Big Peace took less than a day to start driving the Left up the wall and jumping the shark, which is probably exactly what Andrew Breitbart had in mind in the first place. But if you can get beyond their dreary predictability, these attacks do serve an important purpose – they illustrate exactly why sites like Big Peace are so necessary.
No review of lefty anklebiting would be complete without a hat tip to the nonentity task force otherwise known as Media Matters. Some guy there named Matt Gertz started things off by chiming in on Day One about how – I’m paraphrasing just a bit – Andrew Breitbart and Big Peace editor Frank Gaffney are the unholy spawn of a three-way between Glenn Beck, Mussolini and Satan himself.
Gertz called Breitbart a “liar,” which must be true because “liar” is documented by a hyperlink to yet another Media Matters piece, which itself boils down to the argument that ACORN’s eager assistance, on multiple occasions in multiple locations, to people representing themselves as trying to traffic in child prostitutes, really wasn’t immoral because the journalist who caught them on tape was not wearing a sufficiently flamboyant pimp hat.
Gertz also asserted that the “Big” sites have some sort of pro-birther agenda; I must have missed Andrew Breitbart’s memo. But hey, why let facts obstruct a good meme?
Now, I tried to find Gertz’s bio on the Media Matters website so I could compare it to Frank Gaffney’s formidable resume. I couldn’t find it. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough. Maybe I just didn’t care enough. But I did find a Media Matters donations link, and I even got a donation pop-up ad – what, did Soros spend all his petty cash on his drugs-for-everybody scheme?
Regardless, I was disappointed – I was expecting to be blown away by the sterling foreign policy credentials you know that the “Deputy Editorial Director, Media Matters for America” must possess. I did find his locked Twitter profile, though – I’m assuming, by process of elimination in my regressive gender-normative way, that Matt Gertz is not the redheaded woman in the profile picture. He must therefore be the one that looks like SNL’s Pat.
Another lefty trying to take a piece out of Big Peace is Conor Friedersdorf of something called True/Slant. He’s gone after Breitbart before. Friedersdorf’s post repeats Breitbart’s Big Peace mission statement, and then sternly – and kind of prissily – warns:
Note that Mr. Breitbart doesn’t say he is launching a site to motivate the conservative base, or that he’ll publish propaganda so long as it serves conservative ends, or that the audience should treat the content on Big Peace as entertainment more than journalism — on the contrary, he is promising that Big Peace “will not be an outlet for false information or propaganda.”
He should be held to those standards.
Conor
And Conor Friedersdorf is clearly the one to enforce those exacting standards. After all, as his – surprise – Huffington Post bio reports, he
is a journalist who splits his time between New York City and California. He formerly worked for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group as a reporter, blogger and columnist, and now attends New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in the Department of Journalism.
To be fair, this may not be a complete biography. He might have since graduated from reporter school.
But it’s clear that he learned well the tactics, techniques and procedures of the mainstream media machine at the NYUGSOASDOJ. He must have gotten an “A” in “Change the Subject” because that’s his default play. Friedersdorf’s thesis is that Big Peace can’t be trusted because – wait for it – the ACORN story was a giant lie and Breitbart’s failure to scrub it from the Big Government archives demonstrates a commitment to spreading Goebbelsesque disinformation. Or something like that.
Well, Friedersdorf does concede that, “Andrew Breitbart is convinced that ACORN was irredeemably corrupt — in all likelihood he is right about that.” However, according to Friedersdorf, Breitbart is still somehow obligated by some amorphous interpretation of journalistic morality to stop talking about it. His reasoning – and this is convoluted, so stick with me – is that one of the guys at one of the several ACORN offices where the workers were more than happy to help the pretend child sex slavers now claims that he “pretended to be willing to help them out only so he could gather information, which he quickly turned over to police, expressing concern about the possibility of human trafficking.”
Even the most conservative media critic might be surprised to find that the “New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Journalism” teaches its students not only to buy into the “I was just playing along to help the cops” excuse but that they are morally compelled to do so.
Now the facts of the ACORN scoop are well-established. Larry O’Connor has already taken their Mr. Vera: Unfairly Victimized Vigilante for Justice meme apart in Big Journalism. Mr. Vera gave a statement to the police – nine days later. And he did call his cousin, who worked for the police department, earlier – and left a voicemail message. Last time I checked, San Diego had 911.
Maybe at the “New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Journalism” this story counts as conclusive exculpatory evidence. In my world, offering up a tale like that would be a great way to get the jury rolling around on the floor of the box in hysterics.
Friedersdorf, the journalist, also cites the conclusion set forth in a California Attorney General’s report as the final word on the subject – a report that concludes that: “Although highly inappropriate, the evidence does not show that the ACORN employees in California violated state criminal laws.” In a press release, California Attorney General – and liberal Democratic gubernatorial candidate – Jerry Brown conceded that “A few ACORN members exhibited terrible judgment and highly inappropriate behavior in videotapes obtained in the investigation, but they didn’t commit prosecutable crimes in California.”
So, to summarize, journalist Friedersdorf thinks that Breitbart is morally obligated to flush the ACORN story down the memory hole because an ACORN worker– video taped taking actions that a reasonable person can easily conclude appeared to be rendering assistance to a fake pimp and hooker in their child sex business — made dubious claims that he was really a mole, and also because a government organization run by a guy supported by ACORN only found such activity “highly inappropriate” instead of outright criminal.
Apparently, besides teaching its students to accept excuses, “New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Journalism” also teaches its students to never doubt a governmental agency. Well, at least one run by a liberal.
And apparently, it also teaches that the use of hidden cameras by journalists is an example of a “moral code” that holds that “the end justifies the means.” Again, this only seems to apply when the “victim” is a favorite of liberals. Still, when it comes to revealing that a major liberal organization is willing to assist what its employees believe to be child sex traffickers, I think most of us can comfortably conclude that the “means” of surreptitious videotaping amply justifies the “end” of revealing their intrinsic scumminess.
It’s like a teenager confronted about her journal entries chronicling her pot smoking, pill popping and promiscuity, screaming: “I can’t believe you violated my privacy by reading my diary!” Yeah, ACORN is the real victim.
Friedersdorf’s critique varies between alternately imposing double standards and no standards at all. If that’s the best this product of the “New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Journalism” has to offer, then the rationale for Big Peace and its Big Brethren is clear. You just can’t trust a mainstream media that creates a moral framework requiring unequivocal acceptance of any evidence, no matter the source, that supports the liberal paradigm.
The good news is that Big Peace will almost certainly exceed the standards for morality and journalistic integrity that Friedersdorf seemed to have learned at the “New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Journalism.” All it has to do is have a tiniest iota of morality and journalistic integrity and Big Peace will be far ahead of its mainstream competition.