skippy the bush kangaroo: pimp my rights

Monday, March 01, 2010

pimp my rights

mike stark, in conjunction w/the bradblog & crooks&liars, had a one-on-one w/andrew "too old to write for 24" breitbart about james o'keefe's pimp costume in the unfortunate acorn videos. mike, writing on the brad blog [ed. note: also posted on c&l], tells us:

in any sane world, the old-media would spend a little time navel-gazing to figure out how they were so easily suckered by james o'keefe, andrew breitbart, fox news, and talk radio. but, alas, even the new york times' "reader's representative," public editor clark hoyt, has obstinately refused to recommend corrections to the times' repeatedly error-riddled coverage.

rather than accept responsibility, issue corrections, and take steps to avoid such easily-averted errors in the future, hoyt has instead created a false equivalency, shockingly accusing "every person in this argument" of "pushing a political agenda" --- and the broad-brush new-media, bastions of progressive strength, are tarred as unreliable, somehow, along with it.

after brad friedman meticulously walked hoyt through the inconsistencies in the o'keefe/breitbart story and offered definitive proof that their entire construct was a malicious hoax, hoyt's response to friedman was to say that friedman, like o'keefe and breitbart, had an agenda and was therefore unreliable.

see the trick? friedman spent scores of hours trying to save the new york times from itself, proving every which way to sunday that breitbart and o'keefe were dishonest hucksters. for all his efforts, brad asked only for a correction. he asked only that the "paper of record" report accurately. but when hoyt and the times finally ran out of excuses and could no longer conjure remotely plausible counterclaims to friedman's systematic presentation of hard evidence, the paper declared everyone tainted somehow (except themselves of course) and walked away from the table.

old-media have demonstrated little capacity for distinguishing wheat from chaff in the new-media. this will likely continue, as they lump the responsible progressive new-media together with a laughably absurd rightwing electronic propaganda machine and declare everyone suspect --- even as it takes the progressive new-media themselves to help the old-media understand how they've been had by those who deceptively use the guise of "new media" and "citizen journalist" to ply their same old dishonest trade.

here's mike's interview w/andrew:

meanwhile, the ny da has found no criminality on the part of the acorn employees in brooklyn after an investigation spurred on by the o'keefe costume drama.

as an addendum, remember to sign the petition to get the nytimes to retract their obviously-incorrect assertions that o'keefe wore the pimp costume into acorn offices.

posted by skippy at 4:05 PM |

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Remember, in Soviet America, Tass on the Hudson proclaims truth to be a partisan conspiracy to overthrow the rule of the Party. Honorable Sovoks, salute!

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