Rage Against the Media Protest
CBS Television City, Los Angeles, CA
October 20, 2012
Hello, and thank you all for being here.
Before we begin, I would like to thank those people who have been so important in getting this whole thing going. First, Marc Langsam, for giving me the jolt I needed and the courage to get this off the ground, and for his terrific graphics.
Second, Michael Fell who talked me through the beginning of this and who came up with the name, Rage Against the Media. Ari David was a huge help getting this launched, and Gary Aminoff has helped in countless ways as well.
And most especially, I want to thank Doug Perkins, without whom none of this would have happened. I have struggled to find the words to thank him, and I just come up short. Doug, thank you. And the countless people, on Facebook and off, who have supported us in this very short time period, who have helped get this off the ground. To you all, thank you. And of course, thank you ALL for being here!!
OK, Here’s what happened. In the early hours of this past September 12th, I woke up, as I always do, being the insomniac that I am, at 4:25. And being the news and FaceBook junkie that I am, before my eyes were even opened I was fiddling with my phone to check what had happened in the world since the last time I’d checked it, not too long before.
But on the morning of Sept. 12, at 4:25, I awoke to the news of the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and his guards. Unlike other mornings, I did not go back to sleep.
This most outrageous and deeply tragic event was utterly avoidable, and was the obvious culmination of the politics of appeasement, abasement and apologies which are the bywords of President Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – chosen for the post not for any ability she might have but for the politically expedient purpose of keeping one’s enemies even closer than one’s friends.
The Faux “Arab Spring” that led to this was brought to us by President Obama and Hillary, but it was SOLD to us by the media. The narrative that somehow students were rising up spontaneously for peace, love and Kumbaya democracy was utterly preposterous to those of us who follow these things. But this was the narrative that sold the “American people” on the wondrous happenings that would bring peace to all the Earth. Anything that did not fit the narrative was discarded – the rape of CBS correspondent Lara Logan, for example – and they were in constant pursuit of stories that might support it. This was advocacy in its purest, most corrupt, most dangerous form.
The media was utterly complicit in selling us the wondrous “Arab Spring”, and they continue to be complicit in the even more damaging and slowly unraveling cover-up of the outrageously idiotic decisions made by the State Department, if not higher, in the days leading up to this past September 11, and of the misrepresentation of what actually happened on that day.
I watched – we all watched – as the President most certainly did NOT call what happened in Benghazi a terrorist act. In fact, we watched him then, and for weeks, blame it on a video, and we watched him denounce, rather than support, our right to free speech as protected by our first amendment. And the media allowed this to happen. In other words, they had, at least for a while, passed on to the America people the lies being told on to them by the administration. Investigative journalism? HA!
But of course, without the media, the freshman senator from Illinois would never have even become the Democrat nominee, let alone the President. Imagine a media that had actually done just a tiny bit of investigative reporting! Imagine a media that “vetted the candidate,” a failing that Andrew Breitbart spoke of.
Did they vet him? NO
Did they pursue 10 years of tax returns? NO
Did they dig to find his college transcripts? NO
Did they dig to find ANYTHING he wrote as a law student? NO
Did they dig into his relationship with Bill Ayers? NO
What about Reverend Wright? NO
And it goes on and on and on, as you know, if you watched the really remarkable movie 2016. Imagine a media that devoted a fraction of the time to examining the real story of Barack Obama that it does to every aspect of Mitt, or every other GOP candidate. Or that it did to Sarah Palin, someone who took perhaps more media abuse than anyone in recent history.
How is it we know more about Sarah Palin that about our own president?
And how is it that we know more about some plan Paul Ryan gave a fleeting thought to 5 years ago but that we are STILL learning about the hidden horrors of Obamacare?
So over the course of the day, and then the following days, I got angrier and angrier. Yes, at Obama, YES, at those who voted for him. But more and more, and not for the first time, at the media which is just so blatantly the propaganda arm of the progressive left, of the Democrats, of the Obama regime.
But the mainstream media no longer have a stranglehold on the news. I feel so grateful for the “new media” that so many people contribute to for the fundamental reason that they believe in their country. Imagine a media that acts responsibly? WE KNOW what that looks like because of so many conservative bloggers, journalists, publishers who have integrity!
We have Breitbart, PJmedia, Redstate, Townhall, Dailycaller. We have a few of them right here!!! We have choices!!
So it’s not that we don’t have good journalism. WE DO! But the MSM IS NOT IT!!! The problem is that the mainstream media is failing in its duty. Without a responsible 4th estate, a free nation cannot survive, and indeed, we are hanging on by our teeth.
The thing is, we conservatives have been aware for a long time of the media bias – we have long felt betrayed by it. But this is not a left-right issue: ALL AMERICANS are suffering at the hands of the media and the agenda that they advocate! Unemployment doesn’t care if you’re red or blue. Gas costs just the same regardless of whether you are D or R. Obamacare is a hazard to ALL of us, left as well as right! The threat to our national security is a threat to ALL AMERICANS, regardless of party affiliation. We are ALL suffering! The right has been betrayed, but the left is being duped, and the entire country is paying the price.
