non-journalism, which it is. He could have even said Andrew Breitbart just lied, but we all know that would be too good to be true. His next segment is where he falls off the edge of the planet into Outer Journo space:
And that's how ideologues think on the left and on the right. Post a video clip that's misleading? No problem if it helps you make your argument, if it helps boost visitors to your Web site. Make false claims about a person? Why not, if it gets you more Web traffic?
That is where we are today. Andrew Breitbart is conservative. But, as I said, there are liberals online and on TV who do the exact same things. They cherry-pick the facts that prove their arguments, not the facts that reveal the truth.
Oh, really? If you know of any liberal blogger who has intentionally edited a video clip to mislead and cause entire organizations serving poor folks to crumble, post a comment with a link, please. Anderson Cooper's equivalence sounds oh, so lofty until you sit down and ask yourself where exactly are these misleading video clips posted from the left that destroy people?
Where are they? Where is the left saying that an entire organization on the right loaded up voter registrations with bogus Republicans? I've only seen proven allegations with a criminal record to back them up.
Where ARE those lefty videos? Please, show them to me.
Of course, you can't. Because there are none. Huffington Post, which is probably the closest thing to Breitbart's sites, has nothing like that video. This site doesn't. Daily Kos? FireDogLake? I don't see any there. So please, tell me where are these videos?
Of course, Anderson doesn't stop with that. He invokes one of the 'reasonable right' (and I use the term guardedly) to back his assertions.
David Frum, a conservative, said on this program last night the problem is not liberalism or conservatism. It's factionalism, seeing the world through your own limited political lens and never admitting when you have made a mistake, never admitting the other side may be right some of the time, never doing anything that damages your faction.
Funny, I've been known to hammer on those to the left of me about hammering on our own, because they are all too willing sometimes to flog OUR side at the expense of the bigger picture, in my opinion. Whether I hammer or not, there's always someone in the liberal blogosphere willing to take OUR side to task without regard to what the rotten Right might be up to. So again, I'd really like to see the evidence of that. Show us. Quit saying it and show me the goods.
It's a game for people like Mr. Breitbart and others. They don't go out into the field and meet the people they're supposedly reporting on. They don't go out and challenge their assumptions. They stay behind a desk and see the world as black or white, left or right. And it's a lot more complex than that.
Actually, Anderson, here's a news flash for you. I've met Andrew Breitbart and he doesn't sit behind a desk all day. He sits in a bottle a lot, though. Why not call him what he is? A bully, an idealogue, a liar and a likely lush.
This isn't a question of "both sides do it." What Breitbart did, by his own admission, was use a government employee as a weapon to stir racial tension. The fact that it worked at first is another issue entirely. He lied to get a reaction. Andrew Breitbart lied. Repeat after me: Andrew Breitbart lied.
Where I come from, that's dishonest antagonism. Not journalism.
Friday, July 30, 2010
The heroism of Shirley Sherrod
Wednesday, Jul 21, 2010
The heroism of Shirley Sherrod
Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
Everyone is presumably aware by now of the facts surrounding the disgusting fraud perpetrated on Shirley Sherrod, engineered by Andrew Breitbart, amplified by Fox News, and meekly submitted to by the Obama administration. Those who aren't can read excellent commentary from Jamelle Bouie, Joan Walsh, and Chris Martinez. Much has been written about the incomparable sleaze of Breitbart, the standard propaganda boost from Fox News, and the typical cowardice of the administration in the face of such attacks. All of that is well established by now and quite unsurprising, so I want to focus on what ought to be the enduring lesson from this ugly episode: the courage of Shirley Sherrod.
Just as CNN fired Octavia Nasr for one of the few insightful and interesting observations she ever voiced about the Middle East, Sherrod's speech -- which caused her to be fired -- is simply inspiring in its uncommon candor, courage and wisdom. Few people are willing so publicly to confess to tribal biases and detail how they struggle to overcome them, even though that's a challenge which any person who evolves at some point must confront. That process -- far more than the pretense of having always been bias-free -- requires difficult self-examination, and its public discussion offers vitally needed lessons for everyone. Many people are unwilling ever to engage that process privately, let alone candidly describe it publicly. Those with the courage to do so, like Sherrod, should be heralded for that candor. Instead, she was slandered, falsely disparaged, and fired.
Contrary to the excuse being offered by those who did all of that, her actual message -- that she was plagued by racial biases decades ago and overcame them with the recognition that it is poverty that unites people in need -- was clearly evident even from the deceitfully edited Breitbart video. This is part of what she said on that edited video:
That's when it was revealed to me that it's about poor versus those who have. And not so much about white. It is about white and black, but you know -- it opened my eyes.
But -- just as happened with Octavia Nasr and so many before her, including the now-destroyed ACORN -- the blinding, lying, depressingly common right-wing hysteria churned out by Brietbart/Fox meant that no nuances were permitted, no reason could breathe, and few people had the courage to defend Sherrod or even demand that she be allowed to speak before being thrown to the trash heap.
