This is priceless:
The web is abuzz today about video of a speech Barack Obama gave in 1990 (some reports have incorrectly identified the speech as occurring in 1991) at Harvard Law School defending the actions of Professor Derrick Bell. Bell, the law school’s first tenured black professor, had protested Harvard’s failure to offer tenure to women of color as law school professors. Online publisher Andrew Brietbart, who died last week, had said he possessed the speech and hinted that he would release it, arguing that it provided evidence that Obama has long held radical political beliefs.
Today, the website BuzzFeed published a clip of the speech along with an article explaining some past and current context for Obama’s remarks. The website claimed the clip was “not previously available online.” The editors at Brietbart.com responded that the video on Buzzfeed had been “selectively edited” and said that they would release the full footage tonight on Fox News.
But there’s nothing new about the clip or Obama’s role in the controversy at Harvard Law School. In 2008, as a part of our quadrennial election special The Choice 2008, FRONTLINE ran the same footage of the speech as a part of an exploration of Obama’s time at Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1991. It’s been online at our site and on YouTube since then. You can see that part of the film below.
As alarming as it may seem, Breitbart really was the brains behind that operation. I guess we can expect a couple months of the Big website crews outdumbing each other, each trying to prove they are the alpha moron fit to take over where excitable Andy left off.
Baud
How soon before some young woman carves a backwards “B” on her face?
Mnemosyne
I especially love that some super-genius at Breitbart.com decided to run their version through a Photoshop filter to make it look scaaaaaary.
Emma
I have been watching this train wreck but not bothering to say anything. I mean, heck, what can you say besides oh come on, you’re kidding, right? Honestly you’re not that stupid, right?
It seems they are. Sigh.
Steve L.
BOW TO THE BREITBARTPOCALYPSE!
Litlebritdifrnt
OMG Obama hugs scarey law professor. The world is going to end! Fail.
The Moar You Know
Drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Oops, too late.
dmsilev
As I pointed out in an earlier thread, this is proof, proof I tell you, that the assassination team that Obama sent out after Breitbart managed to find and seize the *real* tape.
It’s now in the same vault as Obama’s actual birth certificate.
Soonergrunt
The comments on the Bigmoron site are stupidity for the ages.
Ben Franklin
With Birferism as a corallary, ’nuff said.
dmsilev
@Mnemosyne: Do you think they watched the tape with the room lights off and someone holding a flashlight underneath their chin?
gwangung
As I said on the other thread, if a non-white doesn’t at least implicitly acknowledge the superiority of white American culture, they’re gonna get branded as “eliminationist.” And folks are too blind to their own…privilege…to see that
maya
As gnomedad suggested in Betty Cracker’s post on same topic, “Capone’s Vault” would be a good tag for this kind of shite. – Or, Breitbart’s Box.
Zandar
#whenblackguyshug
dmbeaster
Yeah, Buzzfeed showed the whole version before Brietbart.com gave it the Sherrod treatment. Ruined their scoop.
gnomedad
When will the liberal media stop hiding vital information on YouTube?
Satanicpanic
THE VETTING! So stupid. So so stupid.
jgaugust
I’m actually trying to watch Hannity without laughing and I’m finding it really really difficult.
This really is the definition of failure.
Soonergrunt
@dmbeaster: As I noted earlier, when the “editors” of a Breitbart site complain about selective editing, then the universe is in danger of a paradox that could destroy the very fabric of space-time.
I figure that, it being 2012, maybe the Mayans were right after all.
dmsilev
A new(*), even worse, video scandal: Obama talks about Southern food!. Elitist!
(*) 2001
jonas
Yeah, but the film shows Obama, a black guy, associating publicly with Bell, ANOTHER black guy!
So Obama was like a gangbanger, or something.
Baud
You know, there are just too many unknowns with this Obama guy. I’m not sure America can afford to take a chance with him as President.
Just Some Fuckhead
You spelled execrable wrong.
Svensker
@Soonergrunt:
They are unbelievable. Apparently George Soros and the Obama Truth (Troof) Squad are omnipresent and pretty much omnipotent. I wish someone on the Left had clued me in before now!
chrome agnomen
obama edited the tape during that same period when he time traveled to mars. FSM knows what other mischief lies in store for us in the future that he fixed in the part.
jgaugust
I really needed to start a drinking game for this. The big winners tonight would be “radical” and “Jeremiah Wright of academia.”
