Breitbart.
You know, Andrew Breitbart, the dude who sponsored the heavily edited ACORN "pimp" videos by James O'Keefe which eventually brought down the organization?
The guy who introduced keynote speaker Sara Palin at the Tea Party convention in Nashville TN?
The Matt Drudge protégé who has brought us such illustrious sleezy conservative websites as Breitbart.com, bigGovernment.com, and BigJournalism.com?
Well, according to TPM, Breitbart was behind the incident of attack journalism against Representative Bob Ethridge (D-NC) as has been widely reported across the conservative biosphere. There have been diaries here attempting to paint Etheridge in a negative light for his response. He snapped, pushed the two "journalists" around a bit, demanding to know their names. None of these diaries have brushed upon the point that this is just one example of a new media phenomenon in which so-called journalists stalk politicians, ask them questions that will make them look bad no matter how they answer (Have you quit beating your wife yet Mr. Etheridge?) and record them when they finally snap or slip up.
This new form of attack journalism is insidious in that it forces any targeted public servant who is remotely human into reacting to the stress of constant badgering like most human beings eventually will and slip up, snap and give the "journalists" what they are going after: 30 seconds of a public official acting crazy. The net result is that governmental participation is reduced to only the most media savvy of weasels who may seldom show glimpses of humanity but sure look good on TV.
Etheridge has apologized. This should not be seen as an admission of guilt. ACORN apologized for the "pimp" videos which came from the same source and turned out to be false. It's a PR move, not a confession of moral culpability.
Anyway, it's late, I'm tired, and I've been bitching about this goddamn video all day and how it's got Breitbart's smell all over. I'm just glad to see some confirmation from another source before going to bed.
I'm not going to link to the video, but it's available through plenty of the links I've given. When you watch it, remember these things:
- We have no idea what went on for the 15 minutes or so before filming started.
- The video has been edited. There's approximatively four seconds of footage missing from the middle of the "action."
- The participants have removed their faces from the video. Why would they do that? Why would they fear being identified if they had done nothing wrong?
- This video came from the same source as the hoax ACORN attack videos.
ETA:
Thanks to MTmofo, here's a WaPo blog from David Weigal further connecting the dots.