Why do people keep paying attention to Andrew Breitbart?

Andrew Breitbart is an internet asshole specialising in lying about political opponents and groups in an attempt to get people fired or the funding taken away from them, using video taken without their consent or knowledge and edited to make the victims look as bad as possible. Previous victims include Shirley Sherrod, where Breitbart took comments of her out of context to make her sound racist, which led to her sacking from her job at the United States Department of Agriculture, though afterwards the unedited video showed the truth. This is Breitbart whole stick, ginning up controversy to get easily panicked organisations to sack innocent people and frightened politicians to cut funding for organisations he dislikes. Time and again he has been shown to lie about his victims, time and again the truth has revealed them to be innocent of the charges he brings to them, yet people still keep falling for his tricks.

Case in point: The University of Missouri asking a self-styled communist adjunct faculty member to resign after Breitbart released a video supposedly showing him inciting violence:

After Mr. Breitbart’s Web site posted the videos on Monday, the university system initially responded with a statement distancing itself from the comments that the lecturers are depicted making. “Obviously, the comments on the video do not reflect the position of the University of Missouri,” said the statement from Jennifer Hollingshead, a system spokeswoman. Officials at the St. Louis and Kansas City campuses, where the lectures were delivered, “are looking into the situation,” her statement said.

On Thursday, however, Gail Hackett, provost of the University of Missouri at Kansas City, issued a statement denouncing how the videos are presented on Mr. Breitbart’s Web site, based on the campus’s continuing review of the raw classroom footage used to make them.

“From the review completed to date,” her statement said, “it is clear that edited videos posted on the Internet depict statements from the instructors in an inaccurate and distorted manner by taking their statements out of context and reordering the sequence in which those statements were actually made so as to change their meaning. Such selective editing is disturbing, and the release of students’ images without their permission is a violation of their privacy rights.”

[…]

Mr. Giljum said he had been told by his immediate supervisor at the St. Louis campus, Deborah Baldini, associate dean for continuing education, that both the campus’s chancellor and provost had called for him to resign, even though he had never been given a chance to discuss with them the allegations made in the video. Mr. Giljum said the only opportunity he has been given to defend himself was a brief conversation with Ms. Baldini in which, he said, he told her the statements he is shown making in the video “were taken totally out of context and completely edited. It is nothing but a hatchet job by this person who wants to destroy unions and destroy labor education.”

[…]

Regardless of what happens at St. Louis, Mr. Giljum, who politically identifies himself as a communist, has already lost one source of income because of the controversy over the videotapes. The St. Louis-based Local 148 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, for which he had worked as business manager, demanded his resignation on Wednesday. Mr. Giljum said he is worried that Southwestern Illinois College, where he teaches a class on labor relations, will ask for his resignation as well.

Shouldn’t the university and especially the union, which should know it itself is one of Breitbart’s targets, have rejected these claims out of hand rather than take them serious? Shouldn’t they know about Breitbart and his campaigns by now?

Well…

It’s difficult for any administrator finding themselves in a situation where suddenly hundreds of people mail or phone you demanding you take action against an employee for doing something outrageous and you find yourself in a media storm where you need take action now in order to not be demonised yourself. It may not be clear to you who is behind these complaints, that this is a Breitbart operation; if you’re not a political junkie you may only have a vague knowledge of who he is, you may have some idea that he was the guy who helped out ACORN, not realising it was all a lie. Your first instincts therefore may be to placate the critics, sack or suspend the offending employee and then start an internal investigation, to show how concerned you are about those grave allegations. Which is all very understandable, but it’s this mentality that Breitbart counts on to win. Even if his victim is reinstated afterwards, he has won the propaganda war, showing both his power to get people fired and undermining the trust of the people on the recieving ends — if your employer threatens to sack you on the directions of an internet loon, would you trust them afterwards?

So what’s the solution? Raise awareness, counterattack Breitbart’s organisation itself, support the victims. Keep exposing him and his mission. Sue the bastard for defamation, ruin him like her ruined his victims.