As it is, I’m just laughing incredibly hard.
Anoniminous
Doesn’t “Breitbart” sound like a character, humorous sidekick perhaps, in one of those cowboy TV shows that infested the airwaves in the 60s?
PTirebiter
Excitable Andy. Feared by every usherette in West L.A. Of course all of Hollywood quakes in the presence of Andy’s mighty and talented sword.
dmsilev
@Soonergrunt: I got about three comments in and found this:
At which point I gave up. I’m sure it’s possible to out-stupid that paragraph, but I’m equally sure that I’d react like a typical H.P. Lovecraft protagonist who goes incurably insane when they lay eyes on some creeping horror from beyond space and time.
Amy
Obama also praised Bell for engaging in conversation and dialogue with students.
You can’t get more radical than that.
I’d asked what the heck these people were thinking except, you know…
Mnemosyne
@dmbeaster:
Fix’d. :-)
@Satanicpanic:
It needs a better, scarier name, like THE VETTENATING! You know, so it can sound really impressive without actually saying anything.
GeneJockey
@Anoniminous:
Right – Bright Bart as opposed to Black Bart.
Mnemosyne
My favorite part of the FAIL is that they took their super secret video from a five-year-old, nationally-broadcast PBS documentary show. Do you think they did it out of laziness, an assumption that their audience is so lazy they wouldn’t check, or did some idiot actually find it on YouTube or something and think it was his BIG BREAK!1!
Soonergrunt
@Mnemosyne: Well, in their credit, they did at least know that conservatives don’t watch PBS, so it was likely new to THOSE people.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Andrew Breitbart. He was just an excitable boy.
dmbeaster
By the way, the basic spin on this is to equate Derrick Bell, the Harvard law school professor who was leading the protest at which Obama spoke, as allegedly another radical Jeremiah Wright. Therefore, Obama is shown by this “secret” video to really be a fringe crazy.
I know and met Derrick Bell. He became dean of my law school the year I graduated (1980, Univ of Oregon). He was a decent polite man with very strong convictions about race in America. To slander him as a crazy “racialist” (their word) is just another fact-free right wing hit job. He died last year, so he is not around to defend himself.
The smear machine makes McCarthy look like a piker.
gbear
@dmsilev:
Either that or you’d react like the Monty Python sketch about the joke that kills.
dmsilev
@dmsilev: OK, against my better judgement and advice of counsel I clicked on the guy’s name (and went here: http://PalinsDirtyLittleSecret.blogspot.com/ ) and found what appears to be the largest untapped reserve of pure wingnut this side of RedState. Just a taste:
You really have to admire a conspiracy theorist who can tie Mark Cuban, Oprah, and Sarah Palin into an incoherent whole.
David Koch
This Frontline bio of Obama is pretty cool
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/dreamsofobama/view/
dmbeaster
@Mnemosyne: From reading the Frontline article on this, it appears Brietbart.com got the video from the WGBH archives, and did not realize it had previously been broadcast by Frontline and was also on YouTube. Which just makes the fail even more funny.
Spaghetti Lee
@Anoniminous:
I’m thinking more a hilariously overwrought sitcom character. At least once an episode, someone says “Oh, Breitbart! ” and then he mugs for the camera and a little sad trombone plays.
freelancer
@dmsilev:
I really love the part about how everything is suspect or alleged except for two obviously known facts:
jgaugust
I think what I’m enjoying most right now is the infighting among the wingnuts who are battling it out about which conspiracy theory is the best one. I fear that 1/2 this country really just wants to see Idiocracy actually happen.
imbrium
-Republicans shocked and outraged at video showing president Obama speaking at a rally promoting diversity.
-Republicans confused that minorities are not rushing to embrace them.
Spaghetti Lee
@dmsilev:
OK, I’m going to call parody on that. Please. For my own sanity.
Steeplejack
Fix’d for house style.
dmsilev
@freelancer: It gets better:
GeneJockey
Watch as the Right try to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat! I checked in on the Bowhunting forum I used to frequent till the stupidity got too deep. The first few ‘post reveal’ comments were pretty disappointed:
“Are they kidding? What was supposed to be a bombshell is barely a sparkler….if that.”
But, true to the research on how people deal with Cognitive Dissonance, someone came up with a straw for them to grasp at…
“I think the key here is too look at the history of how anti-American and ultra-left that professor is, and then look at the big and lengthy hug Obama gave him. Then ask yourself why the msm never bothered to cover his relationship with that guy and ask why they edited out the hug.”
