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Andrew Wept
You may recall the recent Hewitt v. Trump thread, where the silver-haired lickspittle of the Cocktail Circle Corps demanded that Donald The Brave tell him the atomic weight of Boron and other gotcha! questions. Trump, to his credit, noted that he would get up to speed on the periodic table, and know more about the elements than Hewitt ever would – possibly by finding the best scientists in the world, hiring them, liquifying their brains, and having the rich, brilliant slurry injected directly into his cerebral cortex.
In the comments, I noted that the outcry after the interview would result in Hewitt’s banishment from the ranks of True Conservatives, because he was elite, squishy, and no doubt part of a plan to resettle the entirety of Kansas with Mexican gang members on the orders of the Jewish Masons. (They secretly control the regular Masons.)
On cue, breitbart.com obliged with a piece: HUGH HEWITT, GOP DEBATE QUESTIONER, SIDES WITH ESTABLISHMENT, NOT VOTERS. The comments are … well, go read them, and you’ll be slapping your wallet to re-up for Ricochet. (Did you know Michael Medved is a Jew? He is.)
Disclosure: Hugh is a friend, and I am a regular guest on the show. I am also a daily listener for 15 years, during which time I enjoyed many appearances by a fellow who also held Hugh in warm regard. Guy by the name of Andrew. Hugh was a big booster of Andrew, and whenever he had a new project or made the news or just wanted to pop off, Hugh had him on.
I knew this Andrew too. A capital fellow. Last time I saw him was in my kitchen at the end of a party; he was the last to leave, and he was talking about the toll it all took. The man had endless fearless energy, and it never occurred to us that sometimes it must have been damned hard being Andrew. I miss him to this day, and I know, if he was still around, he’d be on Hugh’s show saying whatever he wanted to say, and if he said something that clashed with something Hugh said, Hewitt would say hold that thought and keep him over for the next segment.
Andrew left a brand. His heirs soil it. A good site, once. Now it’s a toll house on the edge of the fever swamp. I wish they’d change their name, but of course they won’t.
Without it, what would set them apart?
Image Credit: “Andrew Breitbart” by Gage Skidmore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Published in General
While accusing others of demagogy and feigning a desire for reasoned discourse.
Those descriptors applied to Pat Buchanan, and he earned them fair and square. You cannot dance with Buchanan and expect to be able to distance yourself from the uglier parts of his agenda and rhetoric, is my point.
Immigration is an issue that needs to be fixed, but not at the expense of abandoning all other conservative priorities which Trump is all too obviously willing to do. It also doesn’t require the overbroad solutions and divisive rhetoric the demagogues like Trump are using to whip up his questionable support.
Spoken like a true protectionist and Union leader.
1/2
2/2
I’m not trying to guilt white people. I’m pointing out that Breitbart went out of its way to emphasize the racial makeup of the immigrants it’s ominously warning everyone about. Instead of writing this sentence,
“… hundreds of millions—of poor Africans, Latin Americans, Asians, and Middle Easterners are responding to the open-borders signals from progressive elites in the developed world.”
why not say this?
“… hundreds of millions poor from the third world are responding to the open-borders signals from progressive elites in the developed world.”
The racialist rhetoric is consistent and deliberate, and the proof is in the type of Alex Jones/Storm Front/white supremacist followers who flock to champion this type of rhetoric.
Bully for you and your hispanic bona fides, open your eyes to the cynical button pushing going on and the way Trump and his boosters are playing and exploiting a segment of society that you really should want nothing to do with.
It has become more than obvious that there is no reasoning with Trump supporters who believe that he is actually conservative or sincere despite all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I have no interest in reasoning with people who are so plainly, stubbornly, and willfully obtuse.
This is completely lacking in logic. It would seem that you and Pres. Obama agree on immigration reform. So I guess you can’t distance yourself from the uglier parts of his agenda or rhetoric.
Why must someone agree with Pres. Obama on immigration if they disagree with Trump?
