Fool me a dozen times or more using the same damned trick, and you probably will fall for the next smear:
You may recall this video. It was the first of two posted on Big Government’s site two weeks ago alleging that UMSL Professor Don Giljum and UMKC Professor Judy Ancel were teaching impressionable young college students how to become union thugs, which they were not. I posted the unedited versions (as did Media Matters) proving that once again, the videos had been edited to give the appearance that these professors were saying something exactly opposite of that which was alleged by Breitbart and Co.
Monday UMSL published this statement absolving Giljum and Ancel of any and all wrongdoing:
The excerpts that were made public showing the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) instructor Don Giljum and students as well as the UMKC instructor and students were definitely taken out of context, with their meaning highly distorted through splicing and editing from different times within a class period and across multiple class periods.
If this were a fair and just world, these professors would receive a profuse apology from Dana Loesch, Andrew Breitbart, their respective universities, and Don Giljum would be invited to rescind his resignation with a public invitation to teach the very same class again next semester.
It just never stops.
cleek
200 years ago, Breitbart and his stable of flunkies would find themselves too busy to put out this much misleading crap, because they’d be spending their days fighting duels with the people they’d slandered.
pistols at dawn, cocksucker.
AAA Bonds
It won’t stop, either, so the left better start thinking of standard ways to respond to this, because this 25%-or-so success rate they’re having with these hits is working in their favor.
D.N. Nation
For fuck’s sake.
Dear America:
If you ever see a video put together by Breitbart or any of his hangers-on, it is fake.
Stop giving these bloated bigots the time of day.
Yours,
D.N.
Tsulagi
Breitbart putting the lie to the Bush statement they can’t be fooled again. And again. And again… There’s no Peak Fooled with these dumbasses.
Maude
Will the vid play anywhere except Fox?
I don’t know, don’t watch tv and don’t want to.
How many people in the country will even pay attention to this?
Cris (without an H)
I sort of understand that the corporate news media can’t quit Drudge, because he actually did break a story once. I really don’t understand why they keep getting punked by Breitbart/O’Keefe, who have never produced anything that wasn’t fraudulent.
Bubblegum Tate
At the very least, Breitbart should be pelted with rotten fruit nonstop whenever he is not within the confines of his home.
Stillwater
I dunno John. Not to take Brietbart’s side here, but I read that statement from the University a little differently:
balconesfault
At this stage, isn’t there a civil suit sitting out there waiting to be filed?
Legalize
Shorter Shirley Sharrod’s lawyers: Thanks!
DZ
@efgoldman:
Not to mention the White Aryan Resistance and Aryan Nations. Morris Dees is a great unsung American hero.
AAA Bonds
@Maude:
It already got UMSL and the AFL-CIO to pull Giljum out of classrooms to avoid the Fox nutwing. Damage has been done by these filth yet again.
slag
Really? Are they still doing this? And people are still falling for it? Damn. No wonder that Nigerian prince keeps ending up with people’s bank account numbers.
mellowjohn
“If this were a fair and just world, these professors would receive a profuse apology…”
bwhahahahahahahaha. you crack me up, cole.
Just Some Fuckhead
You’d think rightwingers would get tired of being lied to by their own side at some point. But I see no evidence of it yet.
SFAW
Well, maybe, except that some sugar daddy will probably keep the Foxin’ Koch-suckers from actually bearing the consequences of their actions.
I keep hoping to read about Breitbart and O’Queefe in the Ig Nobel Awards, but apparently they have someone looking out for them. Which, in itself, may finally be proof that G-d hates us.
MattF
‘Apology’ in the sense of “… it would be regrettable, in some sense, if any misinformed person misunderstood our carefully prepared and informative reports.”
Lori
IANAL, but seems like Breitbart’s defense lawyer in the Sherrod case should be bummed about this. Since there is demonstrably a long pattern of slanderous films, hopefully that puts Breitbart’s defense in a worse position. (I’m of the same opinion as @legalize)
Cris (without an H)
For some reason I always mistake his name for “Morris Day.” Which is fine, Morris Dees and the SPLC are the motherfucking Time of civil rights advocacy.