See, the REAL story is that the MSM only told us Obama said nice things. They didn’t tell us he HUGGED him!
muddy
@dmsilev:
Needs more blackboard.
Cacti
I’m still waiting on the expose reporting how Barack Obama fathered not one, but two black children.
Svensker
@GeneJockey:
They. Edited. Out. The. Hug.
O.M.G.
This is worse than Watergate AND WWII!
Spaghetti Lee
@dmsilev:
(Rips off shirt.) You wanna go, Crazy Internet Person?! Because I’m ready, any fuckin’ time or place. Watch me:
PalinsDirtyLittleSecret has 23 LETTERS.
23 was the uniform number of noted BASKETBALL PLAYER from CHICAGO, and BLACK PERSON, MICHAEL JORDAN.
When Michael was still playing at THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, he wore the color BLUE. The background at the PDLS blog is ALSO BLUE.
NORTH CAROLINA is close to SOUTH CAROLINA, which is where MICHELLE OBAMA’s ancestors are FROM.
SOUTH CAROLINA started the CIVIL WAR by firing a CANNON, just like BASKETBALL PLAYERS FIRE SHOTS AT THE BASKET.
Bam, QE fuckin’ D, you putz.
Soonergrunt
@Svensker: And so, like House Republicans in 2010, you know how the Iranian protesters felt now.
The Moar You Know
@dmsilev: That’s not wingnut; that’s TimeCube levels of clinical schizophrenia.
Too bad we can’t force people into mental institutions anymore.
geg6
Anybody else feel like some sort of corner has been turned or that we are in the process of making that turn?
This is the lamest “scoop” I’ve ever seen and that’s saying something being that we are talking about a Breitbart “scoop” after all.
These guys are dropping like flies. First, Beck flamed out and now not even BoB pens paens to him any more. Breitbart drops dead just as he’s about to reveal the lamest “scoop” ever. And Limbaugh opens his big fat mouth one too many times and finally goes too far against the wrong person. Murdoch’s empire is crumbling from the criminality within. I’m not saying that the fight is won or that we can sit back and relax, but I really never thought, back in 2005, that a time like this would ever come in my lifetime. I’ve lived long enough to watch the Democratic Party fall apart and wither enough that the DLC and the mushy moderates were the only way we could win elections. I watched Reaganism take over the GOP and, sadly, foresaw the trajectory that would take but not the extent to which they’d be willing to take it. I’ve seen presidential election stolen and watched in horror as that president transparently lied this country into a war that never needed to be fought. I saw and helped a black man to become president, a job made so difficult by his predecessors that I’m still amazed that he would even want the job. I can’t believe I’ve lived through all of this. I had lost anhy hope of the country ever moving even slightly to the left, even after Obama’s election because of the escalation of craziness on the other side. But it feels different now somehow. It feels like the pendulum is swinging the other way for the first time in my adult life.
Sorry to get all rambling there, but I had to say these things I’ve been thinking. And hopefully, you all don’t think I’ve lost my mind.
Silver
Is being a dork an impeachable offense? Because that’s the message I took away from this horrible, horrible piece of video.
They want to make him sound like Malcolm X, but he’s not even as scary as Bryant Gumbel (apologies to Wayne Brady, Paul Mooney, and Dave Chappelle. Chappelle got shot for making that joke…)
danielx
@dmsilev:
This reads like a demented version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Are there any mentions of livestock aside from bears and cubs?
BruceFromOhio
Alpha moron(s), in the bathtub, with the laptop.
Did I win?
pj
@Svensker:
sadly, no. the hug is right there in the pbs documentary.
freelancer
@dmsilev:
I read further down. I swear to Christ I was going to excerpt that exact same paragraph.
dmsilev
@freelancer: It really was a thing of beauty, wasn’t it?
Jebediah
@Spaghetti Lee:
Excellent effort, but sorry, your underlying sanity shows through. I could tell by checking the pixels.
beltane
@geg6: Have we turned a corner or have the conservatives gone around the bend? That is the question.
Jebediah
@PTirebiter:
Thanks for the Zevon reminder. Had Breitbart lived, I don’t doubt he would have lived out the rest of the lyrics.
srv
Bush, Ryan, Perry, Newt and now Breitbart… as the public loses faith in the Rocket Scientists of the GOP, who will save the party?
