Conservative Blogger Faces Criticism Over Protege, by DAVID FOLKENFLIK

The conservative online news entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart is, for the moment, doing little to dispel stereotypes about bloggers. During a recent visit to his home on the west side of Los Angeles, Breitbart, 41, is working from his own basement. Barefoot. At the beck and call of his own kids.

But that basement is light and airy, with a decent view of the city. A young assistant works there with Breitbart to help funnel wire service stories to Breitbart.com, his main news aggregation site. And his reach, thanks to a brawling rhetorical style and a protege who taped the undercover ACORN videos last year, is only expanding.

Over the past year, Breitbart has hired editors to run a new network of conservative blogs called BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com and BigJournalism.com. No matter the focus, the media are a prime target throughout.

“They want to control the narrative,” Breitbart says. “I’m saying, ‘No more!’ The new media has freed it up. I’m sorry, mainstream media. It’s over. Your ability to control the narrative is over.”

New Fodder

He can talk that way for hours — and finds fresh grist all over. The media have devoted intense coverage to the late-January arrest of James O’Keefe, the 25-year-old videographer and conservative provocateur. He was charged with trying to get into Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s federal office in New Orleans under false pretenses to commit a felony. And O’Keefe is also under contract to write for BigGovernment.com.

Read the full transcript at NPR.com.

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Sean Hinchey and Eric Tozzi, the writer and director of DBD respectively, had been friends for years before Hinchey came to Tozzi with the idea of a fictional blog about a unsuspecting individual dealing with the aftermath of a disaster.  Hinchey says that he had “always had a strange fascination with real life disasters” as they’ve always contained stories “about humans overcoming incredible odds to save themselves or help others.”  The team decided that it would be fascinating to explore the emotional toll that a dirty bomb detonation causes, thus raising the stakes even higher.  As Tozzi explained, “a dirty bomb is meant to cause mostly psychological harm on a large population…the initial blast doesn’t cause massive damage, but the spread of radiation…is the real worry.”  Couple that pandemonium with limited access to resources like food and water, and suddenly there is widespread panic and fear.  Out of this inspiration, The Dirty Bomb Diaries was born.

While the idea of a dirty bomb attack was the motivation for the show, the struggle of a young woman in a world she never dreamed of became the heart of the story.  Before writing the script, Hinchey had watched the events of Hurricane Katrina unfold and was taken aback by the numerous failures of the government to come to the aid of the people of New Orleans, making him realized that “you should never, ever expect anyone else to help you out of a tight situation, especially the government.”  While the main character is caught unprepared, as Hinchey put it, rather than “wallow in her misery, she [attempts] to get what she needs in order to live.”  As Tozzi adds, “whether the local or federal government comes through with help or not, she decide[s] her own fate.”

As a conservative, the emphasis of personal responsibility throughout the show struck a chord with me.  The protagonist evolves from a helpless victim of an unexpected terror attack into a fighter who does what is necessary to survive the turmoil and make her way to safety, making life and death decisions at every turn.

As an artist, however, I was even more impressed with the story of how Hinchey and Tozzi took their idea and made it into a success.  Frustrated with waiting on Hollywood to finally discover their talents, the duo decided to take their careers into their own hands, and shot the show for a total of $600; literally in their own back yard.  With no marketing experience, they then promoted their show through online communities dedicated to similar type shows such as Jericho, slowly building their audience over time.  Since posting their show on online video outlets, such as YouTube, DailyMotion, Strike.tv, Veoh and Revver their series has garnered almost 2 million views, and made the team a respected force in the online world.

The success of the first season will allow the pair to take the show to another level in season 2, which the pair plan to shoot in HD.  Hinchey and Tozzi will add more complexities to the show, as they introduce their audience to new characters, new plot-lines, and new locations as they examine the attack further.

New media is still the wild west of Hollywood, providing conservatives with an incredible opportunity to take control of our own fate.  The Internet, coupled with cheaper technology, gives us a chance to stop relying on the old Hollywood system of distribution and allows us to create our own material and take it directly to our audience without ever stepping foot in a studio office.  For instance, it has been asked many times on this site why Hollywood won’t produce content that celebrates the heroics of our men and women in uniform.  Perhaps, instead, we should ask ourselves the same question Hinchey and Tozzi asked themselves: why wait on Hollywood?

Hentoff, who wrote about jazz and then civil liberties for the newspaper for the past fifty years, was a staunch leftist and counter-culturalist, but he showed some intellectual integrity on the subject of freedom of speech in recent years, exemplified by his book, Free Speech for Me—But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other.

The premise of the book is rather skewed, given that the right has had virtually no power in either academia or the culture for several decades, especially the elite culture. Nevertheless, the fact that a well-known leftist and ACLU-style civil liberties advocate (meaning those who use the subject as a stalking horse for the left’s agenda) would acknowledge the left’s illiberalism was an important cultural event.

Another policy position that made Hentoff unusual—and particularly unwanted—among the left was his opposition to legalized abortion. It was indeed a very courageous stand for a Village Voice writer to take.

Showing impressive intellectual integrity, Hentoff argued that his dedication to protecting people from exploitation by government and big business meant also protecting unborn children from the abortion industry. That industry, after all, does constitute an alliance between business and state that exploits women’s desperation, especially through decades of destruction of the humane alternative, adoption.

The huge, extremely profitable, and unregulated abortion industry is one of those rare businesses that the left supports, in one of the great ironies of our time.

