It is/was a tagline, even. Ironically, Breitbart.com may not be long for this world. From The Post:
In January 2017, Breitbart.com was flying high. Donald Trump, the candidate it had backed during the 2016 campaign, was sworn in as president. Its former executive chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, was named chief White House strategist, seemingly auguring an era of unparalleled access and influence for the far-right, anti-establishment news and commentary site.
In hindsight, it looks like it was Breitbart’s high-water mark.
The site Bannon once described as “the platform for the alt-right” has steadily tumbled from the commanding heights it occupied just 30 months ago.
Since Trump became president, monthly traffic has virtually collapsed, plummeting nearly 75 percent. Aggressive conservative competitors have zoomed past it. At the same time, it faces a double financial whammy: the loss of its biggest donor and an ad boycott launched by a liberal group that continues to erode its revenue…
[Former Breitbart spokesman Kurt] Bardella thinks the site will make it through another election cycle. But he’s not sure after that. “I think the future for them is very bleak,” he said.
Some complaints about the WaPo piece, which was authored by Paul Farhi: As you can see from the above excerpt, the article does note that the site’s own former chairman turned Trump White House chief strategist turned unwelcome hunk of unFebreezed flab encased in multiple buttoned-down shirts Steve Bannon called it “the platform for the alt-right.”
Farhi also notes that Chardonnay-soaked tampon fart Ann Coulter is a columnist for the site. From that fact, astute readers will instantly intuit that Breitbart.com must be a kind of online flophouse for wingnut charity cases who’ve been bounced out of more ongoing concerns for saying the quiet parts a little too loudly. And they’d be correct.
But Jesus, Mr. Farhi, isn’t it past time to start connecting the fucking dots for people? Describing Breitbart’s ethos as “anti-immigration, pro-economic nationalism, skepticism of multiculturalism” is like calling that thing on Trump’s head a “follicular innovation.” It’s an abomination, FFS, and Breitbart was/is a full-on racist hate site that until the election had a “black crime” tag to helpfully point its white supremacist readers to rage boner-inducing content. That’s worth mentioning, in my opinion.
Also, Farhi left out any mention of journalists from more respectable outfits who joined Breitbart.com after the election, putting all their chips on ethno-nationalism. Let’s take a short jaunt down memory lane, shall we? From the 1/10/2017 CJR:
Q&A: A scrappy Wall Street Journal reporter on his jump to Breitbart
THE NEWS THAT RESPECTED Wall Street reporter John Carney is leaving his role at The Wall Street Journal to head up a new vertical at the right-wing news site Breitbart raised eyebrows among media types late Monday. As Bloomberg’s Joshua Green first reported, Carney will lead a team of contributors in establishing a business, markets, and economics news site that is informed by what Carney describes as “an optimism about the potential for the American economy.”
I can’t be the only one who wonders how Carney’s decision to head up the “Jews Control the Economy” desk at the Daily Blood & Soil worked out. I assume he’s making the most of Trump coasting on the economy he inherited from President Obama, but does Carney surreptitiously send résumés to online financial advice and economics outfits, hoping to make the jump from mottled fool (Bannon) to Motley Fool?
The article mentions the site’s loss of patronage from wingnut oligarch Rebekah Mercer, and it references Sleeping Giants’ successful campaign to discourage brands from placing ads on the site. Shamefully, WaPo remains an advertiser with Breitbart. Maybe that’s all the explanation we need for the gaping holes in the story.
Still, I find it disturbing that our dailies — even mostly good ones like The Post — won’t at least call the racist, sexist, xenophobic president’s most racist, sexist, xenophobic fringe hangers-on what they are. It doesn’t bode well for getting past this accursed era.
Open thread.
VeniceRiley
UnFebreezed is now in my flexicon.
Hey wait, is soaking a tampon in alcohol the chick equivalent of Kavanaugh “boofing”?
ThresherK
Re the CJR quote: I find it difficult to believe anyone working at the WSJ, even the supposedly good (news-only) section, can be described as scrappy.
feebog
They were done the moment the Mercer’s stopped funding them. Doubt they ever operated in the black.
