Breitbart is no Taibbi.

  I just read this story from Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism about the alleged role of the "mainstream media" in working with the Wall Street protesters.


  I have to say that the concept of the piece is pretty flimsy. Dylan Ratigan doesn't have near enough of a following to influence hardly anyone. Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald aren't super mainstream either. Definitely not any more mainstream than Breitbart himself.

   My biggest gripe is the way Matt Taibbi is portrayed as being some sort of scheming journalist trying to influence the movement, even getting a mention on the Rush Limbaugh show. Here are two of his responses, here, and here. Taibbi is a journalist, but he's still opinionated.

   I fail to see a big difference between him giving suggestions to OWS protesters (if he was doing this) and Breitbart's speaking at numberous conservative/Tea Party gatherings. As it is, nothing that I've seen shows me that he is personally trying to relay anything to the OWS people that he hasn't written in his articles.

  The concept of Breitbart's website going after Matt Taibbi is hilarious. Breitbart fashions himself a "journalist" but he's really just a spastic kid who takes (often dubious) information from other people and gathers it together. Breitbart would be lucky if he had a person with even a drop of Taibbi's talent working for him.


UPDATE: Another article from Big Journalism does actually have some info on Dylan Ratigan possibly giving guidance David DeGraw who was actually going to be interviewed by Ratigan's fellow NBC employee  Brian Williams. That would cross a line in my mind, especially since they work for the same news network with Ratigan as more of an editorialist and Williams as a straight newsman. Still, I see no concrete info that Taibbi is nearly as involved as Ratigan. Even if he is, I don't have a problem with him trying to get his ideas out to people who could make a difference. If there were more conservatives and liberals raking up the same muck as him then this would probably be a better country.