And that's where the truly significant and rare courage of Sherrod becomes so consequential. Unlike so many who are caught in similar right-wing/media smear storms and (understandably) back down, Sherrod refused to meekly slink away. She conspicuously refused to apologize for things that merited no apology. Rather than legitimize the accusations with defensive self-justifications, she put the blame squarely where it belonged: on Brietbart, on the NAACP for condemning her without all the facts, and on the Obama administration for demanding her "resignation." And as a result of her refusal to allow these false smears to go unchallenged and the low-life smear artists to be rewarded, the true facts have emerged. The actual culprits in this episode -- basically everyone except her and the white couple who came forward to defend her -- are clearly identified and exposed, with their credibility in tatters. And it's hard to imagine the administration's not reversing itself and offering to re-hire her, thus being forced to reverse a serious injustice.
As much value as Sherrod's NAACP speech has for everyone, her conduct in the face of this massive onslaught is even more instructive. It ought to serve as a template for how people respond to all of these low-life, right-wing smear campaigns: with unapologetic clarity and resolve about who the actual wrongdoers are. To the extent the gross injustice of her firing is reversed and the slander to which she was subjected is nullified, it will only be because she stood up to the right-wing smear machine, the establishment media, and even the Executive Branch, which were all jointly operating -- with different motives -- to destroy her. That isn't easy to do, but this is obviously a woman with uncommon courage and principle -- exactly what is required to stand up to and expose the group of thuggish bullies trying to smear her and the cowardly government officials willing to play along. This will be an extremely valuable episode if her conduct inspires future targets of such smears to respond with similar defiance.
UPDATE: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack did the right thing today, which was actually the only thing they could have done in light of the fraud that was exposed: apologized to Sherrod and (in Vilsack's case) offered her job back to her.
Meanwhile, Shepard Smith, one of the very, very few people at Fox News with any inclination toward actual journalism, explained why he refused to show or even mention the edited Sherrod tape yesterday even when the rest of Fox was doing so non-stop: because, among other things, he does not trust the "source" of the video (Breitbart) in light of his history.
The heroism of Shirley Sherrod
Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
Everyone is presumably aware by now of the facts surrounding the disgusting fraud perpetrated on Shirley Sherrod, engineered by Andrew Breitbart, amplified by Fox News, and meekly submitted to by the Obama administration. Those who aren't can read excellent commentary from Jamelle Bouie, Joan Walsh, and Chris Martinez. Much has been written about the incomparable sleaze of Breitbart, the standard propaganda boost from Fox News, and the typical cowardice of the administration in the face of such attacks. All of that is well established by now and quite unsurprising, so I want to focus on what ought to be the enduring lesson from this ugly episode: the courage of Shirley Sherrod.
Just as CNN fired Octavia Nasr for one of the few insightful and interesting observations she ever voiced about the Middle East, Sherrod's speech -- which caused her to be fired -- is simply inspiring in its uncommon candor, courage and wisdom. Few people are willing so publicly to confess to tribal biases and detail how they struggle to overcome them, even though that's a challenge which any person who evolves at some point must confront. That process -- far more than the pretense of having always been bias-free -- requires difficult self-examination, and its public discussion offers vitally needed lessons for everyone. Many people are unwilling ever to engage that process privately, let alone candidly describe it publicly. Those with the courage to do so, like Sherrod, should be heralded for that candor. Instead, she was slandered, falsely disparaged, and fired.
Contrary to the excuse being offered by those who did all of that, her actual message -- that she was plagued by racial biases decades ago and overcame them with the recognition that it is poverty that unites people in need -- was clearly evident even from the deceitfully edited Breitbart video. This is part of what she said on that edited video:
That's when it was revealed to me that it's about poor versus those who have. And not so much about white. It is about white and black, but you know -- it opened my eyes.
But -- just as happened with Octavia Nasr and so many before her, including the now-destroyed ACORN -- the blinding, lying, depressingly common right-wing hysteria churned out by Brietbart/Fox meant that no nuances were permitted, no reason could breathe, and few people had the courage to defend Sherrod or even demand that she be allowed to speak before being thrown to the trash heap.
And that's where the truly significant and rare courage of Sherrod becomes so consequential. Unlike so many who are caught in similar right-wing/media smear storms and (understandably) back down, Sherrod refused to meekly slink away. She conspicuously refused to apologize for things that merited no apology. Rather than legitimize the accusations with defensive self-justifications, she put the blame squarely where it belonged: on Brietbart, on the NAACP for condemning her without all the facts, and on the Obama administration for demanding her "resignation." And as a result of her refusal to allow these false smears to go unchallenged and the low-life smear artists to be rewarded, the true facts have emerged. The actual culprits in this episode -- basically everyone except her and the white couple who came forward to defend her -- are clearly identified and exposed, with their credibility in tatters. And it's hard to imagine the administration's not reversing itself and offering to re-hire her, thus being forced to reverse a serious injustice.
As much value as Sherrod's NAACP speech has for everyone, her conduct in the face of this massive onslaught is even more instructive. It ought to serve as a template for how people respond to all of these low-life, right-wing smear campaigns: with unapologetic clarity and resolve about who the actual wrongdoers are. To the extent the gross injustice of her firing is reversed and the slander to which she was subjected is nullified, it will only be because she stood up to the right-wing smear machine, the establishment media, and even the Executive Branch, which were all jointly operating -- with different motives -- to destroy her. That isn't easy to do, but this is obviously a woman with uncommon courage and principle -- exactly what is required to stand up to and expose the group of thuggish bullies trying to smear her and the cowardly government officials willing to play along. This will be an extremely valuable episode if her conduct inspires future targets of such smears to respond with similar defiance.
