Topics > Media Bias/Media War

That Breitbart Guy Is Pretty Damn Clever...

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trapeze:
...just imagine: You hire a dyed in the wool liberal to work with you on a big story. The lib is forcibly joined at the hip with you and gets to witness firsthand the incredible crap that conservatives have to put up with from libs in general and the MFM in particular. The result is this mind boggling post at PuffHo. Here is one part of it:


[blockquote]I'm in an odd position. In the last few months, I've had one foot in the left wing news stream and one foot in the right. My media duality began when conservative publisher Andrew Breitbart hired me to work with him on the Pigford 'black farmers' settlement story. I'm a pro-choice, pro-single payer, anti-war, pro-gay rights independent liberal with years of work in print and film backing those positions. Breitbart hired me to bring a different perspective to the non-partisan issue of corruption in Pigford.

Since then, I've written both here for the left-leaning Huffington Post and at Breitbart's right leaning BigGovernment.com. I've ended up reading a lot more conservative sites and dealing firsthand with a lot more conservatives than any time since I attended a high school dedicated to the principles of Ayn Rand about 30 years ago.

Unlike many on the left, I didn't view the Wisconsin battle as the end of days. I wasn't convinced that I had a dog in that hunt, in part because I think there's a strong case to be made those public employees shouldn't have the same collective bargaining rights as private sector workers -- a case made well by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who said...

(I will skip the quote because most of us have already heard it. But it's there in the linked article.)

Roosevelt's statement makes sense to me; it does seem that public employees are different than private. I'm not at all anti-union. (I've publicly supported unionizing the visual effects industry, for example.) I'm open to a good rational argument against the case FDR made but in discussions on Twitter and elsewhere, all I got in response from people on the left was anger and insults. I saw little light and felt much heat.

That tone of extreme hostility I experienced brings me back to the death threats in Wisconsin. Frankly, the bile and invective in that threat reminded me of the tone I saw directed at me from many so-called liberals because I committed the heresy of taking a different position from them on the issue of collective bargaining for public sector employees... based on something FDR said.

Is this really what liberalism has come to in 2011?[/blockquote]

Sounds like a Paul on the road to Damascus experience.

If only some of the libs could see the light.

If only some libs could be this intellectually honest.

But one lib experiencing a revelation such as this is a start.

Good work, Andrew Breitbart.

IronDioPriest:
I read that earlier this evening. Quite remarkable. It's along the same lines as the Juan Williams epiphany. Still liberal, but looking around at his friends and basically saying I want nothing to do with people like you - and they're returning the sentiment.

This Stranahan fella will be excoriated for daring to step off the farm. Eventually he'll either be shunned, or seek the warm embrace of the familiar and quiet his observations. He was both supported and pilloried in the comments. One commenter noted that his post was pushed off the bottom of the HuffPo front page list in record time.

It occurs to me that as the Left/Right; liberal/conservative war rages on, the battle-lines are being redrawn to reflect the true nature of the war, crystallizing around liberty vs. tyranny; good vs. evil. In that reorientation of ideologies, there are going to be people like Lee Stranahan who will "see the light" so to speak. Not that their core values will change, but that they will see the evil of the Left, and want no part of it. It would be to the benefit of the country for conservatives to figure out how we're going to deal with those people regarding electoral politics.

Pandora:
How would you suggest dealing with the "I'm a pro-choice, pro-single payer, anti-war, pro-gay rights" cohort re:  electoral politics?  Compromise seems to me to be out of the question, so, what does "dealing" look like?

Libertas:
I concur with Pan.  Just because this guy had his eyes open when a bunch of ideological soulmates released their dark side doesn't mean he is about to renounce his left-leaning positions and enlist in the rebellion against the Evil Empire!  I would bet dollars to doughnuts all he is really angling for is for some softer NPR on-air like tone to be introduced into the debates between left and right.  So at best, all we can hope is that he shames the left for their tone...so how does that help us?  It's not like he's going to give people on the right a get-out-of-the-tone-jail-free card!  I think the worth of the article has already passed, the left will ignore it, we have a propaganda victory saying "aha!" and that's about it.

Sectionhand:
 

If only some of the libs could see the light.

If only some libs could be this intellectually honest.

But one lib experiencing a revelation such as this is a start.

Good work, Andrew Breitbart.
[/quote]

If only some libs could be attacked by their left-wing bretheren for deviating , even slightly , from "Progressive Orthodoxy" .

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