In case you were looking for more dimwitted, low-rent cardboard cut-ups, Riley Waggaman at Wonkette generously shares the news that “Breitbart Will Save Scott Walker From Ordinary Working Americans!“:
WHO WILL RESCUE SCOTT WALKER FROM ALL THOSE PEOPLE STANDING AROUND PEACEFULLY?… (Haha, we imagine that Scott Walker is probably just relaxing quietly at home, maybe even masturbating to his favorite Brooks Brothers catalog, the one with the dolphin tessellation neckties and fancy springtime Cashmere Depends or whatever.) Maybe that John Galt guy will pop out of a cake and save Scott Walker and Free Enterprise from the evil unions? (Sadly, no. John Galt is just a fictional rapist from one of Ayn Rand’s horror stories, used during the CIA’s MK-ULTRA mind experiments to give horrible nightmares to small children and woodland creatures.) Uh, how about that drunken oaf, “Andrew Breitbart”? Maybe he has a fake YouTube video that proves Wisconsin public school teachers are racist against white farmers? That or something equally retarded, yes!
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Conservative wingnut support group “American Majority” is hosting a Freedom counter-rally tomorrow in Madison! And Andrew Breitbart will be there, along with, well …. read for yourself:
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American Majority has set up an “I Stand With Scott Walker Rally” Facebook page to spread the word, and by 1 o’clock Friday, 1100 people had replied and said they were planning to descend on Madison. And if they and others do flock to the state capital, Madison could well become a media circus. Conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart will be headlining the tea party rally, along with Gateway Pundit blogger Jim Hoft, who recently scoffed at the Egyptian pro-democracy uprising. (Hoft also blamed CBS News reporter Lara Logan’s “liberal belief system” for her sexual assault in Egypt.) Recently added: potential GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain. And there may also be a cameo appearance by Joe “The Plumber” Wurtzelbacher, who tweeted Friday morning that he he was headed to Madison to “do some interviews.”…
I know this blog does not have the google-rank-changing abilities of a Dan Savage, and yet I would like to propose a modest addition to our modern vocabulary: From this day forward, a breitbart is a turd in the wrong place. As in:
“Damn, the dog just left a huge, stinking breitbart on the living room carpet! I told you not to feed him chili!”
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“Who left a breitbart in your cheerios?”
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“Everybody check your soles — smells like someone stepped in a breitbart.”
gbear
That idea sucks breitbart.
Spaghetti Lee
The Wisconsin Governor’s Office is full of breitbarts.
The Dangerman
Too many bratwursts can lead to an unfortunate breitbart.
fasteddie9318
How is it possible that Bill Maher has a fucking CNBC pundit on his panel who doesn’t fucking know how marginal tax rates work? Is everybody on that entire network a total drooling moron?
Allan
If you’re in Madison tomorrow, expect Breitbart and his minions to shove a video camera in your face and try to provoke you into saying things that make “progressives” look bad.
Don’t give them any footage they can use.
Instead, ask them any or all of these questions, over and over, until they go away.
1. Did James O’Keefe have dildos and handcuffs onboard the yacht because he planned to rape CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau?
2. Do you have any comment on Shirley Sherrod’s libel suit against Andrew Breitbart?
3. When will you release all the raw video and audio captured surreptitiously in ACORN offices to independent investigators?
Disco
Whatever your position on this issue, I think we can all agree that Ed Schultz is an insufferable fuckface.
!! ON WISCONSIN !!
MikeJ
@fasteddie9318: SATSQ.
Spaghetti Lee
@Allan:
I’m not going to be there, but I’m pretty worried. Breitbart and his jackass toadies may be more full of shit than any other group on the planet, but they know how to raise a ruckus and they know how to make people look bad. I’m expecting the weekend to not pass without some ginned up scandal courtesy of Breitbart that the mainstream media will latch on to. I’m not hoping for it, but I’m expecting it. All the “never again”s about Breitbart from the MSM after he punked them for a third time with the Sherrod story, well, that’s something else I’m hoping for but not expecting.
gbear
What a fucking whore. No way is he going to put himself in a position where protesters can mess up his camera time. I hope he’s accosted by an army of protesters waving plungers.
freelancer
@Disco:
I got shouted down for expressing this earlier today. There were a few people agreeing with me, but one guy just blamed lack of liberal unity on me. Excuse me, but my loyalty is not dogmatic.
