After Andrew Breitbart pissed in their Wheaties, shit in their mouths and fucked their little sisters, the brass at ABC News finally let him go:
We have spent the past several days trying to make clear to you your limited role as a participant in our digital town hall to be streamed on ABCNews.com and Facebook. The post on your blog last Friday created a widespread impression that you would be analyzing the election on ABC News. We made it as clear as possible as quickly as possible that you had been invited along with numerous others to participate in our digital town hall. Instead of clarifying your role, you posted a blog on Sunday evening in which you continued to claim a bigger role in our coverage. As we are still unable to agree on your role, we feel it best for you not to participate.
A great blow against his innate constitutional right to appear on network TV, to be sure, but it still brightened my day.
rob!
I cannot believe I find myself on the side of Andrew Fucking Breitbart.
morzer
You know, every time I see Andrew Breitbart, I can’t help thinking that if you take away the guns and the money, he’s just a dirty old man.
Calouste
@rob!:
And why would that be?
Dave
Another blow to the First Amendment! Get Palin on this, stat!
Culture of Truth
They’re both lying.
geg6
@rob!:
Why, pray tell, would you?
They graciously gave him a seat at their web-only table. He went on to lie about what the deal was. After ABC clarified AGAIN that he was only one of several panelists on the webcast, he went nuts, accusing ABC of just about everything short of piloting the planes that hit the WTC.
And you think that ABC had an obligation to keep someone like that on their webcast? Seriously?
MeDrewNotYou
That’s the most bitch-slappiest thing I’ve heard from the media in a while. Its kinda like Breitbart and ABC went out for coffee together and Breitbart changed his Facebook relationship status to “Engaged,” forcing ABC to post on his wall, “Dude! We just got coffee and talked for a while! You’re totally creepy! Stay the hell away!”
ABC was dumb in the first place for bringing him on, though. My sister, when she first heard, told me, “They might as well just brought on David Duke to analyze things.”
MikeJ
@Dave: Seen the ads for her new TV show? I particularly like when shes says she’d rather be out in the wild than in some political office somewhere. All I can think is, yes, we’d rather leave you out in the wilds of Alaska than have you in office too.
Joshua Norton
Who the hell at ABC thought it would be a good idea to use the toxic Breitbart in the first place?
Is Fox the only standard they can aspire to now-a-days?
Legalize
Christ. Now we get to hear about ABC taking away Breitbart’s rights for the next bazillion years because they want to silence him. ABC never should have gotten into bed with the little turd in the first place.
JPL
@Dave: ABC.. The Atheist Broadcasting System, maybe?
Zifnab
Perhaps we should amend the Constitution to state “Only those with a network TV deal…” because if you asked Shirley Sherrod, I’m sure she’d have a few things to say about First Amendment Rights and who actually gets to exercise them.
geg6
@MeDrewNotYou:
Heh. Me likey your analogy. And your sister.
jharp
That is pretty sweet. Thanks for sharing.
Sue
They forgot a sentence:
‘We were shocked, shocked to discover that you would use your blog to distort the facts and tell lies about us.’
Fwiffo
How long before he posts a doctored tape of ABC brass promising him a network anchor chair?
MTiffany
Wow, someone at ABC found their spine and stood up to Bitchbart? Sounds like someone’s getting fired.
MeDrewNotYou
@geg6: Amazingly, she only just heard of Breitbart when he was on Bill Maher a few weeks back. I was home for the weekend and she asked me if I wanted to watch it with her. After I noticed he was on the panel that night, I refused, telling her I couldn’t stand the race-baiting asshole. She watched it anyway and told me that the only reason the TV was still intact was because she only had soft, non-damaging things nearby to throw.
balconesfault
Personally, I think that Breitbart should go on a crusade to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, so that a white male corporatist conservative voice could be heard on the major networks.
freelancer
Cue flashmob of hate and general wingnut pantscrapathon.
gypsy howell
Has he inked his deal with Fox yet? I imagine he’ll have a million dollar contract before the evening’s out.
