Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World!

by Andrew Breitbart

  I intentionally co-created the Huffington Post in order to grant the hard left a place in the blogosphere to express itself. I knew that in the future I wanted to provide a similar platform for citizen journalists who relate more to my way of thinking on the center right, on the side of individual freedoms and individual liberties and individual rights over group rights, group thinking, and categorizing people into racial, gender, and sexual-orientation categories only to then pit them against one another.

  I co-created the Huffington Post and the Big sites as part of a grander strategy to knock down the false edifice that is the mainstream media, that is built upon the false proposition of “objective” journalism and the grotesque anti-American proposition of political correctness. My mission isn’t to quash debate—it’s to show that the mainstream media aren’t mainstream, that their feigned objectivity isn’t objective, and that open, rigorous debate is a positive good in our society.

  Man, how I long for the days of Sam Kinison, Richard Pryor, Abbie Hoffman, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, George Carlin, and Lenny Bruce. Today, the only people upholding their free-speech legacies are conservatives like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. And it’s weird that most liberals, who seek to ban them from media appearances and NFL-team ownership, can’t see that.

  It’s that mission to have a rigorous, no-holds-barred debate that made me a central part of this election cycle. Whether people read the Huffington Post on the left or my Big sites on the right, everyone is now disillusioned about the media. Nobody is fooled into believing that most reporters are objective, straight-down-the-middle truth-seekers. That means there’s a greater transparency in the media. It doesn’t mean that it’s a calmer media—it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot of tumult and chaos out there—but I don’t think our Founding Fathers would have considered a political-Prozac-addicted electorate to be the ideal.

  I find it ironic that the same mainstream media that in 1992 lamented that my Generation X was not sufficiently engaged in politics are now upset that we are and have created New Media and Social Media, transforming them into a highly aggressive, deeply democratic, and rough-and-tumble environment that is now putting those former critics and overlords in the mainstream media into the unemployment line.

  Election Night Revelation

  When I was asked by ABC News to appear as a participant in its election night coverage, I at first considered the invitation a tacit acknowledgment that even a bastion of the mainstream media had heeded our message. With Big Journalism editor Dana Loesch in ABC’s New York studio with George Stephanopoulos and Diane Sawyer, and me set to appear via satellite from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism in Arizona before an audience of students, I thought, Hmmm, maybe there is some progress. The invitation had been in many ways righteously ironic. My primary critics had to recognize that the Tea Party they had denigrated consistently for two years had paved the way for massive political change, and the Tea Party’s primary journalistic defender and the publisher of some of the biggest stories of that election cycle had to realize the benefit of asking me to be part of their election night coverage.

  So, perhaps naïvely, I accepted the invitation and considered it to be a done deal.

  It wasn’t.

  After accepting the invitation from ABC News, we posted an innocuous article at Big Journalism promoting the ABC News coverage that would feature Dana and me. In essence, we were simply asking our millions of readers to watch ABC. Some would call that free advertising.

  Within hours, the organized left went after me (and ABC) with a meat cleaver. I found myself under the same level of organized attack that I had faced when the Shirley Sherrod incident occurred. (Speaking of which, you may have noticed that I don’t discuss the Sherrod incident in this book. You probably know that Sherrod has threatened in the media to sue me. I can say this: there’s a hell of a lot more to the Sherrod story than you’ve heard to this point. Stay tuned.)

  Both the organized left’s reaction to the Sherrod incident and their reaction to the ABC News story were retribution for my role in taking down ACORN and other sacred cows of the left. I had warned James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles that we would forever be marked targets. But knowing you’re going to be hit doesn’t take away from the sensation of being clobbered with a sucker punch.

  Less than two days after the invitation, and less than twelve hours after the post announcing my participation in the broadcast, the organized left, led by my pals at Media Matters, ColorofChange.org (Van Jones!), CREDO (a Progressive phone company that sends a portion of one’s bill to left-wing causes), Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, and my beautiful red-headed Frankenstein, the Huffington Post, assaulted ABC with at least 125,000 signatures and over 2,000 phone calls. By the time I woke up the next morning (a Saturday), there was already a hit piece in the Washington Post with an inside, unnamed source at ABC claiming that there was outrage inside the network’s newsroom over the producer’s picking me in the first place. “This blindsided a good portion of the team here,” the source reportedly told Greg Sargent of the Post. “And not in a good way.”1

  The second insult-to-injury capitulation to the organized left was a concurrent statement by ABC News’s David Ford, a PR flack, to Media Matters. Ford stated, “[Breitbart] will be one of many voices on our air, including Bill Adair of Politifact. If Andrew Breitbart says something that is incorrect, we have other voices to call him on it.”2 Upon reading it, I thought, How naïve that I accepted this invitation. How naïve that I thought that ABC News would stand by its invitation and that the producer responsible for that invitation would act like a man and defend his pick.

