BREITBART AND LIMBAUGH

Now that Rush Limbaugh is dead, who might replace him as the popular leader of the conservative movement? I’m not sure anyone could, given Limbaugh’s unique blend of high intelligence, prodigious memory, and analytical skills. It might have been Andrew Breitbart if he hadn’t died of a heart attack nine years ago last week when he was only 42. In his largely autobiographical 2011 book “Righteous Indignation,” Breitbart said Limbaugh shaped his world view.

Raised in Brentwood, California by upper-middle-class Jewish parents who adopted him as an infant, Breitbart had been quite liberal. After he married stage/screen/TV actor Orson Bean’s daughter, he was surprised when seeing a Limbaugh book on Bean’s shelf. He declared that Limbaugh was a fascist and a racist so why the book? Bean asked if Andrew had ever read or listened to Rush and Breitbart admitted he had not, but everyone said so. Bean suggested he give Limbaugh a try. After listening to Rush’s show while driving around LA for a week, Breitbart realized  how wrong he had been. He continued listening and became a conservative for the rest of his life.

Bean and Breitbart

At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), both Breitbart and Limbaugh were presenters. It was the first year I attended with a press pass that gave me much more access. I could kneel down onstage alongside the main podium and take photos of big-name speakers. I could set up on Bloggers Row with my laptop. Breitbart and others dropped in there several times but we were not introduced at that point.

I had listened to Limbaugh for more than a decade by then. During his, 90-minute talk he said nothing I hadn’t heard before so I wandered through the lobby into other function rooms where other presentations were going on. It was there that I bumped into Breitbart and we chatted a bit. The previous two days I had become intrigued watching his facial expressions while he was seated alongside the main podium listening to Ann Coulter and other big-name speakers. Because whatever he was thinking or feeling was displayed on his face, it was very interesting to watch him through my telephoto lens.

His presentation at the big podium was unpretentious. He spoke extemporaneously as though everyone in the audience were his friend and they seemed to reciprocate. CPAC’s dress code was “business casual,” so I and everyone else wore a jacket and tie throughout the three-day conference but Breitbart would discard his tie and open his shirt collar whenever he could. Like his many friends growing up in the Hollywood entertainment industry growing up, he had been very liberal by default. After becoming a conservative, however, he developed his mantra: “Politics is downstream from culture.”

Breitbart became convinced that conservatism will continue losing ground so long as the left controls Hollywood, academia, and media — especially mainstream media. Three years in a row at CPAC I heard him declare war on mainstream media. I’ve since come to believe firmly that he was right. The left controls what people perceive and Breitbart understood better than most the aphorism, “In Politics, perception is reality.”

Rush Limbaugh became influential because he was on the radio three hours a day for over thirty years. Fifteen million people listened to his analysis whenever anything big happened, cultural or political. Limbaugh had a profound influence on American perception and that’s why the left hated him so much. He peeled off a chunk of their territory and they attacked him desperately trying to retrieve it from him.

Andrew Breitbart’s skill lay in shrewdly forcing mainstream media to cover stories they were studiously ignoring, like the ACORN (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) scandal in the fall of 2009. Posing as a pimp, undercover journalist James O’Keefe had collected video from publicly funded ACORN offices in various cities across the country agreeing to help him open whorehouses in which underaged, illegal alien hookers would be hired. O’Keefe offered his videos to mainstream networks but they turned him down. They knew ACORN was a Democrat/Obama-affiliated organization.

James O'Keefe

Through a contact, Breitbart got Fox News to run one video from Baltimore and after a huge outcry mainstream networks were forced to pick up the story. When Democrats then declared it an anomaly in Baltimore, Breitbart then played out more videos once city at a time. Democrats called the second video anomalous too, but then Breitbart continued releasing them from other cities one at a time until it became a huge, very embarrassing story for the new community-organizer-President Obama and the Democrat Party.