Omnes Omnibus
@dmsilev: The deuce you say. I am convinced. Convinced of what, you ask? Convinced that Kennedy did fake the moon landings, of course.
AWL
You died for nothing, Brietbart!
Mnemosyne
@AWL:
I can just picture Obama’s death squad: “Wait, that was what we assassinated him for? God damnit!“
Soonergrunt
Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo just now on Twitter:
Soonergrunt
@srv: “…the Rocket Scientists of the GOP”
Well played, srv, well played.
pseudonymous in nc
Public mental health in the US leaves a lot to be desired.
I don’t know if this is Peak Wingnut, but it has the feeling of Wingnutterdämmerung.
gwangungcommentGwangung
This is pretty much like clueless white people trying to place the race card….except they’re using the children’s old maid cards and they’re tossing the whole deck around.
chrome agnomen
confederate yankee to the rescue!
trollhattan
@geg6:
I haven’t lived an exemplary enough life for that to be the case. Next week my kneejerk Republican relatives, acquaintances and friends will say, “I pay too much in taxes, already” and continue to vote Republican without a further thought.
It takes a tremendous jolt to get somebody to change parties, and this stuff is just bidnez as usual.
CardinalRed
Somewhere loesch is throwing kittens against a brick wall to numb her pain
New Yorker
@geg6: @geg6:
I think it’s the death spasms. Seriously. Like the Japanese in World War II, the more defeat appeared inevitable, the more fanatical and desperate they got (kamikaze attacks, anyone?).
Somewhere, deep inside, they have to know that despite the fanatical conviction that the country belongs to “them” (white, rural, evangelicals), that Obama is going to win a second term.
Add in all the cultural trends going against them (a country becoming less white, less religious, more urban, and more educated is not the place for a white, evangelical, rural, less educated movement). Given the way Latinos have abandoned the GOP in droves, Texas will be a swing state in 10 years.
Once Texas becomes a swing state, there will be another great realignment in politics. The GOP will continue to exist, it just won’t be a place where Nathan Bedford Forrest is ranked as a far greater American than Franklin Roosevelt. That’s what this freakout is all about. They’re finished and they know it.
Gravenstone
@dmsilev: I think my eyebrows just raised so much, they met behind my head.
Nutella
@Jebediah:
Wrong, looser! You should be checking the kerning. It proves everything!
Culture of Truth
I actually knew Derrick Bell, a lot better than Obama did, I’m sure.
different-church-lady
@Soonergrunt:
Running yourself over with your own car is a paradox, yes, but probably not one that would end space-time.
IrishGirl
@dmsilev: This shite is far too much like paranoid schizophrenic ramblings to be funny…to me it’s just really sad and pathetic. Somebody get those guys a beer and some Thorazine.
different-church-lady
@GeneJockey:
Fix’d for house style, also too.
Soonergrunt
@different-church-lady: I was thinking it might actually make the whole Mayan calendar thing true.
Anne Laurie
@dmbeaster:
And that renowned social1st news organ, the NYTimes, actually mentioned the nefarious link between Professor Bell and President Obama right there in Bell’s obituary!
Best I can tell, it took the Heirs of Breitbart five months to follow that lead and track down the PBS tape. Well, maybe four months, plus a month for adding the ‘shadow’ feature to the video. To paraphrase Jane Austen, these people will never set the Potomac on fire with their unleashed wit and brilliant deductive skills.
TooManyJens
@Anne Laurie:
I find myself oddly enchanted by the idea of Jane Austen’s Thoughts on Today’s Politics. That would make an awesome blog.
Soonergrunt
@Anne Laurie: The ONLY way this makes sense as anything intentional is that they are trying to pivot the conversation away from Rush Limbaugh.
Andrew Breitbart may have been a lot of things, but he wasn’t entirely stupid. I’ve seen no evidence that he suffered a stroke or other mental impairment in the months leading up to this so I don’t really believe that this is what they were talking about. I think that he probably thought there was something more. There isn’t, I’m sure, but I’ll bet Breitbart thought so.
By the way, Andrew Breitbart is still dead.
different-church-lady
@trollhattan: Probably 90% of republican voters have never heard of Breitbart (just as probably 90% of democrats have no idea who Markos is).