Betty
A home run, Betty. So many good lines in there.
TenguPhule
I am firmly in the burn them all down camp at this point.
Fire has been a universal cleanser and purifier since ancient times.
dmsilev
@feebog:
All things considered, I’m sure they referred to it as ‘operating in the white’.
Plato
And breitbart is still dead. Drudge will be happy.
dmsilev
TPM:
Irony wept.
dp
I love it when terrible things happen to terrible people. I’m just awful that way.
TenguPhule
@dmsilev:
I can top that.
Betty Cracker
@feebog: I’m sure you are correct about that.
BTW, did Trump make the Mercer hedge fund’s $7B (yes, BILLION) tax arrears problem go away? Seems like at least a year since I’ve seen any reporting on that. Imagine owing the IRS such a gargantuan sum and not only being allowed to walk around without an ankle bracelet but getting to go play cop out of state and throw millions of dollars at GOP candidates to secure even better tax treatment.
MattF
My guess is that Breitbart & Co learned that a no-enemies-to-my-right strategy fails, unless you endorse mass murder. I’m sure there’s a bunch of ex-Breitbart commenters in 4chan, 8chan, 2-to-the-nth-chan, etc.
Brachiator
Whew!
I just love how you took a rhetorical blowtorch to these wretches.
And yeah, it’s sad that WaPo and other newspapers still can’t quite clearly call out racists for what they are.
Plato
germy
@Plato: What’s a little double-dipping among friends?
ThresherK
@dmsilev:
But I thought it was a well-known fact that coffeeshop hipsters quietly love Trump.
trollhattan
They don’t want to ponder this says more about WSJ than it does either about the person or where he’s going.*
*For the determinedly thick: WSJ is not a proper news outlet. It’s one of a gajillion Murdoch properties pretending to be something besides a propaganda rag. Stop pretending otherwise.
germy
@trollhattan: Their editorials can be truly frightening.
Nicole
@feebog:
Ding ding ding ding. Wingnut welfare, all the way down.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
The hedge fund is still pursuing a settlement with the IRS.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-10/renaissance-explores-settlement-as-irs-seeks-billions-in-taxe…
Martin
Looks like the CBP blue line is starting to fracture. I wish I could hope for better days here, but that won’t happen. The people who need to go to jail won’t, though they might get fired/reassigned. The whistleblowers will get fired/harassed out of their job. The Facebook hate group will continue to function, because Facebook. Things will get dressed up just enough to draw attention off of them, but they’ll keep doing this stuff, just with weaker tea.
Adam Serwer has a nice piece on the whole shitshow.
The problem with this assessment is that latino voters aren’t who kicked the GOP out of CA, it was white voters. Even as late as 2008, long after the GOP purge in the state started, whites still made up 63% of the presidential vote. Latinos were less than 20%. It was white voters that dropped the racial animus that kicked the GOP out. These guys ought to look at the makeup and turnout of NYC, because white voters there are even more unlikely to back the GOP than CA voters are. Once white voters drop the racial animus, there’s no real way to bring it back. Attempts to do so only cause those white voters to dig in with more determination to vote out the racists and so CA has gotten increasingly, almost desperately, more liberal. As has NYC.
These assholes are forcing voters to take sides, where before they didn’t need to. The dogwhistling worked fine. Nobody needed to defend this shit at the border, conservatives could keep on with the Atwater plan, of defending small government and states rights, but when I talk to my Republican mom, it’s ‘defend this shit at the border, defend you continuing to vote for this, defend deporting the families of US service members’, and she doesn’t like that. She’s being forced now to take sides on an issue that she was perfectly willing to ignore, but which now can’t be ignored.
Pay really close attention to Rachel Bitecofer’s work. I said we would flip house seats in CA, and she saw that as well. The flip didn’t come from support for dem vs gop policies, it came from legitimate disgust and anger at GOP behavior and policies. It was an anti-GOP vote far more than it was a pro-Dem vote, and you could feel that among the canvassers and people who answered the doors. People were taking sides – women especially were taking sides.