In 2011, Breitbart used similar tactics with the unfortunately-named Democrat Congressman Anthony Weiner after learning that Weiner was sending out obscene photos of himself to young women (and later underage girls). Weiner denied everything until Breitbart’s strategy forced him to admit it. He resigned in disgrace soon after.

Matt Drudge

Among many other things, Breitbart helped both Arianna Huffington and Matt Drudge set up their highly-successful web sites — before each turned liberal.

Keeping Your Head When Others Are Losing Theirs

You probably hadn’t heard because it didn’t get a lot of attention, but David Daoud Wright was convicted in a Boston federal court last Thursday of conspiring to cut Pamela Geller’s head off.

ISIS ordered her killed and Wright was attempting to implement that “fatwa,” or order. As quoted in the Boston Herald: “Acting U.S. Attorney William D. Weinreb called Wright’s conviction a ‘victory in the fight against ISIS and all terror organizations targeting the United States. Wright is a terrorist, an ISIS supporter and recruiter who intended to wage war against the U.S. by beheading people and killing Americans,’ Weinreb said. ‘Together Wright and his uncle planned to murder Americans, and those plans were as real as the long knives Wright’s uncle bought to carry them out.’”

Ten years ago Pam Geller interviewed me in Washington, DC after an exchange I had with Newt Gingrich at National Review’s “Conservative Summit.” I had no idea then who she was, but it was clear that she was an intense person on a mission. Gingrich had just finished a speech in which he predicted that sometime in next ten years radical Muslims would destroy an American city with an atomic device. Happily, that has not yet come to pass.

During the question and answer period following his speech, I went up to the microphone and identified myself as a middle school history teacher. I told Gingrich that my job of explaining to my students why radical Muslims were trying to kill us was getting difficult because the Bush Administration kept denying any connection between Islamic terrorism and fundamental Koranic teachings. My students were hearing one thing from me and another from the president. That put me in an awkward position as a teacher in the public schools. Gingrich basically told me to keep doing what I was doing.

Spencer, Me, Geller

As I returned to my seat I was swamped by media people asking me questions, and the most persistent was Pam Geller. I’ve met her several times since at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) and she’s nearly always accompanied by her sidekick, Robert Spencer. He directs Jihad Watch and is the author of seventeen books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad.

Even before ISIS condemned her to death, she was surrounded by bodyguards. When once I slid into a booth with Geller and Spencer for a chat at a Washington hotel lounge, I was immediately aware of rugged-looking men in nearby booths scrutinizing me before Geller signaled that I was okay. She’s an extremely courageous American and a Jew who won’t be intimidated by Islamic threats — and she’s willing to pay the price for speaking out. Like her friends the Somali immigrant Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Dutch Member of Parliament Geert Wilders, she lives under guard 24-7-365 and will for the rest of her life for daring to publicly criticize radical Islam.

Fatwas are not empty threats. They were issued against a Danish newspaper and a French magazine for publishing pictures of Muhammed and jihadis twice tried to kill the Danish cartoonist. In January, 2015 jihadis murdered fifteen Charlie Hebdo magazine staff people in Paris. American media outlets (except for my web site a few others) self-censored and declined to publish the Muhammed cartoons.They claimed it was out of respect for the religion of Islam, but this writer sees that as a smokescreen for cowardice, because they had no problems publishing images degrading Christianity.

So what did Pamela Geller do after the Charlie Hebdo massacre? She conducted a “Draw Muhammad” contest in which the winner received a check for $12,500. Two jihadis from Arizona showed up with assault rifles at the Garland, Texas facility where the contest was held and opened fire, wounding a security guard. Another guard took them both out with only a pistol. Liberal media outlets like the New York Times who were too cowardly to publish the Muhammed pictures from Europe blamed Geller, accusing her of “hate speech.”

The Winning Picture

Geller later learned that the FBI had an undercover agent at the scene of the “Draw Muhammad Contest” who had been surveilling one of the jihadis. According to TheIntercept.com: “FBI Director James Comey said in a press conference following the shooting that the FBI [agent at the scene] did not have reason to believe Simpson was planning to attack the event, even though the bureau had spent years trying to build a case against him.” 

