Andy Breitbart: Pathological Liar, Race-Baiter, Undone

– Check out Brad Friedman’s knockdown of  Andy Breitbart with all of the video at Andy Breitbart, Pathological Liar, Race-Baiter, Undone.

By Brad Friedman

It’s a neat trick. Andrew Breitbart, the pathological liar, race-baiter, propagandists and rabidly partisan dirty-trickster, posts a deceptively edited video (again), to which media and Democratic officials cowardly knee-jerk in reaction (again), before the video is ultimately discovered to have been a deceptively edited hoax. Then, rather than copping to having been a pathological liar, race-baiter, propagandist and rabidly partisan dirty-trickster, Breitbart criticizes the media and those others who bought into the hoax that he himself perpetrated.

You see, it was all the media’s fault for being irresponsible enough to buy into his own bullshit. Well played, Mr. Breitbart – you pathological liar, race-baiter, propagandist and rabidly partisan ratfucker.

Breitbart, as usual, is partially correct, which is why his ratfucking continues to have any effect at all. The media did, at first, buy into his Shirley Sherrod scam. And not just Fox “News”, who more than simply “bought into it”, actually played their usual vital role in the rightwing disinfo food chain by offering a news-like presentation to the false story, as if it’s a real one which deserves coverage by others. But others in the non-wingnut, theoretically-legitimate media also treated this story, initially, as legitimate. For that matter, even after the hoax was revealed for what it was, Washington Post, late last night, granted the phony story more legitimacy by “privileging the lie” and burying the by-then known truth in the 15th paragraph of its coverage.

Today, however, as the dust settles, Breitbart’s lie has been uncharacteristically exposed in a record 24-hours or so, and he finds himself backed into a corner threatening whatever legitimacy he had foolishly been granted by adults who ought to have known better long ago. So now, the very professional snake-oil salesman and con-artist is attempting to riggle out of that corner withan all new lie that moves the goal posts from his original, now-discredited smear, to an entirely new, made-up-out-of-whole cloth claim. To wit: Since discovered to have lied in the first place, Breitbart is now claiming, to anyone stupid enough to listen, that his original blog post where he published the deceptively-edited video, was “not about Shirley Sherrod. It’s not about Shirley Sherrod. I can say it 20 times. It’s about the NAACP.”

Breitbart lied, got caught lying, then lied about it to keep from being called out as a liar.

 Oh, and also, he now adds in desperation upon having taken on a foe who was willing to fight back: “I feel bad that they made this about her, and I feel sorry that they made this about her…Watching how they’ve misconstrued, how the media has misconstrued the intention behind this, I do feel a sympathy for her plight.”

 They made this about her? The media misconstrued the intention behind this?

Of course, those claims are complete lies as well. As usual. And they’re betrayed by his very own words. As usual…

In other venues, one provided by CNN, for example, Breitbart has attempted to re-write history to claim that what he really objected to in the Sherrod video was the NAACP audience applauding for her self-admitted biases some 25 years ago. Of course, that didn’t happen either. Nonetheless, as usual, many of the corporate MSM outlets are reporting on what Breitbart has to say, when trapped in a corner, uncritically, as if his words represent actual reality. As usual, they don’t.

Writing at Media Matters this morning, Jocelyn Fong documents the demonstrable facts that huge news organizations with enormous budgets seem to have trouble highlighting themselves:

How can these outlets actually repeat Breitbart’s claim that this was “not about Shirley Sherrod,” when it clearly was? Didn’t anyone read what Breitbart had written? In his initial poston July 19, Breitbart claimed that the video is “evidence of racism coming from a federal appointee” and that Sherrod discriminated against a white farmer in her “federal duties” as the USDA Georgia Director of Rural Development. The video itselfalso included text that said. “Ms. Sherrod admits that in her federally appointed position, overseeing over a billion dollars she discriminates against people due to their race.” Breitbart then posted a tweetasking, “Will Eric Holder’s DOJ hold accountable fed appointee Shirley Sherrod for admitting practicing racial discrimination?” After the USDA forced Sherrod out of her position in response to the deceptive video, Big Government celebrated with a post titled: “Racist Govt Official/NAACP Award Recipient Resigns after Big Government Expose.”

In other words, Breitbart lied, got caught lying, then lied about it to keep from being called out as a liar. And many in the media took the (race)-bait and ran with it as if it actually represented reality.[Update: Even some on the Right are now having trouble defending Breitbart’s attempted lie about his lie.]

The same pattern occurred after The BRAD BLOG helped to detail the out-and-out deceptive lies of all of the trumped-up ACORN “Pimp” Hoax videos earlier this year. Even afterBreitbart was shown, in no uncertain terms to have lied about those videos in his own newspaper column, he would later attempt to move the goal posts, claiming he was actually the one who was duped and, oh, none of that matters anyway, because the videos were about something completely different. Watch the snake slither as we backed him up against the wall last March over his ACORN deceptions as, apparently, few other media outlets are either willing or able to do…

But it also took years before the corporate MSM came to understand what a pathological liar, race-baiter, propagandists and rabidly partisan dirty-trickster that Ann Coulter was as well before she would largely be consigned to the pathological liar, race-baiters, propagandists and rabidly partisan dirty-tricksters ghetto that is Fox “News”. Sure, the non-wingnut, theoretically-legitimate corporate news outlets will still toss her a bone to boost their own ratings every now and again by allowing her to appear, but she’s roundly understood by almost all serious human beings to be no more than the attention-seeking bomb-thrower that Breitbart has now finally been revealed as. Soon, he too will be consigned to the same discredited Fox “News” ghetto all together. Thankfully.

But, as we noted again last night, we’ve never cared about him and his scams. We care about those who shamefully fall for them. We know that he and his ilk are degenerate, out-and-out liars. That will never change. Bad guys are bad. So it’s the media’s responsibility to keep such bad guys and liars in check, and that’s where the system has fallen apart over the last 10 years (or more).

So we’re happy to see that, this time around, the gap between scam published and scam discredited has exponentially shortened, even as serious journalists have still not yet learned that the scams ought to be discredited from the start, before they are even discussed or given the light of day in legitimate news outlets.

Late last night — actually, 2am ET this morning — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who had inappropriately forced Sherrod to resign in embarrassing fear of Fox “News” and Breitbart, without having bothered to do appropriate due-diligence, issued a statement that he was reconsidering her firing and planning to “conduct a thorough review and consider additional facts” in her case.

She should, of course, be beggedto take her job back, with personal apologies from the President himself. A “thorough review” should then be made to determine if Vilsack himself ought to be made to tender his own resignation instead, in light of his inexcusably shameful failure in this episode.

And while we’re at it, the Administration ought to look at apologizing to former Green Jobs adviser Van Jones, and consider begging him to take his job back too, after he was the victim of a similar high-tech lynchingcourtesy of the Fox/Breitbart Ratfuck Gang and tossed under the bus by an Administration which obviously lacks the steel balls that bothof the pathological liars, race-baiters, propagandists and rabidly partisan dirty-tricksters Andrew Breitbart and Ann Coulter are willing to use, unapologetically whenever truth, facts and human decency are not enough to achieve their despicable aims and partisan agendas.

Finally, one last word about the indomitable courage and decency of Shirley Sherrod, courtesy of Glenn Greenwald today:

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.

And, make no mistake about it, there will be “future targets of such smears”. It bespeaks a horrible shame about this nation in 2010, that it requires the victim to stand up to the fire on their own, rather than the media — once, the protectors against such injustices — standing up to expose the realvillains in these despicable, but now all-too-predictably frequent, smears and assaults on the truth.