Breitbart’s Last Big Scoop Video of a Young Obama: A Fizzle?
Conservative blogs have been noting since the untimely death of conservative media maven Andrew Breitbart about his promised last scoop, a video of Barack Obama during his college days that would provide more vetting and, by implication, be a story that would bust this town wide open.
But it apparently is now a BUST. Breitbart’s associates are claiming that the version released by Buzzfeed (which managed to scoop the Breitbart folks and get it out first).
Most damning, from the standpoint of journalistic credibility, is what PBS’s Frontline had to say:
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.
GO HERE to watch it and read the entire PBS post.
You Tube has this chunk of the speech and video that it had been suggested would bust this town wide open:
Buzzfeed puts this into perspective:
It was perhaps Barack Obama’s most intense immersion in the charged campus racial politics of the late 1980s and early 1990s: As President of the Harvard Law Review in the spring of his final year there, 1991, he aligned himself with Professor Derrick Bell’s dramatic protest for diversity on the faculty of Harvard Law School.
Bell was the first black tenured professor at the school, and a pioneer of “critical race theory,” which insisted, controversially, on reading issues of race and power into legal scholarship. His protest that spring was occasioned by Harvard’s denial of tenure to a black woman professor, Regina Austin, at a time when only three of the law school’s professors were black and only five women. He told Harvard he would take a leave of absence — a kind of academic strike — “until a woman of color is offered and accepted a tenured position on this faculty,” and he launched a hunger strike to dramatize his point.
Obama was a major figure on campus, the first black president of the Law Review. Some friends, in a prescient joke, just referred to him as “the first black president.” He had a reputation as a conciliatory figure, not a confrontational one like Bell.
“”How Obama would react to Derrick Bell’s protest was a matter of some interest,” New Yorker editor David Remnick wrote in his exploration of Obama and race, The Bridge.
Some blogs now are suggesting the released video was part of some conspiracy — there are new parts that will reveal more. (Is there a Grassy Knoll?)
What can you say about this?
1. This shows the provincial state of American politics where the idea is to get something, anything to try discredit someone. Debating on policy ideas? Oh, that’s so 20th century..
2. This major campaign revelation, it turns out, is not about Barack Obama so much as trying to discredit him by pointing to people who he interacted with at college. Did anyone vet the Taco Bell manager Obama chatted with while in college yet?
3. Some blogs are already running posts about Bell. So let me get this straight: the more things that seem unpleasing about Bell from a certain person’s political perspective that emerge, the more that is supposed to make voters decide they can’t vote for Barack Obama?
4. Although some may feel differently, the bottom line is that the bulk of Americans do not consider Barack Obama a dangerous radical who plans to remove the white and blue from the American flag if he’s elected to a second term. Many Democratic liberals feel Obama has turned out to be too moderate. Many voters may not like Obama, they may feel he was a huge disappointment, they may consider him inept, they feel he is too liberal for their tastes — but a dangerous, foaming at the mouth radical?
It’s one more example of how American politics now revolves around the small battles and mini issues — even battles that are synthetic battles, hyped up to be battles by partisans but of no interest to the average American. These battles can drive up website hits, they can drive up ratings on ideological political shows, they can boots the profile and/or speaking fees of those who push these synthetic battles and involve pushing partisans’ hot buttons.
But the average person will look at this and say: Who cares? So what? And why did you waste my time?
Which is the reaction on this one, no matter how many details people write about Bell’s life or beliefs or activities.
The major revelation in this video? Obama’s hair (Rick Perry eat your heart out).
Share This
It certainly looks like much ado about nothing.
There’s a legitimate point to be made about the lack of vetting of Obama IMO (I will probably get pushback on that from those who point put all of the Rev Wright stuff, but if you look at the timeline the MSM was dragged into covering it and compare that to the way they sent scores of investigators immediately to dig through every shred of trash on Sarah Palin. Both of those figures were relatively unknown in natl politics prior to their POTUS / VP runs so there should have been an equal amt of vetting but there was a huge disparity.
anyway… My point is that the Breitbart team has so far utterly failed even to make that point. This latest is something that was aired during the 08 campaign and there doesn’t appear to have been any selective editing.
The reality is that people on the right do want to know about the associations of left wing candidates with some of the more radical elements of the left just as leftwing voters want to know about the associations of right wing candidates with radial social conservatives. Tis should form part of the media dialogue (though I think it sometimes becomes obsessive at the expense of covering policy and issues and political records.)
But to rehash stuff that’s pretty minor (about on par with McCain appearing on platforms with certain conservative religious leaders) and which was already presented during the campaign, just makes these folks seem desperate. Just make Obama run on his record, and ask the GOP candidates to provide an alternative vision, please.
“…and ask the GOP candidates to provide an alternative vision…”
Romney provides alternative visions everyday.