Might once have been true

Yeah, right. There was a time when I would have had no doubt about the credibility of a statement like that from the Director of the FBI, but those days are long gone.

Breitbart To Bannon

“That’s my ADHD,” said Andrew Breitbart from the podium at CPAC as he was drawn off topic by something in the crowd. With my press pass, I was free to get near to him on the dais for close-up photographs and I had recognized his ADHD symptoms earlier in the conference when he was part of a panel. Breitbart was squirrelly as he sat waiting his turn to speak, but full of passionate intensity when he finally got up there.

Breitbart waiting -- David Horowitz at Podium

The panel included former leftist David Horowitz and David Bossie, who later became Deputy Campaign Manager for President Donald Trump. He had been on still another CPAC panel I attended, introducing Irish film makers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, who had just released Fracknation, a documentary debunking mainstream media hype against the hydro-fracking process to produce oil and natural gas.

One theme ran through all his panels and talks: circumventing mainstream media control of what Americans knew and didn’t know. He had a visceral hatred of their monopoly and made it his mission in life to smash it. He encouraged CPAC attendees to use a camera and laptop and become guerrilla journalists.

People like James O’Keefe took him up on that when he went on to single-handedly destroy ACORN by exposing its incestuous relationship with both the Democrat Party and mainstream media. Another is Steve Bannon, who took over breitbart.com after Breitbart’s premature death in 2012. Bannon then took over Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and engineered a political earthquake. Andrew Breitbart is dead, but his mission continues.

It’s all-out war now. Bannon was at CPAC himself last week on a panel with Trump Chief-of-Staff Reince Preibus who has an adjoining office in the White House. He usually stays behind the scenes, so this was a rare, out-front appearance. He told his audience that President Trump will not moderate his positions, and will push them even harder. When Preibus predicted the administration’s relationship with mainstream media would improve, Bannon disagreed: “Not only is it not going to get better, it’s going to get worse every day… There are corporatist, globalist media that are adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda like Donald Trump has… If you think they are going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken. Every day, every day, it is going to be a fight.”

Shortly before his death, Andrew Breitbart said: “My goal is to destroy the New York Times and CNN… and not just them. I’m committed to the destruction of the old media guard... and it’s a very good business model. I believe that from that something better will come… The media class is the wall that we have to climb over in order for our voices to be heard. Once our voices are heard, then democracy will happen.”

Steve Bannon is bringing that mission closer to fruition and he’s paying the price. Bannon has become enemy number one for the left. Democrats and their mainstream media mouthpieces routinely refer to him as a racist, fascist, misognynist, bigoted, anti-Semitic, white nationalist — and that’s on a good day. But then, their candidate, Hillary Clinton, called half of Trump supporters racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, irredeemables — over 25 million Americans. Is it any wonder Bannon called mainstream media the “Opposition Party”?

I voted for Donald Trump, but I cannot say I ever liked him, reminding me as he does of narcissists I’ve met and tried to avoid over the years. Nonetheless, I like very much what he’s doing — his cabinet appointments, his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and his executive orders. I did, however, like Andrew Breitbart. He was unpretentious and approachable. I photographed him over three CPAC conferences and he asked me once if I could understand his friends and fellow panelists Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer through their strong Irish Brogues. I told him I could because I’d just returned from a vacation there and was forced to learn. I cannot say I knew Breitbart personally but I quite strongly identified with his mission.

Saturday Night Live Bannon controlling Trump

His successor, Steve Bannon, was born to an Irish-Catholic-Democrat, blue collar family in Virginia. Bannon’s world view has been influenced by that heritage, just as my own has. The epithets thrown at him by the left have also been hurled at me and are just as groundless. That’s what the left does when they want to avoid discussing issues but they don’t know it doesn’t work anymore. They see us as deplorable because we don’t view the world as they do and we accept that. They think their defeat was a fluke and they’re digging in for a long battle to re-take control, so buckle your seatbelt.