Roger Simon of PJMedia wrote just last week that we are living as victims of a media coup d’etat. How true is that! And Pat Caddell has just said that the media have become an enemy of the people – ALSO TRUE!
So people are writing about it. And plenty of people are doing their best to be responsible journalists!
But after September 12, it wasn’t enough for me. I got to thinking: If we can rise up in support of Chick-Fil-A Appreciation day – if we can get off our butts and go show our support for CEO Dan Cathy and freedom of religion, then by God we can surely get off our butts and PROTEST the DAMAGE that the media has done to this country!!
So I looked around. Who was PROTESTING? WHO WAS TELLING US TO STEP AWAY FROM FACEBOOK, that incredibly powerful tool of new media and yet that is also a soporific, sort of circus for the masses? Who was telling us: RISE UP! TAKE TO THE STREETS AND SHOW HOW ANGRY WE ARE?
Nobody.
And the lies continued, and I fumed some more
And as it happened, I had dinner with an old friend of mine. She’s editor of a local “Patch.” This was about a week after that Sept.12th morning. And we talked about Libya and I told her how utterly crazed I had become over it.
And she said: “Yeah, that guy shouldn’t have made that video.”
I almost fell off my chair. Here was someone IN THE MEDIA who still didn’t get it. I explained, as calmly as I could, what the story was.
And she said: “Oh Karen, not everybody has the TIME YOU DO TO DIG DEEPER INTO IT”
And that’s when I realized, I shouldn’t have HAD to. My friend who is in the media doesn’t even realize that the media is lying to her. My friend who is in the media is every bit a pawn as most Americans. It’s not that people are stupid. People really feel that if they take the time to watch the news, and to read the paper, that they are informed! It’s not that they’re lazy! It’s that they are BEING LIED TO. The real story should be ON THE NEWS!! And my brain shifted from seeing people as willfully ignorant to being pawns.
It wasn’t her fault! We are being DUPED!! And I got angrier still. And I wanted a protest even more.
I was looking for a means to VENT HOW ANGRY I AM AT the CORRUPTION OF THE MEDIA. But nobody was doing it. Then I had a moment. I am loathe to exploit his name, but I really am not doing that. I am not exploiting. I am telling you where my inspiration came from.
I am here to tell you that this phrase passed through my mind: What would Andrew Breitbart do.
Andrew would take action. Because that is what he did. And thus, Rage Against the Media was born. In a month, we have over 2200 Facebook members. We have a website with over 1600 hits. People are outraged. And we are here today, each of us, because we recognize the damage that the media is doing.
Mitt Romney said the other night: “I never suggest the press is biased. They have a job to do and I have a job to do. My job is to lay out a positive vision for the country, and their job is to make sure nobody finds out about it.”
We all recognize the truth of this!! And whom does it serve? The American people? NO. On the flyers we are handing out we compiled the shortest list of the most egregious examples of media malpractice. Note, though, that the words “liberal” or progressive don’t’ appear anywhere – that is because we are ALL affected by their agenda-driven faux-journalism. They betray us ALL.
Candy Crowley’s interfering in the debate on behalf of President Obama was an insult to every American. Not one of us benefits from that kind of blatant bias. Oh wait, actually, WE ARE benefiting! That was the ultimate smoking gun of media complicity with the White House. No better example could be found! They made our case for us, right there.
So we are here to say NO MORE:
NO MORE BETRAYAL
NO MORE COMPLICITY
NO MORE TREATING US LIKE CHILDREN
NO MORE BEING THE PROPAGANDA ARM OF THIS ADMINSTRATION
NO MORE MEDIA BIAS
Andrew got this ball rolling, and we are continuing the effort. He knew who the enemy was, he knew this was war. And we’re engaged in the fight. Today is the culmination of a few weeks’ effort but it is ONLY THE BEGINNING. We are planning MANY MORE PROTESTS across the country and we are engaged in a number of other efforts to combat this media malpractice.
We are WAKING PEOPLE UP to the fact that there is MORE NEWS than they are being led to believe, and there are far more reliable sources out there, that there is,in fact, real journalism. We are WAKING PEOPLE up to the fact that they have been DUPED but that they have a choice.
There are watchdog groups; there are “new media” sites and outlets. But there is a place for every one of us to take a stand and be heard. It’s time we told them: WE ARE WATCHING YOU and we WON’T TAKE IT ANYMORE
Thank you all for being here, spread the word
Well, this has been extraordinary.
Let me just close with a reminder from Andrew Breitbart.
“My mission,” he said,” isn’t to quash debate, it’s to show that the mainstream media aren’t mainstream that their feigned objectivity isn’t objective, and that open, rigorous debate is a positive good in our society. “
And this is our mission, too. And we each have a role to play.
Join us.