Pick your heroes, folks. Schultz is kind of the bottom of the barrel amongst available liberal figures out there to choose from.
asiangrrlMN
@Allan: Agreed. As satisfying as it would be to punch Breitbart, your strategy really is the best.
Breitbart. He really is a misplaced turd.
@freelancer: Well, I won’t shout you down because I agree. I cannot stand him. He’s bombastic and loud and not very knowledgeable, and he’s not an honest broker.
@gbear: Yes! But is that too obscure for the masses?
gbear
@Allan: Ooh. A crowd of people chanting ‘SHIR-LEY SHER-ROD!’ would be pretty cool.
Allan
And if Jesse Watters, stalker from the Billo show, turns out, ask questions about Loofahs and falafels until he shuts off the camera.
beltane
@gbear: The plunger theme would work with the whole lot of them, not just JTP. He’s just a fake plumber, the rest of them are authentic turds.
dopealope
Damn it !!! Who left the Breitbart in the punch bowl?
shano
I always take my breitbart bag when I walk my dog in town.
kindness
I think progressives should all come packing. No! I don’t mean a gun. I mean bring loofas & a poster with Bill O’Reiley & the woman who beat the pants off him in court, Andrea Mackris. And when someone with a camera asks you about it tell them all about Bill O’Reilly losing big time.
That or dress up as Senator Vitter in diapers. Your choice.
gbear
@asiangrrlMN: Even if it was too obscure, it might piss off Breitbag enough for him to loose his cool. It would be a fitting and peaceful response to his presense.
Roy G
Imagine the recursive fun of giving Breitbart a Cleveland breitbart.
MikeJ
@freelancer: I’ve never actually spoken to anyone who liked Ed.
Spaghetti Lee
@MikeJ:
I do. And while I can certainly get why he might not be someone’s style, I don’t get some of the hate I hear.
BlueMonkeh
I STAND WITH ANDREA MACKRIS!!!!!
I STAND WITH SHIRLEY SHERROD!!!!!!
Who took a breitbart on my lawn?
Ed’s a blowhard, but I did enjoy him commenting on the fat ass of Rush being wrapped in a flag. (As if there’s a flag big enough for that.)
sukabi
@gbear: from what I’ve seen, when someone shoves a camera in his face and starts asking questions he’s pretty quick to blow… wouldn’t take much to set him off… so questions about why he purposefully pushed O’Keefe’s doctored ACORN videos, his doctored videos of Sherrod and this latest PP video scam… question his credibility and ask him why he’s peddling lies.
jwb
@Spaghetti Lee: Someone should make sure that Breitbart is shadowed by a film crew documenting everything that he is doing.
Spaghetti Lee
@sukabi:
Wasn’t he the guy who started screaming from a hotel balcony at a bunch of schoolchildren because he thought they were chanting pro-Obama slogans and it was actually something about Sudan?
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@freelancer: Google says:
?
MikeJ
@Spaghetti Lee: I hate him because it appears some idiot said, “We need a Rush on the left.” Rush isn’t just wrong, he’s unconcerned with facts. He’s only concerned with waving his team’s flag. Why would I want somebody like that on my side?
Lancelot Link
@Spaghetti Lee: He was photographed giving the finger to a protest against child soldiers in Africa.
Ash Can
I have to wonder how many people will actually show up in support of these shitheels. A thousand people on Facebook is one thing, but actually getting off one’s fat ass and hauling said ass in to downtown Madison is something else entirely. And even if all 1,100 Facebook patriots do show, they’d still be dwarfed by the crowds that have demonstrated against Walker. And then there’s also the issue of these assfaces coming in from out of state, which should truly endear them to the folks in Madison.