That’s also the problem with Dem moderates. It’s why Biden is fucked. You compromise with people that you recognize have a moral framework because you instill in them a trust that they’re working toward a shared goal. Biden trusted Republicans were trying to solve the same problem, just in a different way. That’s gone. Nobody trusts Republicans like that any longer, not after their defense of Trump and looking the other way over this stuff at the border. Maybe they still have it privately, but just as Fox News convinced all conservatives that liberals were baby killers, GOP support for Trump has convinced all democrats that republicans are fascists, and for any voter under the age of 35 or so, that’s now set in stone. They’ll take that view to their grave.
J R in WV
You have to wonder as Breitbart fails, what as yet unknown middle-of-the-road media outlet will replace them as champions of the Fascist Right-wing republican nutjobs?
Mnemosyne
Of course Mercer cut them off — she got her daddy’s $2 billion tax bill canceled and got a huge tax cut, which was the only thing she gave a shit about. She’s not going to spend a dime on Bannon’s white supremacist goals if it doesn’t directly make her richer.
ci
@Plato:
Every time I even see the word “Breitbart” in any context, I can’t help but grin at the thought of that bastard’s sudden death.
Roger Moore
@feebog:
Of course this is true of the news media in general, especially new media companies that don’t have a legacy print or TV component. Lots of these companies were set up with the hope they’d become profitable eventually if they could survive longer than the competition, or (like Breitbart) were funded as propaganda mills rather than with the goal of becoming profitable. But very few of them have managed to find a stable revenue source large enough to keep them profitable without venture capital and/or plutocratic propaganda funding to prop them up.
PsiFighter37
@feebog: None of these right-wing rags actually make any money, with the exception of Faux News. The rest of them are rich right-wingers who have money to burn. Even the NY Post is a huge money-loser for Rupert Murdoch.
Barbara
@Mnemosyne: She cut them off when Steve Bannon jumped off the ship.
PsiFighter37
@Martin: That’s a great sentiment, but because 10-15% more of the country identifies as conservative v. liberal (I know the younger people are more liberal – doesn’t matter until they get their voter participation rates up), it just means you have more hardened Democrats, not necessarily more of them.
PsiFighter37
@Barbara: Not true. They actually kicked Bannon to the curb once he started backhandedly dissing Trump. Funding to Breitbart got cut off after, I would envision in large part because they got their tax cut (which is all they really cared about, most likely), and, because like any of these right-wing fronts, they lose interest really quickly when they hold power.
Jay
@J R in WV:
Quilette.
Mnemosyne
@Barbara:
As PsiFighter37 said, I think the verb for what happened with Bannon is “pushed,” not “jumped.” ?
I doubt that Mercer is a true believer in anything but money. If supporting white supremacy was going to cost her a chunk of her fortune, she would stop supporting it.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
All I can do is quote Nelson Muntz here: Ha ha!
sukabi
Oh Betty. You know darned well that outfits like Drudge and Breitbart are vital to the WaPo, NYT, WSJ and other mainstream “news” orgs. They are the conduit from the sewer that all the crap flows from into the public consciousness.
germy
Betty Cracker
@Martin: I sure hope you’re right.
@Barbara: The way I heard it, she cut them off to spite Bannon because he criticized Trump in that Wolff book, but who knows? At any rate, come the revolution, the Mercers should be spared so their ginormous foreheads (FIVEheads, I tell you!) can be used as projection screens at the reeducation camps.
Martin
@PsiFighter37: I think upping the participation rate is the outcome. A lot of non voters have the attitude ‘what does it matter’. That’s really getting hard to continue saying – particularly for younger voters.
catclub
@germy: The fact that even occasionally, the WSJ does excellent reporting, is surprising.
mrmoshpotato
Awwww….more Republican trash going onto the ash heap of history? Sad!
The Dangerman
Hope I didn’t miss an Adam “Holy Shit!!” but did we ever get a read on why Pence did a 180 yesterday? I’ve been burning incense and sticking voodoo pins in some rotten fruit (I refuse to have a Trump doll) and haven’t heard anything juicy. And I need juicy, dammit.
