When I set out on my second day at Netroots Nation in Minneapolis last Friday, I never expected to come face to face with the likes of Andrew Breitbart, but unfortunately that's what happened.
Fresh off of his Anthony Weiner cellphone picture exhibition tour, and as always looking like he just woke up from a curb nap somewhere, Breitbart rolled into the conference with a camera crew and an "entourage" (entourage being his description, not mine) in tow. Unfortunately I was on my way to a session when I walked into what later became a confrontation between a couple conference attendees and "Big Blowhard." I snapped a couple pictures on my cellphone as I was coming down an escalator that brought me to where the face-off between Breitbart and a blogger was about to get under way. I avoided the scene and tried to get to into the exhibit hall, but just as I was going in, security was turning Breitbart away from the door due to his lack of credentials, and unfortunately I came briefly face to face with his ugly and angry glare.
Not pretty.
Later on I read accounts of what was going on at the time, and it was interesting to read what those who weren't there were saying about it, particularly from right wing newspapers and FOX. I read that Breitbart was met by "MOBS OF ANGRY LIBERALS!" That it was pure "MAYHEM!" and that "BEDLAM ENSUED!" This is of course ridiculous but not surprising considering the sources. Sure, there was some yelling from one or two people, and a few more chanting "loser" as they followed him in his cowardly retreat as he fled the building, but "bedlam?" "Mayhem?" Not so much.
Here's one of the pictures I took of Breitbart, who was chatting with Dave Weigel (to his right) just as he was confronted by the blogger. Does this look like "bedlam" to you?
(Photo: BeachPeanuts)
O. M. G.! BEDLAM ENSUED!
Yeah, me neither. It wasn't. I know the picture is poor quality, and I wouldn't even have posted it or given the right-wing bully any more attention, but the exaggerations of angry mobs of marauding "leftists" throwing him out of a conference he had no business being at in the first place are, well, comical. Not to mention the bragging Beitbart did about his little adventure himself later on.
He along with many others from the copycat conference that shadows Netroots Nation every year, RightOnline, were staying in the same hotel that I and many others from Netroots were staying in. RightOnline held their entire conference there as a matter of fact, since their number of attendees are small enough for just a couple of meeting rooms rather than several floors of the convention center.
The numbers of those in attendance aren't the only big differences between RightOnline and Netroots Nation. RightOnline is "a project of Americans For Prosperity" according to their website, and what a project it is. The speakers and sponsors of this little "project" are quite different from those of Netroots Nation. They come and go via limos and wearing three piece suits and evening gowns and resemble Newt Gingrich and his wife after an afternoon at Tiffany's more than the attendees they seek to prey on, some who look as if they can barely afford to pay the rent, much less the price of a ticket to the conference plus travel expenses and anything left over for a copy of an autographed book by Andrew Breitbart himself.
I say this not to belittle those who attend the RightOnline conference, far from it. I say this because after watching how the right-wing, the Republican Party, and the Tea Party, (pick a name, they're all the same) operate for years and years, it sickens me to see people so manipulated, taken advantage of and lied to.
They seek out the most vulnerable to exploitation, and then exploit them, filling them with fear and the promise that they will be rewarded with "prosperity" if only they believe.
"A project of Americans For Prosperity."
They know what those easily led attendees don't understand: The prosperity goes to the ones stepping out of the limos, not the ones who arrive with their entire family crammed into an old pickup truck, or the retirees helping each other onto an elevator who need the Medicare these organizations want to rob them of. They scare them and then tell them the liberals are the ones responsible for the mess they're in now, (and let's don't forget the added bonus they have to wield since the last election: a black President) rather than their own party and their own agendas. And it works. They've created an angry bunch.
That was evident when people from their respective conferences came together while staying in the same hotel. Like a young and obviously inebriated couple who asked me to take their picture. I obliged, but after some thought, they eyed me suspiciously and then asked which group I was with. Suddenly a picture taken by one who "likes President Obama" would not suffice: "We'll take your picture and show it to Michele Bachmann!" (Not sure what that was supposed to mean exactly.) I can't count the number of people who were nice one minute, but gave me a laser stare the next or made angry comments when they saw what color my lanyard was.
Then there's the arrogance. "Men in black" four abreast from RightOnline standing guard from who knows what in the hotel lobby.
People like Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, rushing from the hotel staring and whispering to her companion while keeping a safe distance from anyone of either conference as if she might catch something from "one of the commoners."
Like any number of people from the Breitbart "entourage" mostly women dressed like, well, like hookers, drinking, laughing, doing a lot of staring and pointing and loudly condemning any Netroots group they came across.
Then there was James O'Keefe. There's some arrogance. Strutting around as if he were an actual every day "journalist" rather than someone who had to get permission from a judge to go to Minneapolis in the first place. He of ACORN fame who claims "he only seeks the truth" while dressing up like a pimp or a telephone repairman, with cameras and tape recorders and such. I made the mistake of getting into an elevator when he came out of nowhere, stepped in front of me, nearly stepped on me as a matter of fact, as if that elevator should have been his alone. How dare I? I of the so called "angry liberal" crowd?
There were no "angry liberals" at the hotel harassing Muslim women, or shouting "white power" and then punching people in the face for whatever reason. Just anger from the prey of RightOnline. Except for their disdain for absent idols like Laura Ingraham who didn't bother to show up, or Sarah Palin, who was only there on the big screen and missing in action from her latest adventure in quitting: The Bus Tour (they wouldn't vote for her, they just believed she was really "one of them" and would actually be there) the anger and hate was reserved only for those with orange Netroots Nation lanyards.
After two days they knew those wearing the orange ones were "the enemy" because those wearing the green ones told them so.
To associate with them would mean that "BEDLAM WILL ENSUE."
At which time Breitbart, Bachmann, Blackburn, and all the folks from Americans For Prosperity, would flee, waving and laughing at them from their limos, leaving them and their empty wallets behind.