Silver Owl
Conservatives are allowed to be failures and grifters because they exist. No way will any other conservatives actually challenge those low standards and sloppy performers.
Today’s conservatives are just not capable of performing to even to a mediocre standard these days.
kdaug
“If this were a fair and just world, these professors would receive a profuse
apologysettlement in a libel suit…”Fxd.
Ash Can
The first hearing in Shirley Sherrod’s defamation lawsuit is scheduled for Friday. I wonder if Don Giljum will be watching to see how that turns out.
MikeJ
@balconesfault:
They can file, and they can even win, but there won’t be anything left to collect because Sherrod is going to own everything he ever has or will make.
beltane
It will only end when one of Breitbart’s victims has the fortitude to stand up tall and shout “Bite me!”. Like all bullies, Breitbart will melt into a puddle of tears and piss at even the thought of a fair fight. I really wish the left wasn’t so conflict averse.
Jay in Oregon
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Why should they show a whit of remorse that these events are happening because of lies and falsehoods, when they’re getting their way?
Breitbart and O’Keefe’s victims are always Teh Enemy — evil election-stealing ACORN, LIE-beral professors, union thugs — and are therefore always fair game.
balconesfault
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Over the years, I’ve ended up getting blatantly fraudulent right wing chain-mail from one friend or another. I tend to e-mail the Snopes or other article which directly debunks the fraud back to as much of the recipients list as I can reconstruct.
Rather than ever getting thanks for this, I usually tend to just find myself deleted from future mailings from said person. Which I’m not complaining about, but I know that it’s not because they’ve decided to quit circulating the same drivel.
Stillwater
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Before entering the Breitbox: You’d think rightwingers would get tired of being lied to by their own side at some point. But I see no evidence of it yet.
After Bartinizing: You’d think I would get tired of being evidence to their own side at some point. But rightwingers see no lie of it yet.
Tonal Crow
This will stop when Bitebart defames a person who objects strongly enough — and has enough cash — to hire a good lawyer to sue Bitebart for defamation, and to pursue the case through discovery (let’s see all those emails!) and on to trial.
Bullies understand one thing only: force.
quaint irene
They announced Breitbert was gonna be on NPR’s Brian Lehrer show., with his usual ‘pushing back against the left-wing media blah-blah.” Couldn’t turn the radio off fast enough. Why do they keep giving this dick any kind of forum?
Martin
Well, this is illustrative. The last time the GOP smear machine got punched, Citizens United Not Timid (C.U.N.T.) ran their case up to the Supreme Court and won. Why isn’t UM suing the fuck out of Brietbart here?
Cris (without an H)
Okay thats cool and alll but dont ever comment on my status telling me that i am wrong everrrr again.
Just Some Fuckhead
@balconesfault: I do the same thing, using Reply All if I’m on a list. I’ll also include a little bit of commentary about how my ten year old is smarter than this and then finish it up with “When you idiots gonna ask your own side to stop lying to ya?”
Then I stop getting the rightwing chain mails. I just assumed my strategy was working.
Pro tip: You generally know the people involved so it’s also a good idea to bring up their academic credentials (like noting they dropped out of high school when they were 14 and clearly haven’t gotten much smarter since) or some other real life example of how they are a complete and utter moron that really can’t rely on their own critical thinking skills.
Martin
@balconesfault: For a while, I tried a different tack. When the emails involved one or another criminal conspiracy, I would write reply to the full recipient list that this information was very troubling and serious and so I took it upon myself to contact the FBI since I hadn’t heard of an investigation yet. I talked to special agent [made up name] and he requested the contact information of the people that sent that information to me, so I gave him all of the email addresses and names from the email and they should be prepared for a followup call from him in the event they could provide more information about this crime.
I’d put as many details in as I could – what field office, etc. and then asked the list who else I should contact – state police, etc. Not only did that get me off the list, I got the impression that stopped the forwarding altogether, which was the real aim.
It’s damn fun too.
David in NY
I recommend this link, which says, “Administrators at the University of Missouri-St. Louis say they have completed a review of video footage from a controversial labor class and found that a lecturer did nothing wrong.