Martin
BTW, Netherlands/Sweden is on. Favoring the dutch because, well, dutch fans are amazing.
germy
@catclub: The editorial page is where the ghouls go to play.
catclub
@PsiFighter37:
only when the question is “Are you conservative or liberal” rather than asking opinions on specific issues,
Then it turns out many more favor the
liberal side of the issue – from refusing healthcare to people because they have no money, to gay rights and same sex marriage, to income inequality.
germy
catclub
@Martin:
on many things true, but the main thing people vote on is the economy, and on that, you cannot tell a difference in the overall
economy based on the date Trump replaced Obama – it has remained on the same trend since about 2011.
I will correct my statement on voting on the economy. Voting on the economy may be changing.
Obama was re-elected with nearly 8% unemployment – which was essentially unprecedented.
Trump may well be turfed out with 3.6% unemployment – which will also be amazing.
Just One More Canuck
@germy: CNN just had a story on that
trollhattan
Pro tip: One way to gain advantage is to cleat the prone hand of your opponent’s keeper. European soccer=hockey with shin guards.
catclub
@germy: and my point was that is has not comletely infected the rest of the business.
SFBayAreaGal
OT. Volcano on Stromoli Island erupts.
Here’s a link to a live feed. Turn your volume up.
skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/italia/sicilia/messina/stromboli.html
trollhattan
@SFBayAreaGal:
Cool!
Stromboli sounds like dessert. “I’ll have stromboli and an espresso.”
Martin
@catclub: That’s the taking sides aspect of things. I don’t think that split is sustainable in the current state. A lot of independents ride that middle state – I’m inherently a conservative person but I support these Democratic policies. Trump is forcing their hand. And don’t get me wrong, there are lots of people gleefully putting their hand up and declaring their white supremacy, but a lot of non-political people are like hell no. That’s why turnout in 2018 was so high.
jonas
I cannot unsee that. Thanks, BC!
Roger Moore
@Martin:
I think there’s more to it than just upping the participation rate. At least here in California, the Republican party has been hemorrhaging membership. And it’s not just the old Republicans dying off and not being replaced. I know plenty of people who have gone from “I like the Republicans” to “I wish there were a sane Republican to vote for” to “I will never vote for a Republican again”. In 20 years, my area has gone from being represented in the House by one of the Clinton impeachment managers (Jim Rogan) to not having a Republican in the House primary.
rikyrah
@The Dangerman:
Nope….
Now, once again folks…
What if this had been 44 and Biden?
It would be the beginning story of every cable news segment until they got an answer.
jimmiraybob
Remember that time that the Breitbart himself, Crown Prince of the Rage-Boner Bros, drunkenly and insanely screamed, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! to all the hippies* and then a couple weeks later his heart exploded and he landed on the sidewalk. Those were some times.
*I’m speaking of familia here.
Aleta
@germy: And it’s no surprise that continuing to hurt the nat’l parks is a desirable byproduct. Another intentional byproduct is that their lies, generation of outrage, and attacks on immigrants, voting rights, abortion … … leave fewer resources to defend parks and wilderness.
They want to mine and harvest resources in public lands so badly, but are coming at it from an angle, that the land will need to generate its own money to maintain.
rikyrah
Well well well………
Court Orders Release of Sealed Docs About Jeffrey Epstein’s Alleged Sex Ring
In a blow to the billionaire pedophile and his alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, a federal court ordered the release of sealed court records in a case brought by an alleged victim.
Kate Briquelet
Senior Reporter
Updated 07.03.19 1:11PM ET
trollhattan
@jimmiraybob:
Will always treasure dead Andy’s “Stop raping people!!!” rant. Also treasure dead Andy being dead.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Ooooh, the possibilities are endless.