UPDATE: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack did the right thing today, which was actually the only thing they could have done in light of the fraud that was exposed: apologized to Sherrod and (in Vilsack's case) offered her job back to her.
Meanwhile, Shepard Smith, one of the very, very few people at Fox News with any inclination toward actual journalism, explained why he refused to show or even mention the edited Sherrod tape yesterday even when the rest of Fox was doing so non-stop: because, among other things, he does not trust the "source" of the video (Breitbart) in light of his history.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
'NO VIOLATION OF CRIMINAL LAW' IN ACORN 'PIMP' VIDEOS
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7780
Brad Friedman on 4/1/2010
CA A.G. FINDS 'NO VIOLATION OF CRIMINAL LAW' IN 'SEVERELY EDITED' ACORN 'PIMP' VIDEOS; RELEASES RAW TAPES FOR FIRST TIME
Unreleased raw footage reviewed by AG Jerry Brown's investigation was obtained from Rightwing activists O'Keefe and Giles in exchange for immunity from prosecution
Contradicting MSM coverage, O'Keefe 'never claimed he was a pimp,' 'did not act as a journalist'...
Echoing the recent report of the Kings County, NY, District Attorney who completed a five-month probe finding "no criminality" seen in video tapes secretly taken of low-level ACORN and ACORN Housing workers last year in New York, California's Attorney General has now reached a similar conclusion regarding videos recorded in three different cities in the Golden State last Summer, according to a report released today which finds the workers "committed no violation of criminal law."
While describing "highly inappropriate behavior" by some of the workers caught on secret video tapes made by Rightwing activists, CA AG Jerry Brown's report finds that "the evidence does not show that the ACORN employees in California violated state criminal laws in connection with their conversations" with activists posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend.
In a press release announcing his 28-page report (and accompanying 55 pages of attachments and exhibits with it), the AG's office says the publicly released videos taken in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino were "severely edited."
Brown's statement in the announcement is highly critical of Rightwing activists James O'Keefe III and Hannah Giles, who posed as a prostitute and her law school boyfriend in the videos posted on Rightwing media mogul Andrew Breitbart's "Big Government" website last year and played extensively on Fox News, as well as other non-partisan media outlets.
"The evidence illustrates that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality," says Brown in the statement. "Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor."
His report notes that the office's "investigation has involved attorneys from all three legal divisions – Criminal Law, Public Rights, and Civil Law – as well as Special Agents from the Department’s Bureau of Investigation and Intelligence" and included a review of "the unedited recordings made by O’Keefe and Giles."
In exchange for "immunity from prosecution," O'Keefe and Giles provided "the full, unedited videotapes" to Brown's office who, therefore, "did not determine if they violated California's Invasion of Privacy Act" when secretly recording the ACORN workers. Those workers, he notes in his report, may still "be able to bring a private suit against O'Keefe and Giles for recording a confidential conversation without consent."
O'Keefe, Giles, and Breitbart have previously refused to release the unedited footage of their videos publicly. Brown's report details why they likely did not wish to, as important, often exculpatory details from each encounter were not included in the edited versions, released to much partisan fanfare last year.
The unedited California videos have now been posted on the CA Attorney General's website. (They are also linked at the end of this article.) The press release also notes that the AG has unedited tapes from other cities outside of California as well. The BRAD BLOG has made a request for those videos from the office of the Attorney General.
'Severely Edited'
The description of the videos as "severely edited" also echoes the Brooklyn D.A.'s office, which was quoted as describing them as a "heavily edited splice job" when his report was released several weeks ago.
Brown's report also echoes an independent investigation [PDF] released by former MA Attorney General Scott Harshbarger early last December, but unreported in the New York Times and many others. That report was commissioned by ACORN as an external review. In it, Harshbarger found serious organizational concerns with the four-decade old community organizing group, but "no pattern of criminality" as seen in any of the highly-edited, heavily-overdubbed video tape releases.
Despite repeated official investigations finding a complete lack of criminality in any of the O'Keefe/Giles/Breitbart tapes --- other than by the filmmakers themselves, who may have broken the law in at least two different states by secretly taping workers --- ACORN recently announced that the publicity from the hoax videos had succeeded in drying up their private funding, and forced them to shutter their doors as of today.
Of the four ACORN employees O'Keefe and Giles met with in three different California cities, none "committed, solicited or conspired to commit any criminal acts," says Brown in his report. "There is no evidence that any of the ACORN employees had the intent to aid and abet such criminal conduct or agreed to join in [O'Keefe and Giles purported] illegal conduct."
The Attorney General also confirms that O'Keefe never appeared in any of the offices "dressed as a 1970s Superfly pimp," as he had been edited to appear at the beginning and end of each of the videos. Neither did O' Keefe ever claim to be a pimp to any of the workers whose good natures, AG Brown says, O'Keefe and Giles preyed upon...