Somewhere, Andrew Breitbart is smiling.

Je Suis Pam Geller

We won a battle against Radical Islam Sunday night, thanks to prompt action by Garland, Texas police, but I’m afraid we’re losing the war. Pam Geller has been fighting it for years here in the United States and elsewhere. President Obama, our commander-in-chief, acts as though he doesn’t even know who we’re fighting.

Dead jihadis in Plano

I had another piece ready for my Monday morning deadline at one of the newspapers carrying this column, but then I saw the first reports about what happened at Pam Geller’s Free Speech Conference Sunday night. Two Islamic gunmen showed up armed with AK-47s ready to kill as many people as they could. However, some very tough-looking Garland, Texas policemen shot them dead before they could. They were only able to shoot an unarmed school security guard in the ankle before they were killed. Now they’re both knock-knock-knocking on heaven’s door looking for their 72 virgins.

Robert Spencer, me, Pam Geller

I first met Pam at the 2007 National Review “Conservative Summit” in Washington DC. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich gave a speech there about Radical Islam and I went up to the microphone to ask him a question. I asked why our government was working against teachers like me who were trying to inform our students about who America was fighting. I told him I was having a hard time because the Bush Administration was removing references to Islam from official literature about who our enemy was. Gingrich answered telling me to continue what I was doing and the government would eventually catch up. As soon as I sat down, Pam Geller came over to interview me for her web site “Atlas Shrugs.”

Wilders with armed guards at Geller reception

Every year at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) in Washington, I’d visit with her and Robert Spencer, her constant companion. In 2009, she invited Geert Wilders, a Member of Parliament in Holland, founder and leader of Holland’s “Party For Freedom,” the third-largest party in the Dutch Parliament with twenty-four seats. Radical Islam put a fatwa on Wilders when he produced “Fitna,” a film showing Quran verses alongside images of Islamic terrorist attacks. Ever since, Wilders has armed guards with him 24-7. CPAC 2009 lacked the courage to sponsor Wilders, so Pam had to rent space in the Omni Shoreham hotel for his reception. I attended with friends. Wilders also spoke in Garland Sunday night.

Wilders and me at Pam's reception. He's tall.

Pam organized her Garland, Texas conference back in January, right after other Islamic gunmen attacked the Paris, France offices of Charlie Hebdo, a left-wing magazine that published cartoons of Muhammed, who Muslims consider their prophet. Radical Muslims shot twenty-two people, killing eleven. Pam selected the Curtis Culwell Center in Plano because Muslims from Dallas held the “Stand With The Prophet Conference” to combat “Islamophobia” there just days after the mass murder in Paris.

The winning entry at Pam's conference

According to the Washington Free Beacon last January: “[S]cheduled to attend the [Stand With The Prophet Conference] is controversial New York-based Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings trial. Wahhaj has called the FBI and CIA the ‘real terrorists’ and expressed a desire for all Americans to become Muslim, according to the New York Post.”

Another. You won't see these in Mainstream Media

One of the dead terrorists, Elton Simpson, is reported to be a Muslim convert. As of this writing, the other one was his roommate, but hasn’t been identified. We can expect the Mainstream Media to blame Pam for inciting violence by sponsoring her $10,000 contest to draw a cartoon of Muhammed, one of the free speech themes of her conference officially called: “American Freedom Defense Initiative.” The building she used is owned by the Plano school department and she had to pay $10,000 to the Garland Police for extra officers. Good thing she did. She said on Fox News Monday morning she paid $50,000 all together for security. “Intentionally incendiary and provocative” are the words CNN’s Alisyn Camerota used in her interview with Pam early Monday. There will be more of that by the time you’re reading this in the newspaper Thursday. Much more.