James E Powell
@Martin:
You make several good points, but I think we will have to wait a few more election cycles to see how this all pans out. I spent most of my life expecting for the inevitable Great Transformation that changing demographics and post Civil Rights Act enlightenment would bring about. After all, even at my totally white suburban high school in the early 70s, we all hated Nixon, Republicans, war mongers, polluters, racists, and sexists. And so did all the bands we listened to. Then six years later, almost all of them voted for Reagan and have been voting R ever since. Now they’re in their 60s watching FOX news and following the leader.
burnspbesq
Speaking of folks on the downside of their career arcs …
theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/03/brazil-glenn-greenwald-investigation-outcry-bar-association-journa…
I’m of two minds about this. If there is actually some cause to think he may have violated Brazilian money-laundering laws, then that was really fucking stupid and I’m going to wallow in schadenfreude for days. If it’s a pretext for harassment, they should just stop. Be patient, y’all—Greenie’s hubris makes it inevitable that eventually he will step in a big pile of something.
SiubhanDuinne
Now this is sweet. Former MI Governor Rich Snyder has decided not to take the job at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, per an NPR headline just now.
(Paraphrasing) “Not in my best interest in light of the current political climate.”
The noise we’re making is having an effect, guys. Let’s keep it up.
Gelfling 545
@rikyrah: The problem here may be that there is no actual explanation. Not one that might be understood by rational people anyway. Not everything Trump does makes sense, even to him.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
UH HUH
UH HUH
Keith P.
@Plato: I was just thinking about an old Homer Simpson quote – “If he’s so smart, how come he’s DEAD?”
James E Powell
@trollhattan:
Stromboli. Not dessert, but delicious.
Bill Arnold
@germy:
Their (WSJ’s) editorials have been frightening for a long time. A (real) marxist friend several decades ago subscribed (paper edition) to the Wall Street Journal. He said, approximately, that the news pages were pretty accurate because information was money to their readership and he wanted to understand that readership, but the editorial pages were nuts. Since then, Murdoch has polluted the news pages, though they still do some stories that inflict damage on Republicans.
cynthia ackerman
@The Dangerman:
I’ve seen only speculation, based apparently on either nothing or rumor.
My favorite so far is iDJT called him back out of concern that a visit to “first in the nation” sets up a Pence 2020 challenge.
That’d be awesome.
gvg
@catclub: Yes, but! It would work to our voter advantage a lot more if people actually realized they were liberal, or didn’t run away from the word. In my opinion the liberal is bad branding has hurt good results for decades now. Reagan did the most damage but some others did too.
I happen to think anyone who currently calls themselves conservative is telling me they are scum. I’ll note that they don’t mean the traditional definition of conservative (cautious, taking care)
I always refused to use progressive, though I am not sure I really know what that means. I am a liberal, which for me has usually meant I don’t want to get in other peoples business. For most of my life, conservatives seemed to mean busybodies nosing into other peoples sex lives. Now it’s gotten worse of course.
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
They lie about everything else, why not their “supporters”?
rikyrah
Alabama DA to drop manslaughter charge against woman whose fetus died after shooting
Melissa Brown, Montgomery Advertiser Published 3:26 p.m. ET July 3, 201
An Alabama district attorney will not pursue manslaughter charges against a 27-year-old whose fetus died after she was shot during a December 2018 fight.
The decision comes after days of public outcry sparked by Marshae Jones’ arrest on June 26. A Jefferson County grand jury had indicted Jones for manslaughter after another woman, Ebony Jemison, shot Jones in December 2018, killing her fetus.
District Attorney Lynneice Washington announced her decision at a Wednesday press conference in Bessemer, Alabama.
Mary G
Right wing outfits do better with Democrats in office. The NRA raked in the dough under Obama, for instance. There isn’t the same level of outrage when one of their guys is taking care of it.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Going to agree by saying two words- Orange County.
The Moar You Know
Awww, the Völkischer Beobachter is going to go under.
Oh wait, I don’t care.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: When does Calzone Island go boom, and can I place an order for pepperoni and green pepper?
rikyrah
@Bill Arnold:
Tis true.
The Editorial page has always been right-wing loon land.
But, the news department put out some of the best business stuff in the country. I say, the best. You wanted to know what the business elite was concerned with – all you had to do is read the columns of their first page.