Misreported 'Pimp'
"In his actual taped sessions with ACORN workers, [O'Keefe] was dressed in a shirt and tie, presented himself as a law student, and said he planned to use the prostitution proceeds to run for Congress. He never claimed he was a pimp," [emphasis added] the AG's office says.
The BRAD BLOG has been covering the media's misreporting of this story since late January, and was recently successful in forcing the New York Times to issue a partial correction to multiple stories in which they repeatedly misreported O'Keefe dressed as, or "posing as," a pimp. Though it took two months --- and several long email exchanges with both the "paper of record's" Senior Editor for Standards, Greg Brock, as well as with their Public Editor (ombudsman), Clark Hoyt --- their partial correction was finally published just last week, after ACORN had already announced they were being forced to shut down.
The paper is still standing, misleadingly, by the notion that O'Keefe "clearly represented himself as a pimp" to the ACORN workers, even though in every case he represented himself instead as Giles' law school student, or sometimes banker, boyfriend, trying to help rescue her from an abusive pimp who had tried to stalk and kill her. Scores of other media outlets have followed the Times' lead in misreporting the facts.
Brown's report notes what the NYTimes and most other media outlets have failed to report:
Although O’Keefe is dressed in stereotypical 1970s pimp garb in the opening and closing scenes of the videos released on the internet, when O’Keefe visited each of the ACORN offices, ACORN employees reported that he was actually dressed in a shirt and tie. Also, contrary to the suggestion in the edited videos, O’Keefe never stated he was a pimp.
While speaking with the various ACORN workers, Brown's report notes:
Giles continued to portray herself as an abused prostitute desperate for help and pushed for any advice. She said she wanted to save the El Salvadoran girls from being preyed upon and raped. She claimed the pimp put a hit out on her and injured her by pushing her down the stairs.
Brown goes on to explain that O'Keefe's edited video tapes from the Los Angeles ACORN office, "did not include all Giles statements regarding the abusive pimp, her tragic life, and fear for the underage girls, or [ACORN worker Lavelle] Stewart's statements that ACORN could not help."
According to the AG's review of the unedited videos, of the 4 ACORN workers O'Keefe and Giles spoke to in three different California cities:
•One instructed them that "no bank would fund the couple based on an illegitimate prostitution business and ACORN would not get involved with an illegitimate prostitution business."
•One, after being told that Giles had been "sold by a pimp in Miami to a pimp in Los Angeles" who was "extremely abusive" brought Giles to an office door marked "Program for Torture Victims" and told Giles "she should speak with the people working there."
•One, after realizing she was being hoaxed, told O'Keefe and Giles "that ACORN would not approve of their business or of her giving them advice, but that she personally supported legalizing prostitution." She then went on to explain how she had murdered her husband, though both of her ex-husbands, as the San Bernardino County Sheriff's office would later report, are still very much alive. She also "told O'Keefe he resembled Princess Diana."
•One, who "speaks limited English ... went along with the conversation in hopes of getting information from the couple that he could provide to law enforcement in the event they were telling the truth." After the couple left the office, the worker immediately telephoned his cousin who is a detective at the National City Police Department to report the matter. He later reported the incident to a fellow employee and to an ACORN board member. The matter was then reported to the San Diego Police Department's human smuggling division.
That's it. That's all. And in every case, O'Keefe withheld important details from the edited versions of the video tapes he released, and reprehensibly titled as "ACORN Child Prostitution Investigation."
Immunity from prosecution
In regard to immunity given to the Rightwing scammers, Brown states that following a request to investigate the matter by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, it was determined that his office "needed the complete, unedited video and audio recordings made by O’Keefe and Giles." The pair sought, and received, a deal for immunity from criminal prosecution before they would turn over the tapes, according to the AG's report:
O’Keefe and Giles agreed to produce the full recordings if the Attorney General agreed not to prosecute them for violations of California’s privacy laws. This Office determined that the fastest and most efficient means to comply with the Governor’s request was to agree not to prosecute.
He goes on to note that "the facts presented" in this case "strongly suggests that O’Keefe and Giles’s violated state privacy laws and provides fair warning to them and others that this type of activity can be prosecuted in California."
'O'Keefe did not act as a journalist'
In conclusion, the AG's report highlights the hit job pulled off by the three partisan activists, and takes pains to note that despite the adament claims of O'Keefe, Breitbart and other Rightwing media outlets' absurd suggestions to the contrary, O'Keefe "did not act as a journalist objectively reporting a story":
The edited O’Keefe videos released on the BigGovernment.com website portrayed ACORN as an organization infested with employees committing crimes. However, the impression of rampant illegal conduct created by the recordings at the various ACORN offices around the country is not supported by the evidence related to the videos in California. Our investigation revealed facts which were not reflected in the recordings. The San Diego employee’s answers were influenced by his limited English and intent to contact the police. The San Bernardino ACORN receptionist knew it to be a prank and made outrageous and false statements.
O’Keefe stated he was out to make a point and to damage ACORN and therefore did not act as a journalist objectively reporting a story. The video releases were heavily edited to feature only the worst or most inappropriate statements of the various ACORN employees, and to omit some of the most salient statements by O’Keefe and Giles. Each of the ACORN employees recorded in California was a low level employee whose job was to help the needy individuals who walked in the door seeking assistance. Giles and O’Keefe lied to engender compassion, but then edited their statements from the released videos. Would it have been best had each ACORN employee simply refused to deal with the couple and shown them the door when their story came out? Of course.