As far as the video. Yawn. My dead grandmother is more controversial.
What do you mean by that, SB?
The lack of proper vetting of presidential and vice presidential candidates goes back at least to Jimmy Carter, who was a deacon of a segregated Southern Baptist church — a fact not noted until the night before the election. Or Spiro Agnew, who resigned after it was discovered that he’d accepted bags of cash when Governor of Maryland. Or George W. Bush, etc. etc. etc.
If CStanley wants to make a point about the lack of vetting by the press, then make it about ALL the presidential candidates we’ve seen over the past 50 years.
[Note: Carter, to his credit, immediately dealt with the issue when it arose. My point is not about any party or candidate. It is merely that sloppy vetting in favor of breathless yak-yak coverage in presidential races is neither new nor news.]
HW- I wasn’t aware of either of the examples you mentioned (was a child at the time) but also wasn’t trying to be selective. I brought up the disparity between Obama and Palin because it’s within recent memory ( and my own experience as a voter) and I do think it was a pretty striking difference regarding two candidates who ought to have been treated more evenhandedly (since both had only recently come to the national scene.)
To the point that candidates are rather frequently not vetted- I don’t disagree but I can’t comment on that which I’ve not previously heard.
Total fizzle. Not to the tinfoil hat crowd or closet racists of course, but to everyone else. Sad and desperate. The political right would advance it’s own cause so much better if they took all the energy they devote to demonization and put it into housecleaning.
What I mean is that I don’t understand what Romney is for. He flip flops on issues… he has one view then offers an alternative view later.
As far as Obama being vetted…. I don’t know what more could have been done. The right even went so far as to make up lies about him in an attempt to get America to vote Republican. No one, despite months of looking, could turn up any real dirt on Obama. Because there isn’t any.
Why can’t people accept the fact that he was born in America, has a beautiful family that he is faithful too, worked hard to go through school and continued to work hard to become president? And I recall that during the Democratic Party primaries he did not waffle on issues to just gain votes from his core constituency. He said he was against gay marriage, but for civil unions (not what liberals wanted to hear). He asked African-American families (specifically fathers) to take more responsibility if they got a woman pregnant, etc. He got a lot of flack from his constituency, yet he meant what he said and said what he meant.
Not sure what more vetting could have been done.
The two differences in how Palin and Obama were vetted is in speed and reaction of the candidate. Obama was vetted over a long period of time which also allowed the advantage of vetting the info(time Palin didnt have). Palin was vetted fast so it seemed harsh when it was actually rather equal but she had more of a record to go through.
The reaction was where I think the major difference is though. Obama reacted through surrogates and then calmly explained himself. Palin got defensive and screamed “how dare you liberal media, gotcha journalism gotcha journalism…I got you journalist” in response to every revelation (no matter how tiny and insignificant). Her reactions made it seem unusual when it really wasnt and its speed gave a misperception of uneven treatment…well that and attacking people that buy ink and paper by the ton which usually results in public meltdown. The media flock to such a show in droves and the meltdown is always inevitable.
People say they build up people to tear them down but I just think they can sense an emotional and mercurial public figure and they know to keep a camera handy(see Brittany and Lindsey) its their bread and butter.
MSF, ok, now I get the Romney joke-sorry for being dense.
Totally disagree with most of the rest of your comments although i expected that. The part I do agree with is the difference in effectiveness of Obama’s vs. Palin’s responses to the dirt.
I will also note that at least some of the ‘made up’ stuff against Obama originated in the Clinton camp, not with GOP (there were of course many there who willingly took it and ran with it in the general election campaign.
So you are saying Clinton did a good job of vetting Obama and then McCain failed to push it along once the ball was in his court? The problem with the “unfair” narrative is that Jeremiah Wright and a long list of others become household names prior to him even getting to the general election. The biggest stink for Palin was Troopergate and the stories coming from the McCain campaign AFTER the election(this is ignoring Sullivan which went to the fringe on her but going to the fringe in 2008 was oddly common). I will restate though that she was vetted fast because she was not a national figure and from everything I have seen and read Palin pre-vp slot was actually rather calm and moderate it is what she did after she got that slot that turned off so many and in my view ended a political career that may have been much more moderate if she would have been better prepped for the spot light.
In short what I have heard since 2008 is “not enough vetting” yet we are years down the line now and I have yet to hear of another scandal from his past that was ignored. Basically it seems that the anger isnt with the lack of vetting of Obama it is with the fact that the vetting he got didnt lose him the election. Palins record was held on high and at least in my view it also was a wash but her attitude and demeanor pushed away more voters than she attracted to her ticket.
Plus Palin was way easier to make fun of because she is not much of a public speaker. And do the Tina Fey skits count as “vetting”? Cuz those were awesome.