Further, the school said that instructor Don Giljum remains eligible to teach courses.”
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/05/10/2865307/university-exonerates-instructor.html#ixzz1M4YFtF7O
David in NY
Also from the above link:
cleek
@Cris (without an H):
glorious.
Steve M.
If this were a fair and just world, deceptively editing a video in the hopes of destroying someone’s reputation and ruining that person’s livelihood would expose Breitbart & Co. to enough multimillion-dollar libel lawsuits to put them out of business and send Lil’ Andy to the poorhouse.
David in NY
I must say, it is disturbing to see that when one looks up a controversy of this sort, the first 10 google sites are wingnut havens. Are we doing something wrong?
Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
It saddens me that David Broder is no longer with us to point out that it’s those of us who are calling Breitbart a liar who are the true liars. Well, I guess we’ll have to settle for Richard Cohen explaining why we’re just mean bullies for saying such awful things about poor Breitbart.
Ash Can
@David in NY: Good news. Thanks for that link.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
That won’t stop it either. Breitbarts are a dime-a-dozen, just like two-bit Klan Wizards. Knock one down, and another one will take his place.
It will stop when large numbers of ordinary people (A) take notice, and (B) react with horror and revulsion, to the point where these tactics become a serious reputational menace to the political movement which benefits from their activities.
I’m not holding my breath.
David in NY
@Ash Can: Yeah, somebody should look up the actual effect of the Giljum “resignation,” which was probably caused by panic and stupidity of the university, but things seem to have been righted and the university seems to have backed them up against the attacks.
All in all, this was a Breitbart fail. People are starting to catch on, if slowly and imperfectly.
WereBear
@Martin: I loooooooooooooooooove that!
Too bad my merciless heckling has driven everyone who does that away from forwarding me.
Ah well.
Walker
The student who contributed to this should be investigated for a violation of academic integrity. Even if he has already graduated, the school can hold his transcripts and deny them to future employers.
BGinCHI
Put Brian Lehrer on a while ago (NYC radio show, and always good) and he was interviewing Breitbart about his new book. I lasted about 2 minutes. I guess Brian might have taken him down, but to give that smarmy fuck the platform just seems like the wrong thing to do. Maybe I should have stayed tuned, but what did I need to hear that I didn’t already know?
Chris
@balconesfault:
I usually shoot back because I want to get deleted from the chain mailing. Works wonderfully and does wonders for my sanity.
Also, politics has become the prime reason for unfriending people on facebook.
PeakVT
@Just Some Fuckhead: If it’s in service of the tribe, the 27%-ers will approve. Truth doesn’t matter to them.
slag
@David in NY:
Don’t even get me started on this subject. It’s persistent through practically every single issue that comes up.
kc
That vicious drunken sot Breitbart is doing his damnedest to increase the national unemployment rate, one innocent person at a time.
Bobby Thomson
@Stillwater: I see what you did there.
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
Leave it to the corporate media.
Newt’s poll numbers are in the toilet with lethal negative ratings. Yet every beltway “expert” is blowing him today. Nevermind that Obama currently has an 18 pt lead vs Newt, for the broder-beltway, it’s always sunny on the GOP.
Obama leads:
Romeny by 13 pts
TPaw by 18 pts
Huntsmentum by 21 pts
Huck by 12 pts
Palin by 19 pts
Trump by 27 pts
Bachmann by 21 pts
Daniels by 18 pts
kth
@Martin: especially as Breitbart doesn’t answer reporters’ questions, nor even acknowledge their presence really, just shouts the talking points he came with repeatedly.
kc
@slag:
I have noticed this as well. If you do a quick Google for general info about any political or historical topic, you can count on the first page of being nothing but wingnut sites.
I’ve just started using ask.com instead of Google (for several reasons, not just Google’s wingnut-laden search results).
Tony J
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Insofar as I can tell they’re cool with it because while they know it’s bullshit, it’s bullshit designed to make ‘Liberals’ look bad, so they’re happy to pretend that they believe it x 11 if that’s what it takes to propel the meme and panic the mushy-middle into voting against their interests. “Politics ain’t beanbag”, “They do it too, but worse!”, etc.
