Saturday, July 24, 2010

Would Andrew Lie? Seriously, Can They Even Ask That?

There are still some on the right falling over themselves to protect Andrew Breitbart, but Breitbart's own web sites take it to new extremes in order to defend their man.

Benson starts with Obama. And when would any on the right miss an opportunity to do that?

This President often decries the 24-hour, hyper-reactionary media cycle, yet his administration responded with warp-speed to toss Sherrod overboard. Can it now safely be asserted that the Obama administration “acted stupidly”?
Yes. The Obama administration panicked and jumped the gun, which was especially stupid considering the fact that the tape was coming from a tainted source.
The administration’s thoughtless abandonment of Sherrod indicates a hair-trigger climate of paranoia about all issues racial within the West Wing.
Hmmm. I wonder what... brought... that... about.

Then he gives us the funniest line of all.
[D]oes anyone really believe that Andrew Breitbart would intentionally distort a video clip to make a one-day splash?
He didn't think he was about to make a one day splash. He had no idea that the entire video would be released with such break neck speed and that the entire story would crash, as it has done, around his neck.
Risk his growing reputation with a deliberate, easily refutable distortion?
What "growing reputation"? The man had already been found to be peddling distorted tapes during the Acorn scandal; indeed, many of us complained about the White House's behaviour during this "scandal" precisely because the tape was coming from a man known to peddle this kind of nonsense.
But a "law enforcement source" told the Daily News that the unedited tapes left a very different impression than the chopped segments that Fox News Channel aired so many times. "They edited the tape to meet their agenda," said the source, referring to O'Keefe and Giles.

Two law enforcement investigations have revealed the hollowness and fraudulence of the videotapes. O'Keefe and his producers blatantly manufactured alleged wrongdoing by their targets.

And we got to see during that investigation how Breitbart behaves if he is charge of who gets access to the original tapes.
Hynes got access to the unedited tapes that O'Keefe's producer, Andrew Breitbart, has refused to release more generally.
If he could have stopped us seeing the rest of those tapes he would have done so, just as he tried to do with the Acorn videos.

The difference this time is that someone got the tape out in public very fast and the size of the lie was exposed.

But, by that point Sherrod, just like Acorn before her, was toast. The whole of Congress rounded on Acorn without any proof that Breitbart's accusations were correct.

The main difference here is that the damage Breitbart set out to do can be corrected. But the damage to his reputation should be terminal.

Click here for full article.

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