Andrew Breitbart is the Andrew Breitbart of the tea party movement
On Saturday, February 25th, LOLGOP and I attended the Americans for Prosperity forum in Troy, Michigan (home of homophobic tea party mayor Janice Daniels.) We obtained press passes and proceeded to livetweet and liveblog the event. (My liveblog, done entirely on my iPhone, is here: LIVEBLOG: Americans for Prosperity forum in Troy, Michigan 2/25/12.)
For the most part, the people at the AFP forum were very nice to us. Perhaps it’s because we had a “Media” badges on but, more than likely, it was despite that, given the sneering way “the media” was treated by speakers such as Andrew Breitbart and Michelle Malkin.
Although the attendees were cordial, the speakers at the event were decidedly NOT nice. They were as partronizingly anti-progressive as you would expect them to be, perhaps worse. There were frequent derogatory references to the Occupy movement which they see as the enemy. While the Average Joe & Josephine attendees probably feel that there is way too much corporate control over our elections and probably decry the outsourcing of American jobs overseas, they fail to connect the dots between the Occupy movement and pushback against the corporatocracy. Instead, they believe as they are told by Breitbart, Malkin, Detroit radio host Frank Beckmann and others that the Occupy movement is an abomination of President Obama’s making to be feared and hated, full of unwashed sexual libertines and criminals. Andrew Breitbart even referred to them as “rapists”.
In other words, they are the DFHs of our generation.
After the speakers had finished, I noticed Breitbart in the middle of a verbal sparring match with someone. I snapped a quick photo.
[I swear this image is NOT Photoshopped or altered in any way. It’s straight off my iPhone into Photobucket. The magic of the iPhone captured an instantaneous moment when the true nature of Andrew Breitbart broke briefly through the human facade.]
I spoke with the guy on the left afterwards. He asked to remain anonymous so I will simply call him “Challenger”. He said the altercation started with him asking Breitbart, “Can you name one person at an Occupy protest who has been convicted of rape?”
Breitbart responded, “There was a guy in DC. He had a foreign-sounding name.” At first, Challenger thought that Breitbart was making a joke but quickly realized he was serious. I began taping their exchange about half-way into it. Here’s the audio:
If the Flash player doesn’t work for you, try clicking HERE. The transcript is below.
Note that Challenger tried to speak throughout the entire conversation but Breitbart intentionally spoke loudly to draw a crowd (which he successfully did) and rarely let him get a word in. Some of what Challenger said is impossible to hear due to Breitbart’s loud pontificating.
BREITBART: There have been murders, there have been murders…Challenger: If I find a tea partier that was convicted of rape, I wouldn’t be calling them all rapists…
BREITBART: No, no, no…
Challenger: It’s a loaded accusation.
BREITBART: Rapes at, rapes at Occupy. Rapes at Occupy that have been suppressed. On camera we have the person who gave us a tour of Zuccotti who said it’s not safe for women here and they’re not reporting these things because … Listen, ACORN, ACORN is still around at it was paying people to be there. This is what the person said. ACORN was paying people to be there…
Challenger: ACORN? Are they rapists, too?
BREITBART: I’m answering your question. They’re sending unsafe people, they’re paying them $50, paying homeless people to go there and when you get crimes based upon a lawless…
Challenger: If the person I were supporting for president was making a speech, I wouldn’t then, on that day, accuse people of being rapists…
BREITBART: I’m telling the truth, I’m telling the truth.
Challenger: …I would support my presidential…
BREITBART: We have, we have the police reports that we put online. We have the news reports, the local news footage that speaks about the rapes that happened at Occupy Baltimore. That happened at Occupy Philadelphia.
Challenger: You’re hurting your party with these claims. These claims are not helping anybody.
BREITBART: It’s true! It’s true! You don’t like the truth? You don’t like the truth? It’s true.
Challenger: It’s a loaded…
BREITBART: How much ya wanna bet that I can show you a police report of a rape from Occupy?
Challenger: Let’s find out, let’s find out…
BREITBART: Okay, how much do ya wanna bet? How much do ya wanna bet?
Challenger: Ten thousand dollars.
BREITBART: What?
Challenger: Ten thousand dollars.
BREITBART: That I can show you a police report.
Challenger: Ten thousand dollars.
BREITBART: A police report? Okay, no, will you, what’s your name?
BREITBART [addressing the gathered crowd]: You heard that.
BREITBART: Okay, what’s your name?[Crowd noise]
BREITBART: I will be able to show you a police report of a rape from Occupy for ten thousand dollars.
Challenger: I’ll contact you on Twitter.
