*Please read past the first paragraph
Today I watched an interview on Fox News with Arianna Huffington, who is promoting a new book about her political development and beliefs. I was rather shocked by the interview. Instead of actually discussing the book, the interview became an attack on Huffington and her character. The Fox reporter mischaracterized a story Huffington had run on her site, accused her of lying and refused to accept her answer regarding the story. Then the reporter demanded to know why Arianna has considered Bill Maher a friend and mentor considering his racial statements about Muslims recently. Later in the interview, the interviewer asked what Huffington thought about a former Ku Klux Klan leader running for mayor as a Democrat in Florida (as if Huffington was responsible for what every liberal in the country thought and did). Finally, continuing with the theme of racism, the reporter asked Arianna about a racist blogger who had once submitted a piece to her site. Huffington pointed out that this was one blogger out of the many that submit articles and once she found out who the person was, she removed the article and the person from the site. In reaction, the reporter ignored the answer and instead tried to paint all of these questions as evidence of Huffington having a racist history. No wonder liberals think Fox is such a biased channel.
Of course none of the above happened on Fox. No respectable journalist, person or news channel would allow or promote that type of demonization and propaganda, which is of course why it happened on MSNBC to Andrew Breitbart today. Breitbart went on MSNBC to promote his new book, Righteous Indegnation: Excuse Me While I Save the World, only to be attacked and portrayed as a racist. Only in the bubble world of MSNBC would the bias in the interview not be naturally visible, but to the very few that watch that channel, it isn’t. In fact, disgraced “journalist” David Shuster even commented on twitter that this was real journalism in comparison to a civil interview MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan had done with Breitbart earlier. However, this interview wasn’t different or worth noting because of the biased questions from the interviewer, but because of the answers from the guest. If you watch the interview below, you will find it is Martin Bashir and not Andrew Breitbart who becomes more agitated throughout the interview. This is mainly because Breitbart did the unexpected, he fought back. Breitbart not only countered each of Bashir’s questions with the truth and deplored racism, but he also pointedly explained and exposed the bias of the channel and interviewer in the process. Breitbart pointed out where Bashir had gotten his talking points/questions (from MMFA), exposed examples of MSNBC actually doing what they were accusing Breitbart of (selective editing), and called out Martin Bashir for acting as the “dupe” in this bogus attack. Watching this interview today made me both angry and proud. I was angry that MSNBC would try to silence and diminish a conservative in such an obvious way by trying to portray him as racist, but I was even more overwhelmed with pride that someone was finally fighting back. The reason Martin Bashir felt comfortable with this ridiculous line of questioning and obvious ploy to demonize a conservative is because he is used to conservatives just accepting the narrative he gives them. Conservatives on television spend so much time trying to correct the individual lies of the media and left that they don’t bother actually challenging the premises and narratives that those outfits create. Andrew Breitbart has started a media war to change that and as this interview demonstrates, it’s working.
I never understood why Republicans rarely fight back against the media like Breitbart did. Everyone knows that the media is overwhelmingly liberal and biased against conservatives, so what do Republicans think they accomplish by trying to be nice and not pointing that out? They legitimize the bias. One of the things that Bashir attacked Breitbart for was admitting he was strongly influenced by Rush Limbaugh, considering in Bashir’s mind Limbaugh is clearly a racist (as I am sure he believes most conservatives are). This is especially ironic since Breitbart explains in his book that this is exactly the way he thought of Limbaugh before he bothered listening to him. Furthermore, Rush is still the most listened to political personality in the country and has influenced almost every politically active conservative in one way or another. In his book, Breitbart refers to Limbaugh and others like Dennis Prager as professors who educated him in various aspects of political realities and Democratic alliances. This is true for many conservatives, but what I think Andrew Breitbart is unaware of is that he has now reached professor status and is teaching a class called “fighting back”; One that every Republican and Conservative should be required to take.
For those that are just waking up to the bias in media, academia, and culture it can be a bit disheartening and overwhelming. However, I urge you to look at it in a different way. From Ronald Reagan through the 2010 election, conservatives have been scoring quite a few points in the last 30 years; now just imagine what the score will be when we even the playing field. If we continue to fight back and take a cue from leaders like Andrew Breitbart, we are going to do just that.
The interesting part of the interview:
Update: Newsbusters did a post about this: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/04/20/breitbart-bashir-youre-insinuating-im-racist-which-what-msnbc-does-co?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
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