Political Ruminations

Arianna Huffington Digs in Her Heels Over Calls to Ban Andrew Breitbart

Gah.

I did an opinion piece last week on this topic, and had no intention to revisit it, but in view of the wide publicity generated by this incident, felt that it deserved an update.

Arianna Huffington’s response to the legitimate criticism engendered by her decision to give the notorious Andrew Breitbart front page space on her site, was to refuse to ban Breitbart from the Huffington Post. Greg Sargent:

The Huffington Post is coming under mounting pressure from some on the left to stop giving Andrew Breitbart a front-page platform, with some wondering whether the granting of prime real estate to Breitbart signals that HuffPo is trying to broaden its ideological appeal.

But according to a statement sent my way, HuffPo will stand by Breitbart and continue publishing him. HuffPo spokesperson Mario Ruiz emails:

From the beginning, The Huffington Post has welcomed voices from all sides of the political spectrum, including conservatives such as Newt Gingrich, Frank Luntz, Tom Coburn, Laura Ingraham, Bob Barr, George Pataki, David Frum, Byron York, Mary Matalin, and Ken Blackwell. The idea being that dialogue -- from a wide range of perspectives -- is preferable to silence. The fact that Andrew Breitbart’s first post on our site drew over 1,635 comments, conducted in a civil manner, seems to validate the premise and the decision to publish his blog post.

My take? That’s all very well and good, Arianna, but Breitbart has admitted his chicanery in the case of Shirley Sherrod. He is also responsible for the demise of ACORN, in concert with James O’Keefe and Hannah GIles.

Opportunist Arianna Huffington Reverts to True Colors

Well, now she’s done it.

As if many of us haven’t been saying for years that Huffington is a fake  Progressive, an opportunist in it for the money and fame, she had to go and prove us right, or at least make us feel like we were dead on right.

Arianna Huffington, formerly the Queen of the Liberal Political Kingdom online, has hired Conservative ideologue Andrew Breitbart, the same guy who spends so much of his time colluding with known con artist James O’Keefe, worked as an editor for the notorious Matt Drudge, worked for Ms. Huffington previously as a researcher, and helped her to launch The Huffington Post.

She not only hired him, she allowed him to use her site, her front page, to defend James O’Keefe’s latest scam video which targets NPR, a scam which resulted in a vote by the 112th Wingnut Congress to defund NPR.

FishbowlLA:

Big news. But we want to talk about something else. Andrew Breitbart is now blogging for Huffington Post. Here’s the first graph of his very first post.

The latest James O’Keefe success story against NPR has taken a predictable pattern — panicked press releases and firings, followed by denunciation of O’Keefe in a belated attempt to discredit him. Naturally, conservatives are crowing about it, but I wanted to give a little perspective to those Huffington Post readers — whatever your political stripe — who share my passion for free speech, honest debate, and fairness in the media.

Yes, not only is the conservative agitator now blogging on the formerly iconographic liberal website, he’s using the site to credit his propensity for “honest debate.”

Honest like taking out-of-context videos of Shirley Sherrod, putting them online and–knowingly mind you–falsely accusing her of being a racist?

Et tu, HuffPo?

Huffington, like one of her many contributors, Jane Hamsher, is an opportunist.

Like Huffington, Hamsher has also teamed up with a much despised Right Wing ideologue, Grover Norquist, and like Huffington, she has spent much of the first two years of the Obama presidency on various television shows, as well as on her website, shrieking about how President Obama is just not ever good enough. All that shrieking, as well as the blatant encouragement by Hamsher’s drones to sit out the election, contributed much to our huge losses in November 2010.

I don’t know about you, but at this point, I am unwilling to give Arianna Huffington and/or the right-leaning AOL, any more clicks than I absolutely have to.

She is so over.

March 24 UPDATE

Teabagger Republican House Votes to Defund NPR

The House voted today to defund NPR. James O’Keefe’s video purportedly exposing unethical behavior by NPR, was debunked, so why would they defund NPR?