  It got worse. Andrew Morse, the producer of the event for ABC, without even reaching out to me, issued a statement from ABC News that was described by the UK Guardian in accurate terms: “Breitbart claims he’ll be appearing as an analyst, but a statement from ABC distances the network from him with comical vigour.” Morse’s statement explained that I was “not an ABC News consultant… not, in any way, affiliated with ABC News… not being paid by ABC News. He has not been asked to analyze the results of the election for ABC News. Mr. Breitbart will not be a part of the ABC News broadcast coverage…. He has been invited as one of several guests.”3

  Never mind that I never said anything to the contrary. But obviously, Morse had his job to preserve.

  It was a line-by-line distancing and diminishing of my role in the event as a means to placate the left’s desire for blood. I saw that my fate was sealed by looking to, of all people, former Clinton hit-job artist turned “objective” anchor, George Stephanopoulos, who tweeted, “Breitbart NOT on ABC network broadcast.”

  Ironically, my first memory of Stephanopoulos in conjunction with ABC News was in June 1996, when, while working in the Clinton White House, he threatened punitive action against the network that would later employ him to unbook as a guest a former FBI agent named Gary Aldrich, who reported wrongdoing at the Clinton White House. It still boggles the mind that Clinton’s media hatchet man was soon thereafter rewarded with an anchor job and the mainstream media seal of objectivity.

  But the saga wasn’t done yet. I knew the ABC News brass had calculated that if they threw me under the bus completely, they risked the political right and Tea Party attacking ABC News for capitulating to the totalitarian left. So ABC News created an artificial wall—a digital Elba, if you will—where I would be exiled. They now said I would be participating only in an online forum—and, most egregiously, they lied that that had been the understanding from the very beginning. Jeffrey Schneider, a high-level ABC News PR flak, issued this statement: “Mr. Breitbart exaggerated the role he would play on his blog…. We immediately made it clear that was never the role he was supposed to play. He had been invited to be part of our digital town hall, and that is still the role.”4

  Every one of these acts by ABC News came in reaction to the left’s push to get me kicked off the air. Every one of these acts was unilateral, without anybody from AB
C News contacting me. They were throwing their invitee under the bus and they were doing so in a most cruel fashion. What was worse, they were calling me out as a liar. They were giving the anti–free speech forces of the left everything they wanted.

  So I called Andrew Morse, whose entire attitude was narcissistic in the extreme. He simply couldn’t believe that he was under such an assault by the organized left. I sympathized with him—for a while. Then I said, “Don’t you understand how you’re being used right now by the organized left? Don’t you understand how they want me to lash back at ABC News so that it will confirm for them that I was a wrong and hostile choice in the first place?” I told him that I am very methodical in how I interrelate with the mainstream media, that I utilize a carrots-and-sticks approach: when you lie and you destroy, I fight back hard, but when you make the right moves, I reciprocate in kind.

  I told Morse that I wanted to give ABC every opportunity to walk back their provably false allegation that I exaggerated my role. In fact, I held off responding publicly for well over a day in order to give them time to do so.

  Meanwhile, ABC reiterated they wanted me in Phoenix.

  “Oh, I’ll be in Phoenix all right,” I said, “because the ball is now in your court. All I have done is accepted your invitation and told my readers to watch ABC News on election night. Since then you’ve done everything wrong including lying, which confirms everything that my readers perceive about network news and the mainstream media.

  “But,” I continued, “I am going to put up the e-mail that you sent me, which confirms the invitation and clearly states that I am telling the truth and ABC News is lying.” ABC News’s answer by way of Morse: “Do what you have to do.”

  On Sunday night, I posted that e-mail. Here it is:

  Andrew,

  So great speaking with you, and I cannot thank you enough for joining us in Arizona on election night. We truly appreciate it.

  NY is booking your travel right now, and want to make sure your name on your ID reads “Andrew Breitbart”.

  I really look forward to meeting you, and would love to take you out to lunch or dinner before our election coverage.

  See below about ABC New’s [sic] coverage on election night.

  Cheers, and will see you soon.

  XXXX

  XXXX XXXX

  Producer

  ABC News

  ABC News is conducting a live event from Phoenix, Arizona for our election night special on Tuesday, November 2nd 2010. I am looking for political figures and newsmakers to appear in our Town Hall style panel.

  ABC News is providing live coverage of the midterm elections hosted by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos in New York, and correspondents across the country.

  ABC News has partnered with Facebook and The Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University to live stream the entire event on abcnews.com, ABC News Now and Facebook.

  The Town Hall is hosted by ABC correspondent David Muir and Randi Zuckerberg from Facebook, as well an ASU student leader.

  The audience will consist of 150 students equipped with laptops and Ipads [sic] who will participate in online political conversations.

  The issues include health care, the economy, immigration, terrorism, and the environment. We will have panelists who will contribute to these conversations remotely from Washington, DC, New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA.

  This program will broadcast on the ABC Television Network, abcnews.com, ABC News Now, and ABC News Radio. The show will be live on the web and ABC News Now as well as on the network from 4:00 pm till 11:00 pm MST.

  We would love for you to be a part of our program, and please let us know what we can do to accommodate your needs.

  I am booking the guests for the event and will be in Phoenix starting Thursday, October 28th.

