Refusing to engage the ideological enemy in popular media invites
failure, argues Internet news entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart.
He’s
absolutely right to say that conservatives “can’t win the
political war until we take on the Hollywood and mainstream media
battles.”
Breitbart offered this reflection after running the gauntlet of
HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” (video available at Breitbart’s
Big Hollywood website) where he was tag-teamed by a liberal
elitist host and a self-important pseudo-intellectual named
Michael Eric Dyson.
“Pretty much everyone I respect in media and politics” warned him
not to appear on the show, but he did and writes in today’s
Washington Times that he had the time of his life. Maher
and Dyson worked hard to rough him up, but he left knowing he won
the rigged bout “simply by showing up.”
The payoff was immediate. After finishing the shoot, “I felt like
I had gone 12 rounds with Mike Tyson and Roberto Duran. But when
I got back to my dressing room, my BlackBerry was filling with
messages from people I’ve never met, many of whom disagree with
my politics but were compelled to praise my willingness to enter
the lion’s den.”
One self-described liberal Democrat who emailed Breitbart wrote
he was dismayed at the appalling treatment the conservative media
figure received:
I felt that you were given very little meaningful ability to
speak; when you requested evidence to back up the claims that
were being made, you received none and when you were requested
not to interrupt by Prof. Dyson (and politely heeded his
request) you were then constantly interrupted. As a side note,
I have watched the show for several years and have never
witnessed the audience applause to be so intrusive and so
obstructive to meaningful debate. I suspect that you don’t care
much about what occurred and likely anticipated it. I
definitely care, not least because it has been my opinion that
the ‘shouting down’ tactics and lack of respect for evidence
have been characteristics of the right more than the left in US
politics in recent years. Overall, I still believe that, but
what occurred on the show has given me much pause for thought.
Please continue to engage in sincere debate with ideological
opponents and please continue to exercise a higher standard of
manners.
It’s the tiny little leak in the proverbial dyke as Breitbart
sees it, a modest step that lays the foundation for liberals to
eventually see the error of their ways and move rightward. “We
must plant seeds of doubt in the minds of the groupthink liberals
in our dumbed-down and activist media culture,” he writes.
Shying away from dealing with liberals in the media when leftists
control both the White House and Congress is a recipe for
disaster:
The problem with the withdrawal approach is that it cedes the
popular culture debate to the other side. We figure talk radio,
a certain cable news network and some independent Internet
venues will allow for us to get our ideas out to the masses.
Well, those few outlets are greatly outnumbered. They are also
isolated and targeted for destruction by the activist left. The
sitting president (using taxpayer money) is now leading the
charge.
Again, he’s right.
Matthew Sheffield and Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters made the same
argument in “Inside the Disinformation Machine: A Look at the
Left’s New Media Operation,”: (Foundation
Watch, September 2008)
Conservatives and libertarians must take their activism to the
web. They should participate in mainstream online communities
like the video website YouTube, the open-source encyclopedia
Wikipedia, and social bookmarking services such as Delicious
(formerly del.icio.us) and StumbleUpon where readers share
stories with other community members. These services offer a
tremendous opportunity to present freedom and free markets to
uncommitted voters and citizens.
We have only just begun to fight.