ACORN was not the criminal enterprise described by O’Keefe in his “Chaos for Glory” statement – it did not receive billions in federal funds and did not control elections.
In fact, ACORN had received an average of just $3.5 million in federal tax dollars over each of the last 15 years. Moreover, there is no evidence that any vote was ever cast illegally, in any election, following an improper registration by an ACORN worker. In most cases, such improper registrations were discovered by ACORN themselves and reported to authorities.
Nonetheless, the anti-poverty organization of 400,000 low- and middle-income member families in 75 cities was successfully targeted and put out of business by Republicans; the long, concerted smear campaigns intended to do little more than undercut ACORN's successful voter registration drives. Those drives had succeeded in legally registering hundreds of thousands of low- and middle-income voters, many of whom tend to vote Democratic. For that, for enfranchising Americans to participate in their own democracy, the GOP had to put them out of business.
Mission accomplished.
Brad Friedman on 4/1/2010
CA A.G. FINDS 'NO VIOLATION OF CRIMINAL LAW' IN 'SEVERELY EDITED' ACORN 'PIMP' VIDEOS; RELEASES RAW TAPES FOR FIRST TIME
Unreleased raw footage reviewed by AG Jerry Brown's investigation was obtained from Rightwing activists O'Keefe and Giles in exchange for immunity from prosecution
Contradicting MSM coverage, O'Keefe 'never claimed he was a pimp,' 'did not act as a journalist'...
Echoing the recent report of the Kings County, NY, District Attorney who completed a five-month probe finding "no criminality" seen in video tapes secretly taken of low-level ACORN and ACORN Housing workers last year in New York, California's Attorney General has now reached a similar conclusion regarding videos recorded in three different cities in the Golden State last Summer, according to a report released today which finds the workers "committed no violation of criminal law."
While describing "highly inappropriate behavior" by some of the workers caught on secret video tapes made by Rightwing activists, CA AG Jerry Brown's report finds that "the evidence does not show that the ACORN employees in California violated state criminal laws in connection with their conversations" with activists posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend.
In a press release announcing his 28-page report (and accompanying 55 pages of attachments and exhibits with it), the AG's office says the publicly released videos taken in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino were "severely edited."
Brown's statement in the announcement is highly critical of Rightwing activists James O'Keefe III and Hannah Giles, who posed as a prostitute and her law school boyfriend in the videos posted on Rightwing media mogul Andrew Breitbart's "Big Government" website last year and played extensively on Fox News, as well as other non-partisan media outlets.
"The evidence illustrates that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality," says Brown in the statement. "Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor."
His report notes that the office's "investigation has involved attorneys from all three legal divisions – Criminal Law, Public Rights, and Civil Law – as well as Special Agents from the Department’s Bureau of Investigation and Intelligence" and included a review of "the unedited recordings made by O’Keefe and Giles."
In exchange for "immunity from prosecution," O'Keefe and Giles provided "the full, unedited videotapes" to Brown's office who, therefore, "did not determine if they violated California's Invasion of Privacy Act" when secretly recording the ACORN workers. Those workers, he notes in his report, may still "be able to bring a private suit against O'Keefe and Giles for recording a confidential conversation without consent."
O'Keefe, Giles, and Breitbart have previously refused to release the unedited footage of their videos publicly. Brown's report details why they likely did not wish to, as important, often exculpatory details from each encounter were not included in the edited versions, released to much partisan fanfare last year.
The unedited California videos have now been posted on the CA Attorney General's website. (They are also linked at the end of this article.) The press release also notes that the AG has unedited tapes from other cities outside of California as well. The BRAD BLOG has made a request for those videos from the office of the Attorney General.
'Severely Edited'
The description of the videos as "severely edited" also echoes the Brooklyn D.A.'s office, which was quoted as describing them as a "heavily edited splice job" when his report was released several weeks ago.
Brown's report also echoes an independent investigation [PDF] released by former MA Attorney General Scott Harshbarger early last December, but unreported in the New York Times and many others. That report was commissioned by ACORN as an external review. In it, Harshbarger found serious organizational concerns with the four-decade old community organizing group, but "no pattern of criminality" as seen in any of the highly-edited, heavily-overdubbed video tape releases.
Despite repeated official investigations finding a complete lack of criminality in any of the O'Keefe/Giles/Breitbart tapes --- other than by the filmmakers themselves, who may have broken the law in at least two different states by secretly taping workers --- ACORN recently announced that the publicity from the hoax videos had succeeded in drying up their private funding, and forced them to shutter their doors as of today.
Of the four ACORN employees O'Keefe and Giles met with in three different California cities, none "committed, solicited or conspired to commit any criminal acts," says Brown in his report. "There is no evidence that any of the ACORN employees had the intent to aid and abet such criminal conduct or agreed to join in [O'Keefe and Giles purported] illegal conduct."
The Attorney General also confirms that O'Keefe never appeared in any of the offices "dressed as a 1970s Superfly pimp," as he had been edited to appear at the beginning and end of each of the videos. Neither did O' Keefe ever claim to be a pimp to any of the workers whose good natures, AG Brown says, O'Keefe and Giles preyed upon...