I am more sympathetic to your point here than your other interlocutors & I even believe that more than the random share of racists are throwing their support behind Mr. Trump. I do not believe, at any rate, many conservatives will bend over backward to do something when people like NR’s Mr. Goldberg are treated to choice anti-Semitism. I’m not sure what should or could be done, & I would even agree that the rising anger & bitterness are partly what allows this kind of depravity to go on unhumbled.
I even agree with you about immigration: It’s not life or death. & at that, immigration is not itself the problem–it’s what’s happening to American democracy that’s the problem. Possibly, stopping immigration is the solution or a stopgap pending a solution.
But saying plainly that the immigrants are not white is not racism, directly or indirectly or very indirectly. It does matter that it’s poor people from what used to be called, with Cold War language, the third world. Why? Because not all poor people believe the same things or act the same way. I think that’s what folks now call culture. But consider the politics, too: America already has a race problem & seems to have added another one with Mexicans given the massive increase in their numbers in the last generation.
Wait for–or elicit–some serious evidence of racism, whether direct, indirect or very indirect. Anger is already on the rise-
Just so that I understand. It is de facto racism to use an accurate description of where the immigrants come from? Only a white supremacist would call an immigrant from Africa an African Immigrant?
This is the world you think most people, much less most conservatives, live in? This is the message that you must fight against and that will win people over to your ideas?
Absolutely correct. Rather than address the obvious fact that importing millions of new voters with little to no appreciation of America’s unique history and political culture (most of whom will support the Democrats and become clients of the welfare state) will further entrench socialism and curtail individual liberty, many in the Republican Party and the upper echelons of the conservative movement would prefer to engage in their own demagoguery and name-calling. I’m having none of it.
It’s the “look, a squirrel!” routine, with Pat Buchanan playing the role of the squirrel in this instance.
What I want nothing to do with are politicians who enact bad policy (amnesty) or constrain the federal government from doing its constitutionally mandated duty (border security).
Please, folks, let’s take a step back & try to argue about this without bringing things to a crisis. Neither America’s future nor American conservatism’s future is to be decided among you just now…
We have to agree that the conservatives are not racists just because their clear-eyed & that a lot of the racism that’s vocal on the right now is to do with immigration & Mr. Trump.
We also have to agree that continued levels of immigration, legal & illegal, seem to doom conservative politics.
Do we also agree that if America becomes a country where the whites are just the largest minority, racial trouble is going to magnify significantly? Supposedly, that demographic change is a bit more than a generation away.
Now, can we agree, too, that there is a national policy on immigration & that the people vote as electoral coalitions for whichever side they prefer?
What if the electorate decides immigration is not going to go the way some or many conservatives desire? What then?
It is not necessary, maybe I was misreading the BThompson’s views on immigration.
Let me try again. Pres. Obama and Marco Rubio were both lobbying for the Senate Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Based on BThompson’s logic Marco Rubio now cannot distance himself from any statement or agenda item of Pres. Obama. Agreeing on a policy makes you the same person.
Especially when it feels so good to assert your moral superiority by accusing them of racism and anti-Semitism.
To get back to the original point of the original post, Andrew Breitbart would be dismayed to see what his management team now considers their “base”, and the quickest skim of the comboxes indicates that they are, in fact, infested with the lowest kind of political scum–actual, hardcore racists and anti-Semites. It’s what makes the “Big” sites so toxic anymore. The real Breitbart was never like that. Not the slightest bit.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-europe-migrant-crisis-20150902-story.html
The LA Times article above discusses the migrant problems in America and Europe. It would seem that the LA Times also fits your definition of white supremacist rhetoric. They also have dared to label the countries or regions where the immigrants are coming from.
I don’t read much of these sites. Could you give an example of actual hardcore racism in the current site?
Jager, look up breitbart.com in your browser and go to the comments section. It won’t take you long to see what I mean.
And it has nothing to do with immigration policy. Mickey Kaus is pretty strong on borders. So is Krikorian. Neither of them would tolerate Nazis–I mean, goose-stepping, arm-banded Nazis.
