Wingnuts and Moonbats: January 2013

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Wingnuts Get A Twitch; No More Mister Nice Blog Calls It What It Is: The Breitbart/OKeefe-ization Of American Politics

Steve M. exposes the rightwing line of attack... ...and the rightwingers pushing it don't like it one little bit.

"The righties in my feed have a very different perspective. They have what they want: a soundbite they can rip from context and use as a cudgel to beat the administration and Secretary Clinton with. I'm not sure if they really expect their efforts to color mainstream coverage of this story, but it's clear that that's what they're hoping. They have a new "you didn't build that," a new "spread the wealth around," and they're going to wring everything they can out of it."

What Secretary Clinton actually said:

"With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, senator. Now, honestly, I will do my best to answer your questions about this. The fact is that people were trying, in real time, to get to the best information."

All that some on the right seemingly heard--and more importantly, all they want YOU to hear:

"What difference does it make?"

And then, with just a little clumsy slight of hand, they attempt to make it about the people who died (see ~~Andrea Tantaros~~ Kimberly Guilfoyle (updated 2:30 AM, after catching a piece of a rerun... If I knew it was going to be on again, I'd've taped and posted the part I cited...but at least I was able to correct the name I got wrong...) on FoxNews' The Five, who opened the show by saying something along the lines of "Four dead Americans, and Hillary Clinton says what's the difference." [I'll add video or exact transcript if/when I ever find one. Looks like it takes FoxNews a day or so to post them, and even then they don't necessarily post the full transcript]), or the foreign policy position of the Obama administration in general.

But, of course, the ripped-from-context quote is "What difference, at this point, does it make?" It's already being seized on by National Review and Fox News and The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard and Glenn Beck's Blaze and Michelle Malkin's Twitchy and the Free Bacon and, of course, Breitbart. There's already a popular hashtag, #whatdifferencedoesitmake.

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This is an Andrew Breitbart/James O'Keefe tactic, but its use is not limited to O'Keefe and the carriers of the Breitbart torch -- this is a mainstream GOP tactic. The entire party and all its coat-holders are on board.

Here's the soundbite in context. The attempt to distort what Clinton said may not be more than a minor irritant. But righties are going to work this for quite a while.