I’m just waiting for the cries of “They’re politicising politics!”. That’s when we’ll know for sure that Breitbart and Co are about to be hit in the nacho-sack by a legal judgement with big money penalties.
Edit – or what PeakVT said much more concisely.
Jay in Oregon
@Tonal Crow:
Fixed…
dollared
@Lori: I’m thinking Breitbart’s lawyer is thrilled. Ka-ching! Here’s another $250k for defending this idiot, and the checks pyaing for Breitbart’s defense (which are probably coming from some Randite who inherited a Ford dealership and thinks he’s a Captain of Industry) are good and will keep coming……
General Stuck
This kind of shit pulled by wingnuts goes back at least to the Nixon era and the little turdwhackers working for CREEP, or Nixon’s reelection. But they mostly targeted other pol players in the dem party. These miscreant mistakes of nature go after symbols of liberalism conjured up in their childlike nasty little lizard brains, and pick targets or marks that are basically civilians and not in the direct political warfare arena….
khead
It seems to me it would probably be easier to just have the Kochs buy the place.
slag
@kc: You quit using Google for one of the many reasons I quit watching teevee, but sadly, neither one of us is solving the problem. And it is a problem. This is where we get our information and it’s absolutely saturated with bullshit.
MikeJ
@Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!): At least Hunstman, Daniels, Bachmann, and even TPaw can argue that they don’t have the national name recognition. There may be a bit of truth to that, but Trump, Newt, and Palin don’t have that excuse.
cleek
@slag:
it’s because they work at it.
MikeJ
@Tony J:
This is thre key word: bullshit. I know it gets tiresome hearing me pimp this book, but everyone should read, “On Bullshit” by Harry Frankfurt. He draws a line between lying, which is trying to make somebody believe something that isn’t true and bullshit, where you don’t care one way or the other about the truth value of your statements.
Ash Can
@slag:
@kc:
Say what you will about teh Google; today’s Google Doodle is simply delightful. :)
Dr. Wu
I’m curious why the University isn’t taking legal action against Breitbart.
David in NY
@slag: Are the wingnuts gaming the google system? I’ve been a skeptic about search engine optimization (SEO), but maybe they’re into it aggressively. Are they getting money to do it? Should we be doing the same? Maybe they jump on these issues faster than we do and gang up on them?
Anyone know?
Chris
@MikeJ:
Right. Whether or not Obama lied about his birth certificate is irrelevant, cause even if he hasn’t, it’s the sort of thing he would do. That kind of thing.
slag
@cleek: Not buying it. Or at least I don’t accept that as the complete explanation. I have Van Jones and Barack Obama as my only two Google News alerts (mostly out of morbid curiosity). I could do a thesis on how many absolutely insane (like beyond birther insanity) rightwing sources show up on there. A lot of blog posts without a single comment. No way are they getting that many hits from average individuals.
Jeffro
@efgoldman: ditto – that is the only way they’ll stop, unfortunately. Probably the best way we can fight it is to chip in to fund whatever legal action can be taken each time this stuff pops up.
David in NY
@cleek: Ah, I thought they must. But why don’t we? It does seem there are more wingnut websites all of a sudden — that may help, cross-linking and the like. But I don’t know anything about this.
David in NY
@slag: But is it their linking to one another that works?
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
Obot Alert
AP Poll: Obama approval rating hits 60%
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2011/05/ap-gfk_poll_obama_approval_rat.html
slag
@David in NY: That’s one element. SEO is kind of bunk and kind of not. If you want to flood the stream, it’s probably pretty useful. If you want to create an environment wherein people are actually getting what they’re looking for, it’s probably not.
As has been demonstrated over and over again, wingnuts know how to do quantity. They know absolutely nothing about quality. And on the interwebs, as in most places, quantity can obscure quality pretty easily.