The loss of Hentoff’s voice is lamentable, but the decline and perhaps eventual fall of the Village Voice will be quite salubrious.

The reaction to the interview excerpts has been far more intense and far more deranged than I expected. Quite simply, the media response has done more to prove the basic point of the documentary than just about anything I could have produced in the film.

Here are just a few ways in which this episode felt like I had suddenly become Alice in Wonderland (without the dress or blond hair).

Governor Palin’s comments about being taken out of context were clearly taken out of context and her statements that they were being taken out of context were themselves taken out of context in a blatant, though thus far, unsuccessful attempt to turn the Governor and I against each other.

The Governor’s measured, rational and accurate attempts to correct the historical record about the basis for which a Presidential election was decided were “reported” by the left as being “whiny,” “catty” and “delusional.” Folks, there’s a reason why there’s such a thing as a war crimes tribunal; some things you just have to get to the bottom of.

Palin’s incredibly mild and humorous pushback against two very grownup media stars (Katie Couric and Tina Fey) who clearly had it out for her, helped destroy her candidacy and who benefited greatly from doing so, was somehow “reported” as an “attack,” “taking shots,” and “not taking responsibility.” Please. This is almost like ripping a Jew for making a Nazi joke (No doubt, THAT will also be taken out of context).

Both the vaunted New York Times and the tiny liberal rag, the Alaska Dispatch (it was difficult to tell them apart since neither bothered to contact me before writing very deceiving pieces), figured out a way to discuss everything about the interview excerpts except the primary issue, which, of course, was their own malfeasance during the campaign. It’s become patently obvious we’ve reached a point where, especially when you’re a conservative, blatant bias, combined with the incredible shrinking attention span of the media and public, make it absolutely impossible to get a message out that is remotely nuanced. And once conventional wisdom is cemented, even when done so by a comedian on SNL with a clear agenda, there’s virtually no chance to set the record straight (again, especially if you’re a conservative and even more so if you’re seen in any way as a threat to Barack Obama).

While I’ve been most concerned with the unfair assaults on Governor Palin and the ignoring of the basic truths she reveals in our interview, I’ve also taken more than my share of shrapnel. It began with a bizarre appearance on MSNBC with David Shuster.

Instead of even bothering to pretend to find out the background of the interview or the nature of the “real Sarah Palin” (forget about why I did the interview or why I’m making a documentary), you would have thought I’d been accused of a major crime. I guess at MSNBC trying to get out the truth about Barack Obama and Sarah Palin may indeed qualify as such.

Judge for yourself how this episode went down:

At one point after that appearance I was booked to do three more spots on Obama’s pet network (two of which had already been scheduled) as well as two more on Fox, one on CNN and one on Saturday’s version of the “Today Show.”

Next up was a live shot with Norah O’Donnell, with whom I’d gotten along great with the previous day during a lengthy interview (only 6.3 seconds of which was actually used, I believe) for that morning’s “Today Show.” After waiting around 30 minutes watching their largely non-condemning coverage of the post-impeachment press conference of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, I was not happy.

When O’Donnell hit me on the air with a totally out of context statement from the Governor’s office I hadn’t seen that made it sound like they thought I had misled them, I thankfully and correctly didn’t believe her and tossed the question aside. But on the follow up I let loose.

Here’s what that looked like:

After that, I was suddenly bumped from “Hardball” on MSNBC, which I was very much looking forward to. (Chris Matthews is not only one of the stars of my new documentary, he also grew up with my deceased mother and many of my aunts and uncles in the Somerton section of Philadelphia. The only time I met Chris was at the home of my grandfather who passed away the day after the Palin interview). I didn’t view the cancellation as a coincidence. I was also bumped from “No Bias, No Bull” on CNN, which I had really wanted to do, if only for the inherent irony in it.

As for Keith Olbermann, he cherry picked an inaccurate description I gave (and have since corrected after being able to view a tape that I previously didn’t know existed) about how the Governor reacted to seeing his photo. It is my only regret of this entire bizarre week that I was not more accurate in that initial post for Big Hollywood and gave that professional liar even more of a chance to gloat over being called “evil”  (doesn’t THAT say everything about MSNBC) than was warranted by the facts. He, of course, did not have the courage to even pretend to have me on his show. 

Finally, Shuster, I guess feeling he hadn’t gotten much of me the first time, heavily promoted a “rematch” on his afternoon show. His behavior and journalistic ethics (is there such a thing any more?) hadn’t improved in the ensuing few hours between confrontations.

Here’s Round #2:

The next day I received a call at home from Governor Palin. We briefly discussed a miscommunication with her staff that led to some on the Alaska state side (who had nothing to do with the actual interview, which was conducted at her home) to be unprepared for the coming storm even though I had informed my contact person of my intentions the morning before the story broke open on Big Hollywood and Drudge.

The Governor also mentioned she had watched my first documentary, “Blocking the Path to 9/11,” and thought it highlighted just how deep the issue of media bias really goes. But mostly we discussed how the pathetic news coverage of this event proves the need for my new documentary. I think this episode has  strengthened the resolve of both of us, each in our own way, to keep fighting to get the truth out on this subject. Once again, I was amazed at her courage to not back down when the average politician would do a George W. Bush and just lie in the fetal position. Sarah Palin is apparently no George Bush, and for that we should all be thankful.

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