Misreported 'Pimp'
"In his actual taped sessions with ACORN workers, [O'Keefe] was dressed in a shirt and tie, presented himself as a law student, and said he planned to use the prostitution proceeds to run for Congress. He never claimed he was a pimp," [emphasis added] the AG's office says.
The BRAD BLOG has been covering the media's misreporting of this story since late January, and was recently successful in forcing the New York Times to issue a partial correction to multiple stories in which they repeatedly misreported O'Keefe dressed as, or "posing as," a pimp. Though it took two months --- and several long email exchanges with both the "paper of record's" Senior Editor for Standards, Greg Brock, as well as with their Public Editor (ombudsman), Clark Hoyt --- their partial correction was finally published just last week, after ACORN had already announced they were being forced to shut down.
The paper is still standing, misleadingly, by the notion that O'Keefe "clearly represented himself as a pimp" to the ACORN workers, even though in every case he represented himself instead as Giles' law school student, or sometimes banker, boyfriend, trying to help rescue her from an abusive pimp who had tried to stalk and kill her. Scores of other media outlets have followed the Times' lead in misreporting the facts.
Brown's report notes what the NYTimes and most other media outlets have failed to report:
Although O’Keefe is dressed in stereotypical 1970s pimp garb in the opening and closing scenes of the videos released on the internet, when O’Keefe visited each of the ACORN offices, ACORN employees reported that he was actually dressed in a shirt and tie. Also, contrary to the suggestion in the edited videos, O’Keefe never stated he was a pimp.
While speaking with the various ACORN workers, Brown's report notes:
Giles continued to portray herself as an abused prostitute desperate for help and pushed for any advice. She said she wanted to save the El Salvadoran girls from being preyed upon and raped. She claimed the pimp put a hit out on her and injured her by pushing her down the stairs.
Brown goes on to explain that O'Keefe's edited video tapes from the Los Angeles ACORN office, "did not include all Giles statements regarding the abusive pimp, her tragic life, and fear for the underage girls, or [ACORN worker Lavelle] Stewart's statements that ACORN could not help."
According to the AG's review of the unedited videos, of the 4 ACORN workers O'Keefe and Giles spoke to in three different California cities:
•One instructed them that "no bank would fund the couple based on an illegitimate prostitution business and ACORN would not get involved with an illegitimate prostitution business."
•One, after being told that Giles had been "sold by a pimp in Miami to a pimp in Los Angeles" who was "extremely abusive" brought Giles to an office door marked "Program for Torture Victims" and told Giles "she should speak with the people working there."
•One, after realizing she was being hoaxed, told O'Keefe and Giles "that ACORN would not approve of their business or of her giving them advice, but that she personally supported legalizing prostitution." She then went on to explain how she had murdered her husband, though both of her ex-husbands, as the San Bernardino County Sheriff's office would later report, are still very much alive. She also "told O'Keefe he resembled Princess Diana."
•One, who "speaks limited English ... went along with the conversation in hopes of getting information from the couple that he could provide to law enforcement in the event they were telling the truth." After the couple left the office, the worker immediately telephoned his cousin who is a detective at the National City Police Department to report the matter. He later reported the incident to a fellow employee and to an ACORN board member. The matter was then reported to the San Diego Police Department's human smuggling division.
That's it. That's all. And in every case, O'Keefe withheld important details from the edited versions of the video tapes he released, and reprehensibly titled as "ACORN Child Prostitution Investigation."
Immunity from prosecution
In regard to immunity given to the Rightwing scammers, Brown states that following a request to investigate the matter by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, it was determined that his office "needed the complete, unedited video and audio recordings made by O’Keefe and Giles." The pair sought, and received, a deal for immunity from criminal prosecution before they would turn over the tapes, according to the AG's report:
O’Keefe and Giles agreed to produce the full recordings if the Attorney General agreed not to prosecute them for violations of California’s privacy laws. This Office determined that the fastest and most efficient means to comply with the Governor’s request was to agree not to prosecute.
He goes on to note that "the facts presented" in this case "strongly suggests that O’Keefe and Giles’s violated state privacy laws and provides fair warning to them and others that this type of activity can be prosecuted in California."
'O'Keefe did not act as a journalist'
In conclusion, the AG's report highlights the hit job pulled off by the three partisan activists, and takes pains to note that despite the adament claims of O'Keefe, Breitbart and other Rightwing media outlets' absurd suggestions to the contrary, O'Keefe "did not act as a journalist objectively reporting a story":
The edited O’Keefe videos released on the BigGovernment.com website portrayed ACORN as an organization infested with employees committing crimes. However, the impression of rampant illegal conduct created by the recordings at the various ACORN offices around the country is not supported by the evidence related to the videos in California. Our investigation revealed facts which were not reflected in the recordings. The San Diego employee’s answers were influenced by his limited English and intent to contact the police. The San Bernardino ACORN receptionist knew it to be a prank and made outrageous and false statements.