Violet
The teabaggers aren’t going to know what to do. Bristol Palin is on ABC’s Dancing With The Stars, but ABC canned Breitbart. Should they love or hate ABC? Oh, the drama!
balconesfault
@MeDrewNotYou: Heh – maybe Sony, LG, Sharp, and Toshiba should sponsor Breitbart having a regular rotating spot on all the major networks, so you never know when he’ll show up. Replacing broken TVs – what a sales generator!
licensed to kill time
ABC News is stunned to find out that Andrew Breitbart, who lies, distorts and misrepresents for a living would lie, distort and misrepresent his role on their broadcast.
They sure are slow learners.
kth
I’ll just bet that Breitbart was, uncharacteristically, telling the truth; i.e., that ABC were sufficiently obtuse and keen to catch some teatard wave that they initially booked him as an analyst and only walked it back after the firestorm erupted.
Josie
Finally – One of these cretins suffers consequences for lying. Can we hope that this will start a trend? Nah, probably not.
Bubblegum Tate
*ahem*
LIEBRUL MEDIA BIAS!
priscianus jr
@rob!:
Punchy
You mean besides the whole fuckin country?
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
How sad.
And by that I mean, how sad that they couldn’t ban him from ever having gainful employment in the industry again.
(rp)
MeDrewNotYou
@balconesfault: I think some drug companies should get in on it too. Sales of blood pressure meds should go through the roof!
MikeJ
And I just got the “We survived the Breitbartpocolypse” tag line at the top.
Mako
Oh sigh. Another blow against the first amendment.
chopper
@MeDrewNotYou:
lolz. i’m loling. that was totes awesome.
seriously, all breitbart needs to do is boil ABCs cat in a pot or something.
Cris
Easy. As soon as Bristol gets voted off — and come on, she’s not going to outlast Brandy — that’ll be a sign of DWTS’s liberal bias.
4tehlulz
OMG TEH SWAERZ
Face
He’s going to doctor the emails he’s recieved from ABC to show that they really did promise him his own sitcom, hookers, blow, and blow jobs.
bemused
@MeDrewNotYou:
Hilarious analogy.
Also hilarious that ABC News didn’t have a “what could go wrong” thought when they invited him to do some analyzing or anal-lizing as Randi Rhodes put it today.
Violet
@Cris:
Bristol may want to get voted off soon. She can’t hide that growing belly forever.
Culture of Truth
I am not taking AB’s side, but c’mon — ABC chickened out.
Ash Can
Is our ABC learnin’?
funluvn
Never have relations with anyones little sister. Always target the oldest family female. Less drama down that street…
balconesfault
ABC should have picked Breitbart up in a limo (as they’d usually do), but drive him straight to a boat, hauled him off into the middle of the East River, and fed him a steady dataset of fake election results (Indiana was just swept by the Democrats!) all night while asking him to do 30-second commentaries on the outcomes every 30 minutes.
Oh yeah … and James O’Keefe gets to ask him for a blowjob every once in awhile.
mantis
Brietbart somehow has a different version. The new (true!) version is below:
Dear Mr. Breitbart,
We created a widespread impression that you would be analyzing the election on ABC News. We made it as clear as possible as quickly as possible that you had been invited to claim a bigger role in our coverage. Instead of clarifying your role, we feel it best for you not to participate. We are still unable to agree on participants in our digital town hall.
Sincerely,
Andrew Morse
Andrew received the email exactly as written above, and has no idea who might have edited it. He’ll post it on his blog soon.
funluvn
@Ash Can: No. They are still stoopid, yet they can make a good call like a blind polar bear finds an iceberg
Cris
Leave the gun. Take the canoli.
Cris
oh fuck I am just like Jonah Goldberg
GregB
What? Andrew Breitbart is a lying sack of shit drama queen?
Say it aint so.
rob!
When I said I’m “on the side of” that means only in this particular dustup.
Breitbart is, to me, demonstrably evil, a label I would only pin on a handful of people in politics (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Beck, Ailes)–he knows what he’s doing is wrong, morally and factually, but he does it anyway even though it helps destroy the country that made him rich. That’s evil.
But ABC knew what it was doing by hiring him (“We’re not the Liberal Media–see, SEE?!?”), and now that they’ve taken shit for it they’re trying to slither out of the deal. So fuck them.