The president hasn’t spoken about it yet, but we can expect he’ll blame Pam too. The UK Daily Mail blacked out the cartoons displayed at the conference. So did NBC’s Today Show, which I watched this morning. They’re cowards, all of them. If you’re reading this on my web site, you’re seeing the cartoons. I published the Muhammed cartoons from Charlie Hebdo the day eleven of its staff were murdered too. If all media published them, Radical Muslims would have failed in their efforts to intimidate us all. But that would require courage, something conspicuously lacking in our elite media.

The Right Gathering

McCain at CPAC

Too bad I had to travel hundreds of miles to feel at home, but it was nice nonetheless. Very nice. Now it’s back to the reality that I live in a blue state where very few people see the world as I see it. It’s hard to get three conservatives together around here. At CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) in Washington DC, 6800 of us gathered to discuss what was important and what to do about it.

We didn’t agree on everything, but there was mutual respect between those with different opinions. Vice President Cheney spoke in the morning under heavy security on Thursday, the first day of the conference. Then, at lunchtime, I listened as Mitt Romney announced he was suspending his campaign. Most of us were shocked and I don’t think even Laura Ingraham, who introduced him, knew what was coming. That left only McCain, Huckabee, and Ron Paul, and it looked like McCain would win. With that, divisions within the attendees loomed larger. In the lobby outside the ballroom, NPR’s Mara Liasson put a microphone to my face and asked, “How do you feel about Romney dropping out?” Classic liberal question.

“You mean ‘What do I think?'” I asked.

“No. I mean how do you feel? Did you support Romney?”

I told her I did and that I was disappointed. Then she asked if I would work for McCain. I said I would vote for him but I was not inclined to work for him, except to point out in my writing why his Democrat opponent’s positions on issues are wrong. Then a New York Times reporter asked me the same question.

Many of us were struggling with the realization that our choice in November would most likely be between McCain and Obama or McCain and Clinton. Though McCain claimed to be a conservative and his support for our war with Islamofascists was strong, his positions on issues like illegal immigration, tax cuts, campaign finance, global warming, closing Guantanamo, and others were decidedly liberal. He’d even considered becoming John Kerry’s running mate in 2004. Prominent conservative leaders like Rush Limbaugh (not in attendance), Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter had been suggesting they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for McCain in November given his liberal positions. Could other strong conservatives bring themselves to put an X beside his name? That was the dilemma, and he was due to speak in a few hours.

Though I originally intended to go elsewhere in the big hotel for the next two sessions, I instead attended the ones scheduled in the big ballroom where McCain would be speaking to make sure I had a seat for his 3:00 PM appearance. During those sessions, his name came up several times as the speakers - two senators and two congressmen - began referring to him as “the presumptive nominee” and urged the audience to unite behind him. Most applauded when they heard this, but enough were booing that they could be heard everywhere in the large room. It was going to be interesting when McCain finally came to the podium.

The whole day’s program had been shuffled around to accommodate the vice president and the candidates. There was confusion when it got closer to McCain’s speech, but another factor was in play too. There were a lot of media in the room and not all of it friendly toward conservatives. Cameras were rolling. More than one speaker begged the crowd not to boo when McCain walked up but some still did whenever they heard his name. The Emcee gave a big introduction and many of us stood up and cheered loudly, but there were still plenty of audible boos. Then, instead of McCain, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma came out again to praise McCain up and down as if he were trying to tenderize the crowd. Finally, McCain came out and received the same combination of about 85% cheers and 15% boos.

It was a very important speech for McCain - almost an acceptance speech before a very sophisticated and very critical audience whose support was essential if he were to have any chance of winning the White House. He did as good a job as could be expected and moved significantly to the right on many issues including tax cuts, Supreme Court appointments and illegal immigration, pledging to build a border fence, and only after it was completed and functioning, to address the millions already here.

Later, Ron Paul announced his withdrawal, and the next morning, President Bush asked the audience to unite around the party’s nominee. Mike Huckabee came in Saturday morning saying he was still a candidate. McCain still has to beat him, win a majority of delegates, and unite the party. He’s not the nominee I would have chosen, but as for my choice in November? It’s a no-brainer: McCain. I hope my fellow conservatives come around to that before November.