O’Keefe stated he was out to make a point and to damage ACORN and therefore did not act as a journalist objectively reporting a story. The video releases were heavily edited to feature only the worst or most inappropriate statements of the various ACORN employees, and to omit some of the most salient statements by O’Keefe and Giles. Each of the ACORN employees recorded in California was a low level employee whose job was to help the needy individuals who walked in the door seeking assistance. Giles and O’Keefe lied to engender compassion, but then edited their statements from the released videos. Would it have been best had each ACORN employee simply refused to deal with the couple and shown them the door when their story came out? Of course.
ACORN was not the criminal enterprise described by O’Keefe in his “Chaos for Glory” statement – it did not receive billions in federal funds and did not control elections.
In fact, ACORN had received an average of just $3.5 million in federal tax dollars over each of the last 15 years. Moreover, there is no evidence that any vote was ever cast illegally, in any election, following an improper registration by an ACORN worker. In most cases, such improper registrations were discovered by ACORN themselves and reported to authorities.
Nonetheless, the anti-poverty organization of 400,000 low- and middle-income member families in 75 cities was successfully targeted and put out of business by Republicans; the long, concerted smear campaigns intended to do little more than undercut ACORN's successful voter registration drives. Those drives had succeeded in legally registering hundreds of thousands of low- and middle-income voters, many of whom tend to vote Democratic. For that, for enfranchising Americans to participate in their own democracy, the GOP had to put them out of business.
Mission accomplished.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
The Yes Men call O’Keefe, Breitbart ’sad and pathetic’ for targeting ACORN
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0330/yes-men-breitbart-okeefe-sad-pathetic-acorn/
The Yes Men call O’Keefe, Breitbart ’sad and pathetic’ for targeting ACORN
Sahil Kapur
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
The ends justify the means, say The Yes Men, but only as long as you're going after the right people.
The duo's latest movie The Yes Men Fix The World, out on DVD April 1, chronicles the real-life efforts of anti-globalization activists Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum to expose corporate malfeasance in unorthodox ways.
"What we do is pass ourselves off as representatives of big corporations we don’t like," Bonanno explains in the film. "We make fake websites, then wait for people to accidentally invite us to conferences."
They've shined a spotlight on controversial practices of powerful companies like Exxon-Mobil and Halliburton. One of their most prominent hoaxes occurred in 2004, when Bichlbaum posed as a spokesman for Dow Chemical on BBC News television and -- under false pretenses -- accepted "full responsibility" for a disaster its subsidiary created in Bhopal, India.
Such tactics have now been emulated by conservatives such as James O'Keefe, who famously went undercover and unveiled the dodgy dealings of some ACORN employees last year, the video clips of which were vigorously promoted by writer and publisher Andrew Breitbart.
"For O'Keefe and Breitbart to be targeting ACORN is incredibly sad and pathetic," Bonanno told Raw Story. "Most of its members are lower-income home owners, so these are model Americans -- pull themselves up by their bootstraps type of people -- people who are often very poor."
In a videotaped conversation with blogger Mike Stark at last month's CPAC convention, Breitbart, probed about the morality of O'Keefe's actions, pointed to The Yes Men as an example of progressive activists using similarly questionable means to attain their goals.
But it's not his and O'Keefe's tactics that The Yes Men take issue with; it's who they're taking aim at, and the now-extinct community group didn't deserve the treatment, Bonanno alleged.
"It's why you're lying and who's gaining and who's losing as a result," he said. "There are liars and there are assholes. What James O'Keefe is doing is making a lot of lower-income people lose, unfortunately. And it's supported by a bunch of very nasty, mean-spirited people."
"A lie itself isn't necessarily bad," Bonanno continued, drawing out the difference between The Yes Men and individuals like O'Keefe. "We lie in order to criticize people who are abusing their power. They lie in order to humiliate and take out people who are at the receiving end of power."
The Yes Men have been chastised as "world-renowned troublemakers" as well as "sick, twisted and cruel" beings by mainstream news organizations. In their latest of two films, the duo deplores the "free-market cult" they claim is centered around "letting greed solve the problem."
They seek to comfort the afflicted by actively afflicting the comforted. And that's the opposite of what anti-ACORN activists are doing, Bonanno purported. "By targeting ACORN, they're targeting people who are victims of a very nasty power dynamic. So, I think it's a mean thing to do."
Bonanno found it "amazing" how Congress insists on taking aim at groups like ACORN over "a few bad apples" when large defense contractors, for instance, have committed far worse transgressions on a broader and more damaging level and walked away unscathed.
Ultimately, Bonanno concluded that lies and trickery are helpful to fight the establishment in an age where corporations wield unprecedented power and where "the political middle is being pushed further and further and further to the right."
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Breitbart admits paying activist
http://rawstory.com/2010/01/oops-breitbart-admits-paying-activist-bug-democratic-senator/
Breitbart admits paying activist who tried to bug Democratic senator
By John Byrne
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
The man who made the conservative activist who posed as a pimp to undermine the community organizing group ACORN, confessed that he pays him -- while at the same time arguing he has "nothing to do with" what he does.
James O'Keefe was arrested Monday after allegedly attempting to wiretap the Louisiana offices of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA). After his interdiction by federal marshals, O'Keefe admitted to planning the operation.
Conservative pundits have sought to distance themselves from O'Keefe after the arrest.