But, yes, the news department went to shyt when Rupert bought it.
trollhattan
@James E Powell:
Ooooh, want!
rikyrah
@Mary G:
I still say they were funded by the Russians, and that money spigot has dried up.
The Moar You Know
@burnspbesq: Without money laundering Brazil doesn’t have an economy. I’d love to see the actual text of those “laws”
Ruckus
@James E Powell:
Notice that Rupert is in the middle of a lot of the conservative bullshit “journalism” around the world. How strong is this going to be after he’s gone?
Also notice that while the direction of conservatism really hasn’t changed in at least the last 70 years, that of heading farther and farther right, the openness and speed of that run to the right has. That openness and speed makes it harder and harder for many to ignore. For example, who could they possibly run next year? Someone going to challenge drumpf from the farther right? They haven’t lost their way, they’ve lost any concept of control, it’s now only massive assholes all the way. Some of course will always embrace that, but most likely not enough. That doesn’t mean we can be complacent, not in the littlest bit but it does mean the right has shot itself in the genitalia and just hasn’t felt it yet.
burnspbesq
74 minutes in, Dutch and Swedes still scoreless.
Steve in the ATL
@The Moar You Know: note that it says “Brazilian money-laundering laws”, not “Brazilian ANTI-money-laundering laws”
burnspbesq
Imperial AT-ATs Begin Arriving In Capital For Military Parade
nuvo2965
“hunk of unFebreezed flab encased in multiple buttoned-down shirts Steve Bannon”…+1-you win today’s internet
Martin
@James E Powell: I don’t think it’s a great transformation, though. I think it’s a temporary one for now, mostly centered around the presence of Trump. Ultimately the Dems need to earn it for it to be transformation, and the GOP will continue to undermine that effort.
ACA is serving to be a durable concept, even with the GOPs efforts, so it’s still worth doing, but it’s not going to probably ever feel transformational because it’ll be such a sand grinding in gears process.
tony prost
@dmsilev: the Democrats ought to take that same footage, and used to endorse themselves: We used to love Trump, but now we are Democrats!
burnspbesq
Dutch score in the 99th minute.
Steeplejack
@Martin:
Well said.
That’s it exactly.
Chris Johnson
@catclub:
You mustn’t confuse funny-numbers like that with lived reality. Things have continued to get worse for people year after year, exacarbated by Silicon Valley shenanigans. If you work three ‘precariat’ jobs that you can’t depend upon at all, that’s not the same as employment, but you might count for as many as three ‘jobs’.
debbie
@Bill Arnold:
Thank Paul Gigot for driving the editorial page to the looney side.
debbie
@dmsilev:
Fifty cents (I’m short this week) says they didn’t pay for the rights.
AThornton
@PsiFighter37:
The Connie lead is down to single digits. And that’s from Gallup a GOP friendly polling organization. Further, the Conservative lead is squarely based on a 36/15 split in the <a href="pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/20/a-wider-partisan-and-ideological-gap-between-younger-older-gene… to 88 year old demo.
Not saying we should sit on our asses. Work must be done to revitalize the state parties, make sure people vote, etc.
Harry Hamid
In defense of… well, in defense of somebody, maybe, it never seemed to me that anyone actually read the articles on breitbart. You could tell, because the headlines OFTEN contradicted the first line of the attached article, and no one in the comments ever went with the first line. It was about venting hateful comments.
Good riddance, if that’s how it goes.
Fair Economist
@burnspbesq:
The article says the government agencies were instructed to investigate him, not that there was any existing evidence or even reasonable suspicion. Especially given the timing, obviously an attempt to dig up something to charge him with. They probably picked money laundering because most developing nations have complicated currency control statutes so there’s a fairly good chance of finding something technically wrong if they look hard enough.
Selective prosecution of corruption is a standard part of the toolbox for modern authoritarian states. China is particularly notorious on that front. It’s usually a great cover because they can use genuine violations of law as a cover for political prosecution.
PIllusion
@Betty Cracker: Your use of creative invective is to be envied! Well said.