Let them rally. All they’ll do is make themselves look bad.
Spaghetti Lee
@MikeJ:
Can you point out something he said non-factual, that you feel he said simply to make Democrats look good?
M-Pop
@Allan: I so liked your comment that I ended up quoting it on DKos – hope that was alright!
asiangrrlMN
@gbear: Yes. This is true. Anything that gets under his thin skin is aces with me.
@Spaghetti Lee: Kinda. There were people protesting the war, and he thought it was the Iraq war (because that’s the only war there is), and he flipped them the bird. It turned out they were protesting child soldiers in a completely different war.
And, I don’t hate Schultz. I just think he’s a pompous, uneducated, opinionated hack who is sloppy with facts.
freelancer
@Spaghetti Lee:
The hate is because his show is uninformative and it has the pageantry of a Pep Rally produced by an angry teenager. You learn literally nothing from Ed Schultz when you watch his show. He starts it off
Thanks, dude. Great News Show. I’ve learned so much. Really. Don’t break your wrist patting yourself on the back.
Ed Schultz combines the mindless, pandering jingoism of Fox News with the inanity of CNN’s multimedia strategy. Conclusion: Ed is an insufferable fuckface.
M-Pop
@Spaghetti Lee: @MikeJ: I have to agree with Spaghetti Lee – Ed may be shouty at times but I’ve never heard him stretch the truth. Even Rachel Maddow praised his on-the-ground reporting of the protests in Madison on her show last night. I respect her opinion and don’t think she would compliment him if she didn’t mean it.
Madeline
Speaking of DKos, this is perfect. Carpet Badgers. Nice.
Nicole
I’m catching the replay of Real Time and that woman from CNBC makes me want to breitbart all over the TV screen.
Oh, shoot. I just used it as a verb.
Spaghetti Lee
@freelancer:
I think it’s supposed to be a pep rally, and it’s supposed to be angry. The left needs more people out there willing to go out and get angry. The right has them in spades, and that’s why they own everything. So he’s a bit of a cheerleader. So what? If we’re going to reject every cheerleader because they’re somehow beneath us, we get crushed.
It takes all types to build a working political movement. You need behind-the-scenes wonks and thinkers, you need GOTV/on-the-streets workers, and you also need attack dogs. Schultz plays that role and I don’t begrudge him for it.
Spaghetti Lee
@Madeline:
Ooh, how about “Cheese product”, or “Non-dairy cheese”?
Omnes Omnibus
@M-Pop:I am not a huge Ed fan, but I enjoyed the show tonight. The fact that I live six blocks from the Capitol, so it felt like it was in my backyard may have been a factor.
Omnes Omnibus
Has BJ gone slow or is Scott Walker cutting off communications to the outside world?
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: Running fine here. Break out the shortwave if the oppression continues. Vive le revolution de fromage!
catpal
@freelancer: disagree.
Ed Schultz is someone who believes in supporting real laborers in the US – and not afraid to say that.
He was one of few media people who has championed for the over 99ers, who are getting screwed after losing Unemployment benefits – and many are too old to be hired into decent paying jobs.
No one else is trying to help them.
junebug
@Spaghetti Lee: yes
M-Pop
@Omnes Omnibus: Feel you. I’m not a big Ed fan, either, but the fact that he’s a high-profile talking head in the thick of it in Madison when I haven’t seen ‘boo’ from any other large news being is saying a lot for how badly we need this support from the press — and, yes, I am a cheesehead in spirit this week so can include myself in the “we” part ;)
sukabi
@Spaghetti Lee: yes.
Sentient Puddle
I haz a sad over Bingaman retiring. For one, he was one of the good ones in the Senate. For two, I was born a little after he took office, and moved out from New Mexico a little before Domenici retired, so all my life in the state, I was represented by the same two guys. It’s weird to think that in 2013, neither of those guys will be in office anymore.