BGinCHI
Exchange from MTP, 2007:
cleek
@David in NY:
yes.
for example, there is a network of wingnut blogs (some automated that just scrape and republish stuff from the other sites, i believe) that will crosslink each other on everything. i’ve stumbled into them while doing searches. it’s nothing but ads and scraped articles and wingnuts clapping each other on the back as their targets creep up Google’s results.
been trying to find it again, but i can’t remember the exact words they used to describe what they were doing.
here’s how they worked it on Digg
Joey Maloney
@SFAW:
You all better admire my wit; that was a huge pain in the ass to do on my iPad.
dollared
@General Stuck: Yes, this is exactly what McCarthyism did: attack ordinary people and deny them their livelihoods, to intimidate all other citizens. And the media cheerfully participates…
David in NY
@cleek: As I recall vaguely, Digg actually did something about this. Is that so? Is Google aware of the situation here? I’m willing to bet that their algorithm could be adapted to give less clout to such naked sites.
slag
@Joey Maloney: Your wit has definitely been admired. Good to know about the iPad frailty. Currently, I have no intention of getting one, but it’s always good to keep a running list as to why I shouldn’t
Chris
@cleek:
I noticed that system years and years ago among wingnut blogs. A bunch of the more popular individual bloggers coalesced into Pajamas Media at some point, which made the Technorati Top 100 and according to wikipedia has partnered with Breitbart.com.
Not sure who the other biggies in the blogosphere are, but that’s a major one – also the one I check to get my daily dose of what wingnuts think is going on in the world.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
ok, brietbart is an a-hole, but liberals have to stop being shamed into quitting.
calling him, and o’keiffe assholes won’t stop them, as much as being ineffective will.
Roger Moore
@MikeJ:
I would say that bullshitting is just one class of lying. It’s the same way you can be convicted of murder even if you had no intent to kill if you acted with sufficient disregard of other people’s safety. If you act with sufficient disregard for the facts, any false statement you make is a lie even if you honestly don’t know whether it’s the truth or not.
Montysano
As we sit here, Hannity and Limbaugh are working the “Vile gangsta thug rappers perform at White House” angle for all it’s worth. They’re not exactly lying, they’re just omitting huge (and relevant) aspects of the story, e.g. that Common is only slightly more gangsta than Don Knotts.
bemused
@Martin:
That’s deliciously devilish.
David in NY
@Chris: But Chris, I don’t recall that wingnuts used to dominate the google results the way they have done in the recent past. Just google “don giljum” and that’s all you get. (Though the left just may not have been following this???). Did it used to be that way?
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
I like to think that at some point in the near future, Breitbart will heap imaginary shame on a person who has a family member with a terminal illness, a nasty temper, an ability to carry through on a vendetta and no sense of squeamishness about dropping a screaming Breitbart feetfirst into a woodchipper.
I’d pay to watch that home movie – the world would then truly be a better place.
cleek
@Montysano:
bitches gotta bitch
Splitting Image
I was fortunate enough to have a history teacher back in high school who gave us a copy of that to read. That’s one of the most important things I’ve ever read, along with “Parkinson’s Law”.
RalfW
Someone’s gotta sue the pants off a few of the folks who trade in these lies. I’m no lawyer, maybe it can’t work in today’s corporatist jurisprudence, but the lie factory has to be forced to pay big cash monies to even have a chance of being stopped.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Montysano:
I recently realised not only that this particular ship had sailed, but just how far from port it had traveled, when my kids tuned the TV into the Nickelodeon Kid’s 2011 Choice Awards and I saw that Snoop Dogg was the MC.
My brief attempt at explaining to the younger generation why this would have caused white middle class parental heads to explode back in the good old days was met with blank looks of incomprehension.
The Culture Wars are over. We won. Suck it, wingnuts.
slag
@David in NY:
I actually don’t think so. The left embraced the internet much more quickly and broadly than did the right at first. But then the money got wise…
Just Some Fuckhead
@slag:
No way, the first big political constituency on the ‘net was libertarians. Which I always found a little ironic since the intertoobz were bought and paid for by gubmint dollars.