BREITBART: Wait, wait, wait…
Challenger: I’ll contact you on Twitter.
BREITBART: If I show you a police report from Occupy, you owe me ten thousand dollars.
Challenger: Here’s what, here’s what it comes down to…
BREITBART: Oh, no. You just made that ten thousand dollar bet. Why are you trying to explain away a lawless occupy culture where they’re trying to…
Challenger: This is the best argument you can make against them?
BREITBART: Yeah, yeah…
Challenger: That you have to call every one a rapist?
BREITBART: I didn’t call everyone a rapist. I’m saying there’s a rape culture in there and there’s a lawless culture and they’re trying to start fights with the police to get them on YouTube. It is a lawless, lawless group of people who are intentionally trying to start fights with the police. Not reporting, not not not reporting these crimes that have been happening. Occupy has acted…given the fact that the last three years the left has held the tea party to an unbelievable standard, saying that it’s a bunch of racist, sexist homophobes and the mainstream media has gone along with it, now I’m going to analyze the Occupy culture with a fine-toothed comb.
“I’m saying there’s a rape culture in there and there’s a lawless culture.”
Challenger made it clear to me that the whole “$10,000 bet” thing was a joking riff on Mitt Romney’s similar bet made during one of the GOP debates. The offer to contact Breitbart on Twitter was also a joke because Breitbart blocked him some time ago. He said the point he was trying to get across was that Breitbart was speaking on the same bill as his party’s candidate for president and smearing thousands of people without one name to back it up.
The claims made by Breitbart are, of course, epically absurd. To suggest that isolated incidents of crime at Occupy locations around the country is evidence of a “rape culture” or a “lawless culture” is beyond the pale and completely preposterous.
Here are some Occupiers from Traverse City that I met with a couple of weeks ago at their Occupalooza event.
Pretty lawless-looking, eh? Clearly part a rape culture.
In Detroit, the Occupy movement is restoring homes and neighborhoods and helping keep people from being thrown out of their homes by predatory banks who have illegally foreclosed on them. The Occupy movement has people from all walks of life and they aren’t all camping in tents in urban cities. Many of them are focused on helping others and, yes, sometimes the homeless and the mentally disabled.
Not only are the allegations made by Breitbart comically absurd, they have been pretty soundly debunked recently by Keith Olbermann.
Mr. Breitbart and his websites have now promulgated a list of what his people boast are 17 rapes at Occupy protests between October 16th and November 19th. 17 stories and links, headlined “Rapes and Various Sexual Crimes” and all of them attributed to Occupy.
It turns out Breitbart and his people have padded this, by listing some stories twice. And in nearly every case, Breitbart’s crew has twisted nearly every one of the allegations in the stories. The idea seems to have been to make as long a list as possible, and assume that your supporters will never bother to link through to the stories, let alone follow-up to find their true outcomes.
Those who do bother will find Mr. Breitbart and his colleagues, are lying…
So. Seventeen stories Breitbart claims are cases of Rape at Occupy. Just reading the stories, googling the names of those identified, following up – this only took me about 70 minutes. The final result:
— Two stories on the list were duplicates.
— One story turns out to have been about consensual sex.
— One case, in Scotland, led the Occupy group to disband for the sake of safety.
— One case of an arrest for child porn, with Occupy immediately banning the alleged perpetrator.
— One case of a girl disappearing — ignoring the fact that she was home and unharmed a month later.
— Four cases in which police said neither the victim nor the assailant were apparently even associated with Occupy.That leaves seven others stories, all of which show police identifying Occupy participants as the victims, six of which show police identifying the alleged assailants as not being Occupy participants.
I highly recommend reading his entire takedown HERE.
Breitbart’s introduction of ACORN into accusations against the Occupy movement is a good indication, actually, of just how desperate he and his colleagues are. ACORN has been gone for a long time now, thanks mainly to Breitbart and his proteges, but the mere mention of them is, of course, a dog whistle eliciting a Pavlovian anti-liberal response in their tea party followers. Once ACORN is mentioned, no proof is needed for any allegations that are made; the group is so thoroughly maligned and demonized that tea partiers will believe anything you tell them.
But, blaming an entire movement for the illegal actions of a tiny handful of people who aren’t even part of the Occupy groups is, though not surprising, a spectacularly offensive perversion of the truth and the facts.
But that’s Breitbart’s role. He goes into the mud and slime so that his lily-white followers don’t have to sully themselves and can stand on the sidelines cheering him on, just as they did as he put on his show with Challenger. And it reveals much about the tea party movement, once you scratch below the surface.