Sure as hell hope Heinrich runs though. That’d be damn awesome.
freelancer
@Spaghetti Lee:
An attack dog that spent the hour highlighting protesters we’ve seen all day long in the MSM. It’s good that the media (from what I can tell) is there covering it, they should be. But instead of walking a rope line of protesters interviewing them like Al Roker on the Today Show, you take your camera and your sound guy, and a producer and you go out and you find a Republican official or someone willing to support the GOP position in Madison, and you stick the camera in their face and you make them explain what they’re doing. Make them own it. That’s being an attack dog. I just saw none of that either tonight or last night, just Ed reveling in the spectacle of it all. Sure, he had some choice words for the GOP, but he has the platform to MAKE news, as an activist, like you’re suggesting he should do, and all he does with it is pump up an already pumped up crowd? He’s not a journalist, he’s a propagandist for Team Liberal.
Yutsano
@Sentient Puddle: Any reason why Richardson wouldn’t step in here? Plus from what I understand the New Mexico Dem bench is pretty deep. I think the wingers thinking easy pick-up might get disappointed here.
Spaghetti Lee
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/19/us/politics/19states.html?pagewanted=2&hp
For example, here’s the NYT’s latest article on Wisconsin. Not a word about Walker’s budget flim-flammery, and not a word about him refusing to leave collective bargaining alone even after the unions said they would take cuts. They’ve had a few days to catch up to this now.
Is anyone else beyond the leftosphere even saying these things aside from Schultz? I haven’t seen anyone.
Spaghetti Lee
@freelancer:
There’s that word “propagandist”. That implies someone willing to lie, but you haven’t actually pointed out an example of him lying. Loud, yes, blustery, yes, maybe a little boorish and self-centered, that could certainly be argued. But a liar? What exactly is he lying about?
M-Pop
@freelancer: I have to disagree. I was talking to my mom- and dad-in-law this afternoon, and they knew nothing about the protests in Wisconsin, and they’re from Minnesota. They read the local paper and listen to the local radio news and that’s it. The press coverage has been abysmal and if they tune into MSNBC tonight because I said that was one of the networks covering it, they might understand the impact of this news.
gbear
I watched Ed for the first time last night after Rachel’s praise. I’m glad he was in Madison making big noise about the big picture (efforts to squash the labor movement in America), but I didn’t like that every time he’d ask someone a question, he’d supply his own answer before the interviewee could get a word out. He did it with almost every protester he spoke with.
That said, I will once again say that I’m glad he was there. No one else is giving this as much air time as Ed.
Sentient Puddle
@Yutsano: Richardson left office in deeply negative territory. I don’t exactly get why, but at least for the near future, he’s too politically toxic to run for anything.
But yeah, the Dem bench is strong in the state and the Republican bench is weak. At the moment, it sounds like the only chance Republicans would have to flip the seat is if Gary Johnson ran for it instead of president, but even then I’d be a little dubious of the prospects because he stayed almost entirely out of the limelight after leaving office in 2003.
Ash Can
Something interesting I came across via the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: the reports of Wisconsin actually having a budget surplus are false, according to PolitiFact, an outfit for which I have a great deal of respect. Apparently the memo that gave rise to this belief was worded in a confusing manner, but the fact evidently is that yes, there is a deficit — although, obviously, what Walker’s doing isn’t the way to go about fixing it.
PS: Someone, on one of these threads, commented that the reason the GOP is making such an effort to go after the unions is that the unions are the only consistent big-money donor the Dems have, and if the unions can be busted, then, unlike the GOP, the Dems will have no Citizens United angels to make ads for them. I think that analysis makes perfect sense, and it makes the unions more important than ever these days.
Spaghetti Lee
@Ash Can:
Huh. Well, I think that doesn’t change the fact that someone who goes around talking about fiscal responsibility shouldn’t be cutting taxes like crazy, and that there’s no reason for Walker to be gutting workers’ rights in what’s supposed to be a budget repair bill. That’s the main thrust here.
freelancer
@Spaghetti Lee:
beyond the leftophere…like the web? In that case you have pretty much the entire MSNBC primetime lineup, including Schultz, saying these things. On the web, you have Wisconsin local papers saying it, you have Huffpo (blech), TPM, The Nation, Steve Benen, Charles Johnson, even cudlip ED Kain!
