October 12, 2012 Hating Breitbart - A Fitting Film Tribute to a Unique Political Warrior By Scott Swett Andrew Breitbart, who died last March at just 43 years of age, was the hardest-hitting conservative activist of the Obama era. If you share his conviction that the leftist-dominated media is a threat to open political debate, you will want to see Hating Breitbart, which was screened recently in Washington. The film offers an affectionate look at the activist's political battles and outsized personality, but it also captures the rage he inspired in his adversaries -- partly due to his flamboyant, combative style, but mostly because he wouldn't play by their rules. For decades, most conservative leaders (and nearly all elected Republicans) could be reliably intimidated by name-calling, especially by allegations of racism. Andrew Breitbart didn't care what his opponents called him. n Instead of apologizing, he turned a new media spotlight back on the accusers. In the process, he broke major stories that "mainstream" reporters wouldn't touch. Breitbart particularly despised the left's efforts to silence opposing views by labeling them as "hate speech." And when he told fellow conservatives not to fear being attacked as racist, sexist, homophobic, and Islamophobic, no one could say he didn't practice what he preached. Breitbart's standard response to such slander amounted to two words: "f*** you." This, along with a few other stray profanities, has earned the film an "R" rating, which the producers hope to reverse. Andrew Breitbart came to national attention in 2009 as the Tea Party movement was forming. Shaken by the explosion of anti-tax grassroots activism, the institutional left wheeled out its biggest weapon -- accusations of racism -- as the media called the movement "too white" and hostile to minorities. When the editorial propaganda had little impact, Congressional Black Caucus members accused Tea Party protesters on Capitol Hill of screaming racial slurs at them. Despite the absence of any evidence, the Democrat media eagerly promoted the charges. Breitbart's characteristic response was to confront the slander head-on. After tracking down and reviewing multiple video clips of the event, he publicly offered to donate $10,000 to the United Negro College Fund if anyone could substantiate a single racial slur -- an offer he eventually raised to $100,000. As Hating Breitbart demonstrates, the old media ignored the videos he provided to document the incident and continued to push their racial narrative -- even as the race-baiting congressmen became increasingly reluctant to discuss the matter. The outcome was a clear win for Breitbart and what he called his "new media army." In another segment, Breitbart can be seen asking audience members to hold their cameras up in the air. As virtually everyone in the crowd waved a camera or smart phones, his message was clear: why should we rely on partisan "journalists" who manipulate the news to serve an agenda? We are the media. Hating Breitbart is clearly a labor of love, and as such, it has a fair number of "inside baseball" moments. Some viewers may tire of watching Breitbart lounge around hotel rooms being quirky and mercurial, at the expense of more footage of his powerful public appearances. However, both of the "operating modes" Breitbart claimed as his complete repertoire -- jocularity and righteous indignation -- are fairly represented. His righteous indignation usually targeted the left's politics of division, which he summarizes crisply as "the opposite of e pluribus unum." Andrew Breitbart had a keen understanding of how the left operates. He knew how organizers create and advance a "narrative" -- a useful story based on inflammatory lies. Moreover, he understood how news operations and news cycles function. He greatly amplified the impact of the O'Keefe-Giles ACORN videos by rolling them out in stages, allowing ACORN leaders to compound the damage by falsely claiming the duo had been "turned away" in other cities when they solicited taxpayer-funded help for their supposed underage prostitution business. Articles: Hating Breitbart - A Fitting Film Tribute to a Unique Political Warrior