We stopped watching ABC in our house right around the 9/11 “It was Clinton’s Fault” telemovie, and this just confirms to me the rightness of that decision.
But when I said I’m siding with Breibart, its like when Lex Luthor and the Joker would team up, and then inevitably turn on each other. I only nominally have a “favorite.”
balconesfault
The thing is that unlike, say, Fox – I think ABC (and CBS and NBC, for that matter) are just schizophrenic. It’s hard to pin any consistency on what they do from episode to episode – they’re just jerking around like some fish that’s been pulled out of the water they swam in for years (actual journalism) and thrown out into the middle of 9th Avenue by some MBAs who wanted news to be a profit center, not a public service, and they still after decades of this abuse have no idea what the hell they’re doing from moment to moment. Should they dodge cars? Should they flop towards the Hudson River? Should they just let themselves get run over and put themselves out of their misery?
chopper
@Culture of Truth:
feh. ABC has a total point.
funluvn
@Cris: That’s harsh dude! A Smith 45 isn’t tasty, but it’s gonna bring more cash than a high calorie end of dinner dish on the white market.
Ash Can
@rob!: I understand your point, but I think there’s a pretty good chance that the poor dupes at ABC really were under the impression that Breitbart was an industry professional, and would act the part. I think it was a case of making a careless and facile assumption, and that they got their eyes opened PDQ.
JWL
As did Richard Nixon, Breitbart “gave them a sword”.
Let the whining begin….
Admiral_Komack
Fuck ABC.
You knew he was a snake, and you STILL got bit.
Stupid fuckers.
Larkspur
@rob!:
Nah, can’t go with you on this one. It was a stupid choice, so they are trying to salvage their coverage. I do not know if it will work, since I will not be watching ABC, but sometimes you have to cut your losses. I’m sure Breitbart will be compensated. He and Ann Coulter can commiserate. She got fired from her 2004 USA Today Democratic convention gig after her first report (in which she noted the dearth of pretty girls like herself, and the overabundance of hairy arm-pitted, corn-fed hippy chicks). They too should have known who they were hiring. I have no sympathy.
Admiral_Komack
@Violet:
ABC/Disney:
“What belly?”
Mr. Moderate
Sadly, reading the e-mail from ABC to Breitbart I can see how he would think he was on the air. I mean this guy is the king of seeing what he believes. The problem comes in with ignoring the clarifications. They had to know he was going to get a persecution complex. If it’s one thing conservatives are good at it’s executing a persecution complex while shouting about how liberals are always bitching about being persecuted to deflect from their own show :).
Mako
@funluvn:
“Never have relations with anyones little sister.”
Quality life advice in the comments of random political blogs is rare and should be highlighted.
Admiral_Komack
I will be checking out Balloon Juice & WeSeeYou.com tonight.
Fuck The Pundits!
Jo
Oh well,Breitbart has a face for radio anyway
Mnemosyne
@kth:
That is my strong suspicion as well. I think that, for once in his life, Breitbart is telling the truth and ABC went into desperate damage control mode as soon as the news broke. Which is how we got from “he’s an analyst” to “he’ll be web-only” to “he’s fired.”
It’s that middle step that makes them look like idiots, but I’m assuming they took it to not look like they were being successfully pressured by liberals to dump Breitbart.
mike
I think this worked out better for him than if he’d actually been involved at whatever level. This way, he can play the victim, which these people love more than anything, even sex. Just goes to show how biased the liberal media is and how an honest, hard working serial liar just can’t get an even break.
ReMarksDC
As Benjamin Franklin would say: He who would lie down with dogs will rise up with fleas.
Another Bob
It remains to be seen, however, if it’s ever possible for a right wing celebrity to disgrace themselves so badly that they’ll be permanently excluded from our national discourse. Breitbart will probably be offered a blog at the Washington Post within a matter of weeks. Because our national press just doesn’t do a good enough job of listening to conservative voices.
Janet Strange
@balconesfault: Fucking awesome comment. Since everyone else has probably run off to the election coverage threads and I can’t bear to look, I just wanted you to know that someone appreciated it. I did, in fact, laugh out loud.
And yeah, more seriously, it does exactly sum up our current “news” media.