No, really.Because it’s Mitch Fucking Albom:
But Breitbart lit the fire. He blew on the flames. As Sherrod would later tell CNN, “He knew exactly what would happen.”
So
Breitbart is where this sad story begins, where the blame lies and
where the punishment should be doled out — if there were any you could
dole out.Sadly, how do you punish a blogger like Breitbart? He
simply slithers back into the muck that some confuse with journalism.
Who does he have to answer to?Nobody.
[snip]
“I believe that I’m held to a higher standard,” Breitbart told
Politico. “If this video showed a picture of a caucasian talking in the
exact same way but talking about a black person with an audience
affirming and clapping that behavior, the reporter would be getting a
Pulitzer Prize right now.”Response: 1) No, he wouldn’t. 2) Showing an edited video is not “reporting.” 3) You, Breitbart, are not held toany standard.
And that’s the problem.
This middlebrow schmaltz-merchant spends most of his column calling Breitbart an asshole, but these are the parts I’d like to focus on, because once again, it’s not about what Breitbart does or doesn’t do. This is America. He has the right to be as big a douchecanoe as he can possibly be. That’s on him, as will be the eventual lawsuit. You know what’s not on him? The decision to listen to his bullshit and take action based on it.
Let’s be clear about this: He didn’t put a gun to Tom Vilsack’s head and make him fire Shirley Sherrod. He didn’t put a gun to the heads of the assignment editors of the TV talking heads and make them jump all over the story like a bunch of teenage girls screaming about the quarterback’s abs. He didn’t do anything but what he and countless other conservative bloggers do every day, which is to peddle absolute horseshit and then whine when nobody kisses their asses for it.
So bitching that HE isn’t held to a standard is ridiculous. Better to hold the people to whom standards are supposedly their stock in trade to some. How do you punish a blogger like Breitbart, American media? Instead of taking away his Magical Internet Bullshitting License, you could just … ignore the next piece of bullshit he comes up with. You could just have those standards yourself, and not worry so much about what standards someone else has.
Schmuck.
A.