But the hope might lay in the idea that people like Breitbart won’t be taken seriously by the mainstream media any longer, and their memes will die before ever leaving the cradle. There’s suddenly so many holes in the wind machine that wind will no longer move through it.
different-church-lady
@srv:
Fixed for personal style.
tc
This is semi-OT, but I just watched that Frontline footage, and damn, Obama even had “it” back then!
pragmatism
@TooManyJens: My wife said the same thing the other day. It reminded me of a Susan of TX piece that I shared. If you haven’t seen already can find here
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/11/the-comfort-of-other-people-inequality-then-and-now.html
Gordon, The Big Express Engine
@Culture of Truth: Pretty damn good ball player. Had some nice years with the Astros…
SiubhanDuinne
@geg6:
Thank you, geg6. That was beautiful and closely mirrors my own thoughts and history and fears and feelings. So thank you.
P.S. How’s John doing?
Jay S
@Soonergrunt: You all will be sorry when this plays out. Eleven dimensional chess from beyond the grave, I tells you. I heard tell that they told Hannity that they had more of this stuff to drag this story out for a week. They’re just lulling you to sleep and then they’ll spring their trap. You thought the “whitey tape” was bad? This will make that look like a nothing burger!
/wingnut.
Seriously though, I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t some creative editing about to surface:)
TooManyJens
@pragmatism: Ooh, thanks!
Hill Dweller
@New Yorker:
As I was saying on the other thread, the winger group Judicial Watch is suing the Air Force in the DC District Court for access to any records pertaining to the First Lady’s 2010 trip to Spain.
This type of shit will continue until the election. I’m sure the republicans will continue milking the Solyndra and ‘Fast and Furious’ “investigations” for whatever political benefit they think they can gain.
different-church-lady
@Hill Dweller:
Like I said earlier, it’s not that any of these people are going to change, it’s that the mainstream media enablers will turn away in embarrassment.
hells littlest angel
“As alarming as it may seem, Breitbart really was the brains behind that operation.”
Thank you. I was worried my day would end without a hearty laugh.
different-church-lady
OK, I’ve officially become a junkie — I gotta have more Breitbart taunting! TBogg is letting me down! Who else is on this? I gotta have a fix…
AA+ Bonds
I understand that shit cray
AA+ Bonds
@different-church-lady:
Have you been introduced to the
crown
princes
The comments by readers alone on the two stories above are better than pretty much anything anyone on TV has said
Jess
@BruceFromOhio: Shades of David’s painting “Death of Marat”…
joel hanes
@geg6: From your hopes to God’s ears.
I too am thinking I smell a sea change coming.
Also: Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch are both old and mortal.
Hill Dweller
Just when I thought it couldn’t get more hilarious, the end of the unedited tape PBS released tonight(TPM has it), Professor Bell compliments ‘Barack’ for his ‘mighty speech’ and notes he did it from memory; while he, the professor, is reading written remarks.
I can hear the wingnuts’ heads exploding…
freelancer
@different-church-lady:
Here ya go:
Jay S
@freelancer: Whoa, the true believers @ #vettheprez think that they actually exposed something tonight. #gullible should be trending.
Q. Q. Moar
I understand now why Breitbart died. He got a late-night call that his footage had already aired on ‘Frontline’ and POP goes the weasel.
Bubblegum Tate
So the wingnuts I scanned this morning are convinced (or are at least trying to convince themselves) that this is just the first of a bunch of videos, that Breitbart’s Merry Band of Idiots is just setting the table for the real knockout punch video to be released somewhere down the road.
Probably when they release the “whitey” tape. Man, these people are such credulous morons.
nitpicker
Here’s the crazy radical Derrick Bell (the one Obama’s introducing) spouting crazy radical advice for young black kids like–and I know this will shock you–“You need to be the best person you can even in the face of (prejudice).”
A monster, truly.
wrb
@Svensker:
I’m boggled.
Apparently 90% of the posts on the internet are made by paid Obama agents so that real Americans are fooled into thinking that they are in a minority.
kay
I think it’s Sean Hannity, I really do.
I think they’ve gotten narrow enough, and insane enough, that one of their fake-controversies could be directed at one specific media personality, and pumping up his CAREER.
The biggest regret of Sean Hannity’s miserable, hollow, soul-dead life is that fact that his Wright scoop didn’t bring down the candidate.
Our national debate is directed by the career aspirations of media personalities.
That’s where we are. We may be able to resist this, but Sean Hannity may well be the ONE reason we’re talking about this. What does HE need? What’s in HIS best interests? That’s the priority.
g
@dmsilev: It’s gotta be satire, right?