"Let it be a lesson to aspiring young conservatives interested in investigative journalism: Know your limits," wrote conservative blogger Michelle Malkin Tuesday afternoon. "Know the law. Don’t get carried away. And don’t become what you are targeting."
In a statement, conservative heavyweight Andrew Breitbart -- who helped O'Keefe become famous after posting videos of him posing as a pimp and chatting with ACORN employees and served an an editor for The Drudge Report and contributor to the Huffington Post -- said he had "no knowledge about or connection to" any of the alleged buggers.
“We have no knowledge about or connection to any alleged acts and events involving James O’Keefe at Senator Mary Landrieu’s office," Breitbart remarked. "We only just learned about the alleged incident this afternoon. We have no information other than what has been reported publicly by the press. Accordingly, we simply are not in a position to make any further comment.”
And yet, on a radio interview the same day, Breitbart told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that O'Keefe was all but an employee.
HH: Last question, in terms of his relationship with you not connected to this event, are you still, is he in your employ in any way?
AB...What he does for the site exclusively is he tells his life rights, basically. So when he puts a story out there, it's on the Brietbart sites, the Big sites, that he can tell people what transpired. So...
HH: Do you pay him for that?
AB: Yes.
HH: And are you free to tell me how much you pay him?
AB: I'll...perhaps at another date, but he's paid a fair salary.
HH: Is he...so he is an employee?
AB: I'm not sure that's technically the thing, but yes, he's paid for his life rights. And he's, you know, he's still...we reserve the right to say yes or no to any of the stories that he puts up on our site as we do to any other contributor who comes to the site.
HH: Will it be a mischaracterization to say he was working for you when he went about this?
AB: Well, I mean, no. He was not involved in anything that was related to Big Government, or Breitbart.com.
At the time of his arrest, O'Keefe was writing for Breitbart's website, though there's no indication Breitbart had any involvement with the wiretap bust.
In a follow-up posting on his website BigGovernment, Breitbart said he wasn't leaping to any conclusions -- but noticeably omitted the fact he was paying O'Keefe.
"Let me state clearly for the record: wiretapping is wrong," he wrote. "But until I hear the full story from James O’Keefe, I will not speculate as to what he was doing in Louisiana."
The exchange with Hewitt was noted late Tuesday by MediaMatters.
O'Keefe and three associates allegedly posed as telephone company employees in a self-confessed effort to tamper with the senator's office phones.
Breitbart admits paying activist who tried to bug Democratic senator
By John Byrne
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
The man who made the conservative activist who posed as a pimp to undermine the community organizing group ACORN, confessed that he pays him -- while at the same time arguing he has "nothing to do with" what he does.
James O'Keefe was arrested Monday after allegedly attempting to wiretap the Louisiana offices of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA). After his interdiction by federal marshals, O'Keefe admitted to planning the operation.
Conservative pundits have sought to distance themselves from O'Keefe after the arrest.
"Let it be a lesson to aspiring young conservatives interested in investigative journalism: Know your limits," wrote conservative blogger Michelle Malkin Tuesday afternoon. "Know the law. Don’t get carried away. And don’t become what you are targeting."
In a statement, conservative heavyweight Andrew Breitbart -- who helped O'Keefe become famous after posting videos of him posing as a pimp and chatting with ACORN employees and served an an editor for The Drudge Report and contributor to the Huffington Post -- said he had "no knowledge about or connection to" any of the alleged buggers.
“We have no knowledge about or connection to any alleged acts and events involving James O’Keefe at Senator Mary Landrieu’s office," Breitbart remarked. "We only just learned about the alleged incident this afternoon. We have no information other than what has been reported publicly by the press. Accordingly, we simply are not in a position to make any further comment.”
And yet, on a radio interview the same day, Breitbart told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that O'Keefe was all but an employee.
HH: Last question, in terms of his relationship with you not connected to this event, are you still, is he in your employ in any way?
AB...What he does for the site exclusively is he tells his life rights, basically. So when he puts a story out there, it's on the Brietbart sites, the Big sites, that he can tell people what transpired. So...
HH: Do you pay him for that?
AB: Yes.
HH: And are you free to tell me how much you pay him?
AB: I'll...perhaps at another date, but he's paid a fair salary.
HH: Is he...so he is an employee?
AB: I'm not sure that's technically the thing, but yes, he's paid for his life rights. And he's, you know, he's still...we reserve the right to say yes or no to any of the stories that he puts up on our site as we do to any other contributor who comes to the site.
HH: Will it be a mischaracterization to say he was working for you when he went about this?
AB: Well, I mean, no. He was not involved in anything that was related to Big Government, or Breitbart.com.
At the time of his arrest, O'Keefe was writing for Breitbart's website, though there's no indication Breitbart had any involvement with the wiretap bust.
In a follow-up posting on his website BigGovernment, Breitbart said he wasn't leaping to any conclusions -- but noticeably omitted the fact he was paying O'Keefe.
"Let me state clearly for the record: wiretapping is wrong," he wrote. "But until I hear the full story from James O’Keefe, I will not speculate as to what he was doing in Louisiana."
The exchange with Hewitt was noted late Tuesday by MediaMatters.
O'Keefe and three associates allegedly posed as telephone company employees in a self-confessed effort to tamper with the senator's office phones.
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