Jon Lovitz used to have a character on Saturday Night live known a the "pathological liar." He would simply make up things to impress his associates and, as he settled on the perfect deceit, would exclaim, "Yeah, that's the ticket."
Andrew Breitbart has taken this notion to new levels. His capacity for dishonesty is boundless and entirely devoid of shame. The latest episode in his recurring series of video lie-fests takes place at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. The video posted at his BigGovernment blog shows a professor and a guest lecturer engaged in a discussion that includes statements that imply they are advocating violence on behalf of labor interests. "Yeah, that's the ticket." The only problem with this expose is that, like just about everything else Breitbart does, it isn't true.
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Judy Ancel, Director of Labor Studies at UMKC, is the professor in the video. She responded to Breitbart's smear in an email with several examples of how Breitbart fiddled with the content to deliberately convey a meaning that did not exist in reality. For instance, she writes...
Breitbart is a master of taking quotes out of context, deletion of what doesn't serve his purpose, and remixing to achieve totally different meaning. For example he has me saying:
o Breitbart's version: "Violence is a tactic and it's to be used when it's the appropriate tactic."
o The real version: After students had watched a film on the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers' Strike and the assassination of Martin Luther King, they were discussing nonviolence. I said, "One guy in the film. . . said 'violence is a tactic, and it's to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.'. . . " The class proceeded to discuss and debate this.
It is apparent that Ancel was quoting somebody in the film, not expressing her own views. This is typical of Breitbart and his ilk. It is the point I was making when I posted this video of Glenn Beck admitting that he idolizes Adolf Hitler:
Media Matters has some of the obviously manipulated video as well as the uncut versions that reveal Breitbart's purposeful deception.
This project has all the earmarks of Breitbart's modus operandi. It is precisely what he did to Shirley Sherrod. It is the very same tactics he used against ACORN, along with his protege, James O'Keefe. However, there are no credits for the video other than the name "Insurgent Visuals." It's odd that no one would want to take credit for what they must regard as a brilliant piece of investigative journalism.
However, after some investigation of my own, I discovered that Insurgent Visuals has a web site. Surely there would be some indication of who was responsible for this story. Nope. Just a short statement on their "About" page saying "We are a small collective of motivated political actionists intent on changing the world." They are also intent on hiding their identity.
So I continued my investigation and discovered that Insurgent Visuals also had at one time a blog at BlogSpot. The blog was no longer available, but I was able to access it via Google's cache. Once there I noticed that the blog's contributors were Bruce Bronson, and some guy named --- James O'Keefe! Who'da thunk it? So O'Keefe, a well-known lying video manipulator may have had an invisible hand in Breitbart's new anonymous smear campaign. He's certainly the guy I would call if I wanted to produce a phony videotaped assault on someone.
Prof. Ancel's response to the video is worth reading in full. It outlines the dishonesty that Breitbart perpetuated as well as her outrage at having the privacy of her students violated and the forum for free expression in the classroom replaced with a chilling mood of fear and distrust. You can read the email in full here.