In a largely symbolic move, the House today voted to block all federal funding for NPR, a week after the embattled public radio station found itself the subject of a conservative activist's sting that led to the ouster of its chief executive.

The bill passed by a 228-192 vote. No Democrats voted for it. Only 7 Republicans voted against the measure

Bob Cesca:

Once again, the Very Serious House Republicans have acted based upon a known fraud and scam artist who selectively edits his videos in order to frame otherwise innocent officials. James O'Keefe inspired this vote, and now 228 Republicans have attached their name to his latest scam. They're a major political party and they control the House of Representatives. When will the traditional press highlight how unserious these people are?

Adding….O’Keefe’s latest fake sting involves the Right’s favorite billionaire whipping boy, George Soros, and has also been debunked.

Adding also.... Just found video of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) mocking the Teabaggers (over the defunding of NPR) on the House floor today.

 

Another Right Wing Hack

James O’Keefe, of ACORN fame, and other sundry scams.

MMFA shreds O’Keefe’s cred, which was already shredded, but said shredding clearly bears repetition:

Conservative activist James O'Keefe has released a video purporting to show an NPR executive making inflammatory comments to two people posing as members of a "Muslim Brotherhood front group." As has been the case in the past, conservative media outlets and blogs are hyping O'Keefe's video.

It's not clear why anyone would believe anything that O'Keefe says about what is seen in the video.

• O'Keefe pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor criminal charge for entering Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in New Orleans under false pretenses.

• O'Keefe falsely claimed that his ACORN tapes were a "nationwide ACORN child prostitution investigation" that implicated many ACORN employees. In at least six of the eight heavily edited videos, either the activists did not clearly tell the ACORN employees that they were planning to engage in child prostitution; or the ACORN employees refused to help them or apparently deliberately misled them; or ACORN employees contacted the police following their visit.

• Three separate investigations cleared ACORN workers of criminal wrongdoing, and a 2009 report by the Congressional Research Service stated that O'Keefe's surreptitious videotaping may have broken laws in California and Maryland.

• O'Keefe and Andrew Breitbart withheld an exculpatory ACORN video from Los Angeles for two months in late 2009, during the height of the ACORN frenzy.

• A September 18, 2009, New York Times article reported that Liz Farkas, a college friend of O'Keefe's while at Rutgers University, said she "grew disillusioned" after O'Keefe asked Farkas to help deceptively "edit the script" of a video involving a nurse at the University of California at Los Angeles.

• In a 10-minute video posted on BigGovernment.com in June 2010, O'Keefe stated that he had been hired as a Census worker and attended two days of training. He said, "What I found were Census supervisors systematically encouraging employees to falsify information on their time sheets." The video includes clips of census leaders, who according to O'Keefe, "didn't seem to have a problem with the discrepancy" of the hours recorded on his time sheet versus the hours he claimed to have worked. O'Keefe omitted a clip that was later aired by ABC, which shows a census leader emphasizing the importance of accurately reporting on miles driven by census enumerators.

• O'Keefe reportedly planned to "seduce" and publically humiliate CNN investigative reporter Abbie Bourdeau. In an article posted at CNN.com, Bourdeau reported that when she arrived for an interview with O'Keefe, she was informed by O'Keefe's colleague Izzy Santa that O'Keefe planned to lure her aboard a boat where he would secretly record his attempts to "hit on her" using "strawberries and champagne." Boudreau reported that a document she obtained suggested O'Keefe would also use props including a "condom jar," Viagra, pornography, a ceiling mirror, and "fuzzy handcuffs." The document explained the motivation: "The joke is that the tables have turned on CNN. Using hot blondes to seduce interviewees to get screwed on television, you are faux seducing her in order to screw her on television." O'Keefe later claimed that he had been "repulsed" by the scenario laid out in the document when it was presented to him, and that it did not represent his actual plan for the interview.