Day: February 8, 2010

As Valentine’s Day approaches, we find ourselves charmed by this picture, posted by the West Wing Report, of a chance meeting of former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell.

The profiteers who organized the tea bagger convention last weekend must have backed off their plan to ban the media from covering events in Nashville last weekend. C-SPAN was there, as were reporters from supposedly liberal sources like the New York Times. In fact, one report said there were 150 credentialed reporters to cover the 600 attendees — or one reporter for every four baggers.

But when it comes to coverage of the biggest kerfuffle of the event — a verbal brawl between Andrew Breitbart, a blogger who once referred to himself as Matt Drudge’s “bitch,” and WingNutDaily editor Joseph Farah, a leading proponent in the 1990s of the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster — the action took place outside the event and would have been fair game to reporters even if there’d been a media blackout in the hall.

What sparked the contretemps was Farah’s use of his address Friday night to relaunch the tired and often-disproved claim that Pres. Obama was not born in the United States. The made-up controversy over Obama’s birth certificate has become a non-issue among right-wingers who are sufficiently sentient to understand that even if Obama were disqualified, it would be his vice president, Joe Biden, would become president — not his 2008 GOP rival, John McCain (who, by the way, really was born in the foreign nation of Panama).

In his address to his fellow baggers in Nashville — after a few minutes of hard-selling his books — he told a lame joke that ended with this punchline:

FARAH: we recently took a guy with no birth certificate, no brains and put him in the White House and now half the country is looking for work.

Then he launched into a rambling 10-minute screed about the birth certificate:

FARAH: You know, I have a dream. And my dream is that if Barack Obama even seeks re-election as president in 2012 that he won’t be able to go to any city, any town, any hamlet in America without seeing signs that ask “Where’s the Birth Certificate?”

It’s a simple question, and it has not been answered, despite what Bill O’Reilly will tell you. The rest of the media, they think it’s ridiculous, which makes me certain it’s one of the most important questions we can be asking…

But the media and the politicians, they keep pretending it’s all been settled. “You know, it’s all been proved.” I say if it’s been settled, show us the birth certificate. Simple.

(For video and transcript of Farah’s rebooting of the birther movement, click here.)

One of the reporters on hand for Farah’s speech was the Washington Independent’s David Weigel, who wrote later that conservative political types in the back of the room were heard “grumbling audibly” about Farah’s re-introduction of birtherism into tea bag movement. Among the most vocal was Breitbart, who has been in the news a lot lately because he is or was the employer of James O’Keefe, the alleged felonious prankster who was caught attempting to tamper with phones in a federal building in New Orleans. (It is unclear what, if anything, Breitbart paid O’Keefe to do and whether he knew what O’Keefe intended to commit a felony.)

Later in the evening, Weigel found Breitbart outside the hall being interviewed by Chelsea Schilling, an employee of Farah’s WorldNetDaily. Weigel later wrote that Schilling was holding a voice recorder in plain sight apparently to make it plain that Breitbart was speaking on the record:

“It’s self-indulgent, it’s narcissistic, it’s a losing issue,” Breitbart told Schilling. “It’s a losing situation. If you don’t have the frigging evidence … raising the question? You can do that to Republicans all day long. You have to disprove that you’re a racist! Forcing them to disprove something is a nightmare.”

“Wouldn’t you say,” asked Schilling, “in this case, that Farah is asking Obama to prove something rather than his disprove it?”

Breitbart rejected the premise. “When has a president ever been asked to prove his citizenship?”

Later, Weigel found Farah in the crowd and asked him if the convention’s organizers had approved his attempt to relaunch birtherism:

“They asked me to speak,” said Farah. “They didn’t ask me, ‘What do you want to speak about?’ No, this operates like a free and open society, not like the kind of Marxist society you would apparently like to be a journalist for.”

When Weigel told Farah that his birther reboot had been negatively received in the crowd, particularly by Breitbart, Farah spotted Breitbart in the crowd and stalked over to him and said:

“Andrew is my friend … He has the right to disagree, and he has the right to say anything to a socialist newspaper that he wants. And if he wants to criticize his friend to you, and he’s dumb enough to do that..”

Breitbart raised his eyebrows. “I’m dumb to do what?”

“Criticize your friend to this socialist newspaper.”

“I was talking to her,” said Breitbart, pointing to Schilling. “I was talking to you. And I was saying that I disagreed on the birther stuff… She was asking me if I thought it was was [sic] to bring it up, and I said, no. “

Breitbart schooled Farah on the use of the birth certificate controversy in politics, according to Weigel, saying it was “an argument for the primaries that did not take hold.” He argued that reintroducing birtherism now while there were substantive issues on the table would be distracting and make the tea bag movement look foolish. “[It’s] not a winning issue,” Breitbart said.

The argument then devolved into a sort of “uh-huh,” “hunh-uh” exchange during which Breitbart quickly found himself swinging at Farah’s conspiracist tar baby:

Farah said, “It is a winning issue!” to which Breitbart replied, “It’s not a winning issue,” to which Farah said, “It is!”

Breitbart is correct, of course. In the GOP primary election for the Illinois U.S. Senate seat last Tuesday, for example, a prominent birther, Andy Martin, came in fifth in a six-person race — and the four tea party candidates collectively only received 36 percent of the vote and were trounced by establishment candidate, whom Martin had publicly accused of being secretly gay and, worse, a “liberal.”

As their exchange continued, Breibart steamed as Farah grew more obtuse and condescending.

“Prove it!,” Breitbart said.

“Prove what?” Farah answered.

Breitbart: “Prove your case.”

“I should prove, what, a birth certificate that may or may not exist?” said Farah.

At that point, Farah played the “journalism card” — which is rich considering that he is a propagandist without a shred of credibility.

“You don’t even understand the fundamental tenets of what journalism is about, Andrew,” Farah said. “It’s not about proving things. It’s about asking questions and seeking truth.” (But aren’t “proving things” and “seeking truth” roughly the same pursuit?)

With tempers boiling Farah said, “I know you’re not a journalist, so that’s fine. But don’t diminish people who’ve been doing this for 35 years.”

“So you’re going to go on record saying that I’m not a journalist?” Breitbart said.

“Are you?” Farah answered, “I’ve never heard you claim to be. Are you?”

“I’ll let it be answered by you.”

“Well, I knew Drudge didn’t consider himself a journalist,” said Farah, “so I assumed that you were. … I don’t know, I’m not trying to insult you.”

“You did,” Breitbart answered.

Poor Breitbart. Just as Farah continued to promote the charge that Clinton killed Vince Foster even after three federal investigations, including one by no less an amoral right-wing ideologue than Ken Starr, had ruled the death a suicide, Farah is not likely to let go of the birth certificate controversy, even though the matter has been litigated all the way up to the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court.

Breitbart must know he is on the losing side on this one. He also knows that, short of a sex scandal involving Sarah Palin and a dead boy or a live girl, few things can do more damage to the tea bagger movement in the eyes of normal Americans and independent voters than reviving the quest to prove the unprovable: that Barack Obama was not born in Honolulu.