  Feel free to email me back or call me at the following number with any questions.

  Thanks so much,

  XXXX XXXX

  Producer

  ABC News

  After releasing the e-mail, on Monday, Jeffrey Schneider reiterated to my business partner that ABC wanted me to come to Phoenix. I spoke again with the producers at ABC News, who also told me they wanted to meet Monday night for dinner in Phoenix. Accordingly, I flew to Phoenix on Monday night to be part of ABC’s election night coverage—in whatever capacity they should so choose. I knew they wanted me to drop out, but I was not going to give them the easy way out.

  At about the time the producers were supposed to meet me for dinner on Monday night, I received a text from Morse saying that he was too busy preparing for the election coverage to attend dinner, and that they would be in touch early the next day.

  The next morning, I called and texted almost continuously, asking where I should be, how I should dress, what topics would be discussed. No response… for four and a half hours. At around 12:30 p.m. (3:30 p.m. on the East Coast), just as I was supposed to leave for the event—at this point all news coverage around the country, including my own website, was all election results all the time—Morse sent me an e-mail disinviting me.

  To add insult to injury yet again after picking at a scab that had been dashed with salt, ABC simultaneously sent the disinvitation to the left-wing media sites that had demanded I not participate on election night. They would revel in their victory as I packed to go back to LA, where at least now I could vote. To make matters worse, I was away from my office desk where I would be of best use on election night. ABC broke the news when those who would care were least interested in blowing up a minor media scandal and when the left needed a victory—any victory it could get, on what they knew was going to be a disaster of an election night for them. I was the left’s Pyrrhic victory on Election Night 2010. I had been played.

  But it was worth it! It was fun. Being the media is fun. Telling the truth is fun. Having an effect on the election cycle is fun. Getting into world-class battles with brand-name media players is fun. When you have the truth on your side and the American people behind you, it’s fun! In hindsight, I wouldn’t change a thing. In two short years we were not just building successful, impactful websites, but changing the way Americans read, consume, and create media. Fun, fun, fun!

  What’s Next?

  I’ve already written that Election 2010 was less about November 2 than it was about November 3 and beyond.

  For me, 2011 is going to be a recommitment toward a righteous attempt to level the playing field in the media; 2011 is going to be less about holding Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid accountable than it’s going to be about holding George Stephanopoulos, Andrew Morse, ABC News, and the rest of the mainstream media accountable. It’s going to be about holding accountable the president of NPR, who capitulated to the exact same forces who attacked me when she canned Juan Williams and attacked his character in the process. It’s going to be about holding George Soros and his Hungarian nut squat squad at Media Matters accountable. It’s going to be about holding Arianna Huffington and Christiane Amanpour and Contessa Brewer and Katie Couric and Pinch Sulzberger accountable.

  I am optimistic that the Tea Party movement is reflective of a greater American sentiment that needs to try at least to save what is good and decent about the American experience. Again, it is a cultural battle. And while they cling to their media guns and their politically correct religion, truth will be our weapon.

  It’s a long war. I know. I’ve lost friends. I have the scars. My wife married an almost inappropriately always-lighthearted guy fourteen years ago. Now she wakes up next to a firebrand who is one of the most polarizing figures in the country.

  But I have also met the America that was rendered silent by the media and is now shaking itself to life again. These are the years that we will look back on and question whether we did enough for our country and for our children. That’s why I’m so determined, so pissed, so righteously indignant.

  Excuse me while I save the world.

  AFTERWORD

  Weinergate

&nbs
p; On Friday, May 27, 2011, I was asked by my business partner, Larry Solov, for a private meeting. The book tour for Righteous Indignation began in earnest in late March 2011, and for two straight months it dominated my psyche. While my Big editors—Mike Flynn, Dana Loesch, Larry O’Connor, Peter Schweitzer, and John Nolte, along with Joel Pollak, Alex Marlow, Dan Riehl, and Lee Stranahan—were holding down the editorial fort, I was floating in a cloud of self-promotion. The period from November 2009 through the book launch was intended to be a victory lap, based upon the journalistic successes we had achieved in reporting stories the mainstream media refused to cover. Instead, the book and its surrounding publicity campaign became an exercise in conveying that the reports of our death had been greatly exaggerated. We knew that our successes would inspire counterattacks, but we didn’t consider that even some in our own ranks would run for the hills when our enemies tried to shoot back.

  So what should have been pure fun and icing on the cake became a very necessary mission to reclaim our good name in the public eye. Those two months of book promotion took me away from our editorial huddle. I trust my people, and they did a superb job as I removed myself from the demanding, borderline-psychotic rat-tat-tat of the daily news cycle. But a two-month sabbatical is almost unforgivable, and in late May Larry wanted to convey to me, eye-to-eye, that the editors needed my guidance. Now.

  During this discussion, at a bizarre entertainment industry software store-cum-coffee shop, I recall experiencing the negative physical sensation that comes with wanting to disagree vehemently with what I was hearing. I wanted to lash out at Larry and find out which editors were making the rumblings of mutiny. But I knew, deep down, that they were right.