As to Schultz “lying”, I haven’t seen him state anything that is actually counter-factual in the two shows I’ve watched him recently, however, one doesn’t need to be a liar to be regarded as a propagandist. MikeJ said it upthread:
Chad N Freude
Fox News will undoubtedly show footage of a million people on the DC mall as an image of the overwhelming turnout.
Pink Snapdragon
@Omnes Omnibus: I was a UW undergraduate during the anti-Viet Nam war rallies. This all brings back memories. As does seeing King St. again in the videos. After law school, I spent a number of years working for DPI in the GEF 3 building. Yes, I was indeed one of those unionized government lawyers – and very proud of it too.
Spaghetti Lee
@freelancer:
I suppose what I meant was, are ABC/CNN/CBS/NYT/etc. saying it? I don’t think they are, and I think in terms of reach and influence, MSNBC is closer to that level than to Steve Benen or TPM, whom I both love.
And really…comparing someone to Rush Limbaugh is just a no-go for me. Limbaugh is a singularly vile, evil, disgusting individual. Ed Schultz has done nothing so vile as to deserve that comparison.
And MikeJ said that Ed is like Rush because he’s “unconcerned with facts”, but you don’t think he’s said anything counterfactual these last few days. So do you agree with MikeJ or not?
freelancer
@M-Pop:
If this is the case, and I could be completely in my own bubble about media coverage, seeing as how I don’t have cable, don’t get the local paper delivered, and get news generally through RSS which I select what goes in and what doesn’t, then he is doing a service by being there. He’s holding a spotlight on something that corporate media could just be ignoring because they don’t like the idea of popular uprising against business encroachment spreading. So good for him on that score, I just thought it was being more widely covered than it probably actually is.
He’s still an insufferable fuckface though.
gbear
@freelancer:
And you’ll get the same old talking points over and over and over. That’s how they’ll explain what they’re doing. They’ll never hear the question the way you want them to answer it and they’ll stick to a version of their story even if you call them out as liars.
The best interviews I’ve seen are the ones where the backstory is revealed, not the ones talking to republican officials.
feebog
Ed Schultz may be bombastic. He may be a cheerleader instead of a jounalist. But to compare him to Limbaugh is ridiculous. Limbaugh is a congential liar. Schultz speaks truth to power, maybe not the way you want to hear it, but truth never the less.
gbear
This has been a great resource for backstory.
freelancer
@Spaghetti Lee:
The comparison to Rush was not one I made, but in Mike’s quote he said “It’s like some idiot said ‘We need a Rush, but for the left’.”
Basically we need a loud, bombastic, pandering, flag waver who will trumpet appeals to ideology and appeals to patriotism as a priority over using facts to make his arguments. In that tactical sense alone, he shares much with Rush. When he does report facts, he doesn’t lie, but the point I’m making is that his “reporting” isn’t so much informative as it is a push button approach to liberals’ emotions. It’s not fact-driven, it’s lizard-brain-driven politics, and there’s enough of that in America, and the thought of my side trying to win people over by sinking to that level of debate makes me ill. Ed is doing a good job highlighting the issues, but not a good job of informing on the issues.
Amir_Khalid
Has anyone here seen this Swampland post from Joe Klein? He doesn’t seem to get that what’s going on here is union-busting, not just a re-balancing of power between an employer and labor.
Spaghetti Lee
@freelancer:
That’s certainly an understandable opinion to have, and I can see why someone concerned with honest journalism would have it. Personally, I disagree, because if we as liberals are afraid to get our hands dirty occasionally, then it won’t matter whether our journalists are fact-driven or emotion-driven, because liberalism as an institution with any sort of importance will quickly cease to exist.
asiangrrlMN
@Amir_Khalid: Well, now that you’ve given me the shorter, I don’t have to read it. Thanks!
M-Pop
@freelancer: Well, I’m like you, then, because I get most of my news online – my in-laws are in their 80’s and set in their ways, news-wise, which is why I was really surprised when they showed surprise about the WI protests. You and I are both in a bubble, I guess.