Something’s gone badly wrong with the Breitbart sites.
If it was a full-squish moderate site, it would still get nutbag comments. It might get fewer overall comments due to reduced interest. If it were so unimportant that it was not also targeted by leftists you would see fewer false flag comments (I forget the proper jargon).
So are you saying they need to actively purge nutbag comments? Do other similar sites?
Ok I trust you on this. I don’t have the time to read every thing on Big Gov’t looking for it. You at least helped me in that it is not having a view similar to Mickey Kaus or, as above, labeling immigrants by their country of origin but actual racism. I guess I am not missing much by rarely reading their stuff.
More sites would benefit if they took the time to moderate their comments. They don’t seem to think having that kind of garbage in their comments hurts their image, but it does drive people away. For some of our commenters to have personally known Breitbart, it makes it even more troubling to see that kind of thing associated with his name when it is not in keeping with the attitudes of the man they knew.
I believe the term you want is Moby.
Don’t care much for labels.
My response to James was positive. He is a jewel. The second part of my comment was based on previous comments, although no quotes were included in my comment. Simply observed that Trump gets slammed at every opportunity by many, many conservatives. And I opined on the candidates a bit. Calm down.
Love this.
Thanks Tom.
What are you people imbibing? Read Coulter, fer cryin’ out loud.
It’s not about race, religion, nativism (whatever the heck that is), or any other label. It’s about preserving our exceptional nation, and ending the apologies for being exceptional. Like Thomas Sowell said a day or so ago, (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/09/08/the_past_and_future_of_the_refugee_crisis_128006.html), the future is where the real ugliness of uncontrolled immigration or migration occurs.
Assimilation is not occurring, and that is a fatal error. It is not kind or loving to invite people into our country and culture, then allow or encourage them to live in enclaves far different from the prevailing culture.
Can’t imagine how Jewishness even entered this conversation. For example, Goldberg is wrong-headed on Trump, not because he’s Jewish but because he might be becoming too much a creature of the Acela corridor. Maybe I’m not sensitive enough to catch these racist undercurrents, but honestly, it hadn’t even entered my mind to read Jonah or Jon as pick-a-label columnists.
This you gleaned from a post about how Andrew and Hugh were compatriots, and Breitbart’s site seems over the moon for someone its founder did not regard as a conservative at all?
If you believe that’s what I said, or that Hugh Hewitt doesn’t want immigration enforcement – he’s been pushing for a wall since 9/12 – you’re welcome to it, I suppose, but good luck finding any evidence beyond wishful inference.
I will ask Hugh where he stands on Trump’s new hell-based humanitarian pro-immigration policy re: the Syrians.
Jewishness probably entered the conversation because of what many see as a fundamental hypocrisy among Jewish conservatives, certainly in John Podhoretz’s case-“open-borders multiculturalism for the US/Ethno-nationalism for Israel.” Mickey Kaus once called out Jennifer Rubin on one of their old podcasts here at Ricochet on the same issue. My own sympathies are with Israel; I wish we would outsource the construction of our border fence to them!
I have never read anything from Jonah that would lead me to lump him in with Podhoretz in that way. I have despised Podhoretz ever since his rude exchanges with Mark Krikorian and John Derbyshire on immigration policy at The Corner on NRO ten years ago. “Ellis Island schmaltz/Latinos are the new Italians and Poles” was the entirety of his argument.
Mickey Kaus is also Jewish, so there are Jews on both sides of the issue.
Tom Riehl, I don’t worry about subtle undercurrents of hate; I worry about blatant, obvious overcurrents of hate, as undeniable as lightning strikes. Take one look at a typical Breitbart.com comments section. It ain’t subtle.
BTW, that’s what this post is about: breitbart.com, not conservatism in general, Trump supporters vs. everyone else, etc. We’re saying the site has drifted far from what it was when Andrew was alive. I’ve seen nothing to make me doubt that.