John Stossel devoted his show this past weekend to an attempt to defend his report on "freeloaders" -- which not only was riddled throughout with false "facts," outright falsehoods, gross distortions, and misleading sound bytes, it was nakedly racist in its depiction of minorities who are the beneficiaries of government largesse as cheaters and chiselers.
So who did he invite on to help make this case? Why, Andrew Breitbart -- liar, prevaricator, and misleader extraordinaire -- of course. Breitbart, you see, was Stossel's chief source for the segment on black farmers who are supposedly ripping off the government in the Pigford case -- the non-story that Breitbart has been assiduously, obsessively pursuing as a way of trying to cover his tracks for his grotesque performance in the Shirley Sherrod matter.
He also invited on Al Pires, one of the lead attorneys for those same farmers, to serve as their pinata for the segment. Except it turned out that this pinata had his own big stick -- and went right after Breitbart for the fact that his reportage on the Pigford case has been a wanton exercise in legal (and agricultural ignorance:
PIRES: I don't know who Mr. Breitbart is. He's obviously not a farmer and he's not a journalist -- none of that's even remotely true.
...
Who are you? Making fun of people who have the guts to take cases against the government. You don’t know anything about farming and litigation. You’re some gadfly from Hollywood. I looked you up. You’re some guy who didn’t have a job for ten years.
...
Yeah, I know who you are. You’re some gadfly from Hollywood. You’re the son of a rich family, you never worked for a living in your life. You go around making fun of poor people, you go making fun of Indians and Blacks and Hispanics and women and I’m not putting up with it. I feel bad for you. You’re a sad, sad person. Why don’t you go get a job?
I especially got a kick out of Stossel trying to pretend that no, really, Breitbart is a journalist! Sorry, dude -- you actually have to practice journalism -- which entails a balanced search of facts and truth -- and not thesis-driven propaganda to earn that title.
Mind you, Pires could have been far more effective if he had just started listing the times Breitbart and Co. have been caught deceptively editing videos and lying about their subjects. But that's OK. Sometimes it's satisfying to just see guys like Breitbart get slapped down on every imaginable basis -- and with this particular lying liar, even personal rips like these are fully deserved. Especially when the entire segment is devoted to an ad-hominem smear of their victim as a rich conniver. Can't blame him for tossing the same game back in their faces.