Like I said upthread, I’m not an Ed fan, but I think he’s doing a lot more than a lot of news sources right now. But I don’t think he’s an awful human being, like Rush Limbaugh.
Yutsano
@Sentient Puddle: Only thing that really occurs to me that would have caused that was his affairs. But I didn’t think he had suffered such a big political blowback for that. It wasn’t because of the Clenis, unless you consider he wholeheartedly backed Obama. It might be worth sussing out.
Also: isn’t there a top female Dem who might be in line for this? I can’t think of he name but I thought there was.
The Bobs
Scott Walker became Governor of Wisconsin and left a big, steaming Breitbart on it.
eemom
I don’t give a shit about breitfart OR Schultz.
I am however deeply interested in what’s happening in Wisconsin, cuz it means maybe I don’t live in a nation composed ENTIRELY of idiots who bend over to get fucked again by the same lying fucktards who fucked them over the last eleventy-zillion times, after all.
Mark S.
@Amir_Khalid:
Yeah, I just saw that and was considering linking to it. Joke Line leaves out a few rather pertinent facts. I also enjoyed this particular stupidity:
Jesus, how do you even respond to such a stupid statement?
asiangrrlMN
@Mark S.: With a rusty pitchfork.
Nicole
@Ash Can: That was an interesting read; thanks for it. I hate misinformation on my side every bit as much as on the other side. That’ll keep me from running my mouth off with the wrong information, which I do enough as is.
It’s still pretty clear that Walker’s agenda isn’t the budget; it’s busting the union. As Spaghetti Lee said.
Nicole
@Mark S.: One of the commenters, I think, responded, with basically, the union is supposed to negotiate for wages and working conditions with its employer, so what, the state doesn’t count as an employer?
Though that comment might have been after a Slate article. There have been a lot of people trying to fight against the tide of stupid today.
Allan
@Amir_Khalid:
I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t get that.
Sentient Puddle
@Yutsano: To my knowledge, his approval ratings are due to (a) that controversy when he was nominated for Secretary of Commerce that was ultimately dropped, and (b) the state budget shortfall. So I’d agree that the approval ratings aren’t exactly fair, but I don’t think there’s much of a chance that he could rehabilitate himself so soon unless Susana Martinez fucks up the budget even worse.
As for the potential female candidate, the one I’ve heard is Diane Denish, who lost to Martinez. I don’t know how she wore on the electorate last year, so I couldn’t make a guess as to how exactly how viable she’d be. But I’d imagine she’d be at least a reasonably good candidate. Which again, says that Dems have good bench in the state.
lol
@Sentient Puddle:
Denish had *terrible* ads. And since Martinez had fantastic ones, I imagine that cost her more than a few points…. though she would have probably lost anyways given the year it was.
Violet
Dan Savage held a contest to decide the Santorum definition. He took suggestions from readers and then a vote was held. I think we should do the same thing here for Breitbart.
Yutsano
@Violet: Nice name drop, especially since Dan’s eyeballs grace these pages. I suppose if we suggested it a collaboration is a definite possibility.
Violet
@Yutsano:
Oh! I didn’t mean to name drop. Was just following on what AL had written in the original post. But yeah, since he’s a reader and all, I wonder if he would be interested in collaborating. His reader have the most interesting life experiences to drawn on for such things.
Angry Black Lady
@Allan: hahahahahaha, FTW.
ETA: laughing because i’m really friggin’ tired and i had an image of someone just saying “dildos” repeatedly in response to any question posed by the great turd himself.
jesus, i’m losing it.
morzer
@Amir_Khalid:
The list of things Joe Klein doesn’t get about modern America is infinite. The only interest in his wretched little columns is whether they are driven by ignorance, malice or both, and how much genetic material he shares with Matoko_chan.
Marc
Wisconsin is front page of the New York Times. There was a featured editorial about Walker and budget games. I also see stories on the web pages of the major networks…
So, no, this isn’t “silent” in the media across the board. It’s a big story.