Mnemosyne
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
To be fair, Snoop has done a 180 since the old days. He used to put porn stars in his videos; now he’s doing a reality show about coaching his son’s Pop Warner football team.
slag
@Just Some Fuckhead: Hmmm…Libertarians aren’t exactly a “big” political constituency. That said, you’re correct, my use of “left” and “right” were inexact. I’ll rephrase: Republicans were late to the game but [have been buying] up a lot of the pieces once they got in.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Mnemosyne:
I know, but it still struck me as funny. Think of it this way: try to imagine this particular tableau playing out in the middle of the pages of Nixonland circa 1971, and what sort of reaction it would have provoked back then.
David in NY
@slag: @Just Some Fuckhead: I thought that the right had all the stuff until about the Iraq war days (when I started paying attention), then the left was the prevailing presence. Now, in actual real blogs and sites I’m not sure, but I might say the left was ahead or even.
But what I think is new is the right’s domination of the Google rankings, not just of hits to sites. If the uninformed want to find out about one of the running controversies, and they just go to Google, they get only the right wing view on the first page. It creates a real imbalance in information. I think that’s brand new, but am not sure.
And in any case, What Is To Be Done about it?
kc
@slag:
I know. I’m not smart enough to come up with a solution myself, but I’m open to suggestions.
Tony J
@MikeJ:
Course they don’t care. In their world of stealthy wingninja counter-revolution they’re the ‘realists’ playing the game better than the ‘Liberal Elite’ who they’re morally certain – must – have invented it. They’re smart, y’see. They know how things really work. These fine, upstanding Real Merkins wouldn’t be forced to stoop so low if ‘The Left’ hadn’t done it first, and worse!
Wingnuts, they read history, they just don’t understand it.
Mnemosyne
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Oh, yes, I know exactly what you’re saying. For some reason, this sprang to mind:
But it’s also funny that, having been born in 1969, my first thought was that Snoop’s history with porn stars was a weird combination with Nickelodeon, not that he’s a rapper or that he’s black.
I think the other side really has lost.
slag
@kc: @David in NY: I’ve become jaded on this issue, so here are my suggestions:
First, you buy up a lot of old-school media sources, mostly tabloids and celebrity gossip sites, and then you start tossing some right wing (or in this case, left wing) pablum into the mix, diligently building a broad wingnut welfare circuit along the way. Then, you buy or create a whole network, throw in some spokesmodels and scour the earth for a few missing white women cases you can exploit for every possible sordid detail that conclusively demonstrates how scary and mean the world is and how you just can’t trust certain types of people. Add a website for that network. And then you read Right Wing Noise Machine to find out what to do next.
Seriously, I don’t know how to fix it. The internet is no longer truly the wild west–it has been tamed. In the longterm, the only avenue I can see is to try and make people smarter and less fearful. But that requires healthy communities, a strong and sustainable economy, and a robust educational system. None of which we’re exactly known for in this country. So, I don’t know.
David in NY
@slag: I think you’re trying to bite off too much, but maybe I misunderstand. I’m just interested in the Google rankings on hot-button issues. They’re distorted, it seems to me. Google can probably fix that (didn’t Digg do something about the gaming of its operation?). Maybe they’ve even begun — didn’t I read about their reducing the impact of aggregator sites.
Or maybe the left sites could find a way to play that game. I don’t know.
slag
@David in NY: I understand. But the point I was driving at is that the problem you’re trying to solve is simply an arms race. And whenever you have major networks that have the power to drive a lot of traffic in the mix, this problem will exist. So, unless you have the resources to create major networks (both media and social, for that matter), you’re always going to be up against this kind of problem.
currants
@balconesfault: Yup. I think it must be uncomfortable outside the echo-chamber. While I’ll admit to being relieved not to have to run my eyes past that trash (and to not get emails from younger folks asking me why I have to wreck everything), I’m also well aware that the emails continue unabated. I’m excluded because I’m not a believer…? yee haw.
currants
@Martin: EXCELLENT! If I were still getting them I would use that strategy!
SFAW
Joey Maloney @ 78 –
Not only do I admire your wit, but I also admire that you corrected my mistake.
I also un-admire that I named the rong dam Award. Merde!