“ANDREW BREITBART is an invaluable asset to the Commonsense Conservative cause.  RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION is a manual and a call to action for awakened patriots who are too intelligent to believe the leftist media lies and distortions… Breitbart reminds us why we must fight for our country’s future by staying true to core values and never retreating.”
– Sarah Palin

“RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION starts off where many conservatives are born:  after college when liberalism’s theoretical utopia begins to clash with the real world.  Gen X slacker Breitbart transforms himself – with a little help from yours truly – into a cultural warrior, a New Media powerhouse, and one of the conservative movement’s most ferocious fighters.  Brash, funny, fiery, and irreverent, Breitbart and his Big sites put liberals on the defensive – where they belong”  – Rush Limbaugh

This is not a book review (at least the way I understand it).  I love the book, I’ve had it for a long time, and I am not even finished reading it yet.  I read the middle first, and then the end, and now I am reading the beginning.

Why do I love Righteous Indignation?  Because it is a love letter and an instruction manual to and for people like me, and Sundance, and the rest of the crew here at the Tree House, and maybe for you too.
There is so much good stuff that it is difficult to decide what to cover.  Since this is an unconventional “book review”, I will stick mainly to one story- Andrew Breitbart’s story about his appearances on the Bill Maher show.  It is in Chapter 7: Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries:

In March 2005, I got invited to appear on the HBO program Real Time With Bill Maher.

Andrew goes on to tell about his experience there, and that he was relieved to have survived, “without a problem”.  He says, “It felt good to be patted on the back instead of being treated like a pariah.  I was riding high.”  He goes on to say:

The following Monday, I got a call from a friend of mine, a closeted conservative Hollywood filmmaker.
“I saw your appearance,” he told me.  “Why didn’t you stand up for what you believed in?”
It was the deepest cut, because in the recesses of my mind I was fully aware that I had gone on Maher’s show wanting desperately to be liked instead of trying to make my best case.
(snip)
For the next four years, that Maher appearance gnawed at me.  I had been flirting with acting like myself in public, but I was still afraid.

Andrew Breitbart was afraid of being booed, afraid of being rejected!  Finally, he said he had to ask himself, “Am I going to be who I am, or am I going to craft a more sophisticated yet untruthful public persona where I pull my punches?”

Then,  in March 2009, I was asked to be on Maher’s show again.  It was at the beginning of the Obama administration, the height of the Hope Brigade and the Change Parade, and there was every opportunity to be an accommodationist.  Even moderate conservatives were still telling their followers to give Obama a chance.
I knew Obama, and I knew he didn’t deserve a chance to turn America into a Frankfurt School dystopia.  (snip)  But I wasn’t sure that I wanted to stake out that position with Bill Maher.
(snip)
Again, I was faced with a choice.  I could appeal to the composite audience, which was a conglomeration of all the insecurities of my childhood and young adulthood, saying, “Hey, look, I’ve arrived, I’m on television — and what’s more, I got the host to laugh!”  Or I could appeal to my true conscience.

The only other panelist that day was Michael Eric Dyson, and Andrew knew that Maher was going to use MED to help frame him as  “the racial Other, as the oppressor himself or, at the very least, as the unwitting aider and abettor of the oppressor.”

I was thinking only one thing:  Stand up for what you believe in this time.  Stand up for what you believe in this time.  Stand up for what you believe in this time. Don’t divert into comedy mode.  Don’t take the easiest pathway out of this experience.  Stand up for what you believe in.
It was an incredibly committed moment in my life.  I knew I was going to go out there and face down an audience predetermined to hate my guts, Bill Maher predetermined to make mincemeat out of me using his winks, looks, nods, dismissive gestures, and comedy to make me the outsider.  And I knew I wasn’t going to run away this time behind my shield of jocularity and submission.

As the show started, things developed pretty much as Andrew thought they would, and he says he thought to himself, “Screw it.  Go for it”, and he DID!  It was a lucky thing, as Andrew recounts what happened, that Maher took the easy, lazy, route of saying that racism is coming from Rush Limbaugh.  In Andrew’s words, “I knew he had gone there because he’d likely never listened to Rush Limbaugh, because I used to be part of that crowd.”
The conversation went down the usual path with Maher and Dyson calling “racist”, saying that Limbaugh uses “code language”, tearing down Clarence Thomas who “does not represent ninety-five percent of black people.”  As I said, things continued along this path, and then Andrew reveals that he had an ace in the hole:

I had done my Lexis-Nexis searching before the program-I knew that somebody was likely to attack Rush that week. (snip)
I also knew that back around 9/11, Maher had made some controversial comments that got him boycotted in several markets, and that Rush had defended him.  So before the show, I e-mailed Rush and asked him about it.  “Yes,” Rush told me, “I even received a handwritten thank-you note from Bill Maher.”
“Let me end on this note,” I said.  “Back in 2001, when you were attacked by two yahoos down in Houston when you said what you said on Politically Incorrect, it was a Republican establishment, it was Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Medved, [and] Dennis Prager who came to your defense, and you sent Rush Limbaugh a letter, a note thanking him for this.”  You could actually sense the air go out of the room as the audience stared at Maher, Holy shit! written over each and every face.  “You’re part of the bullying tactic,” I continued.  “Calling a person a racist is the worst thing you can call somebody in this country.”

Maher tried to parry with the fake “Barack the Magic Negro” story, and, again, Andrew had the facts.  Maher clearly didn’t know what he was talking about.  He also got them on the subject of stem cell research, because he had done his homework (thanks to Charles Krauthammer).  This went on for a “full, commercial-free half hour, defusing the show’s usual comedic touch.”

I hope you read the book so you can get the whole story.  By now you are probably asking yourself, “Why is Stella telling this story in such full detail in a book review?”  Well, like I said, this isn’t really a book review, and the story is key to the entire book, and a clear message to you and to me.  Andrew goes on to say:

My Blackberry started to overflow with texts and e-mails.  Dwight Schultz, who played “Howling Mad” Murdock on the hit 80’s show The A-Team, was the only one who immediately saw things the way I did.   (snip)
I felt something different: an almost druglike and ethereal and divine exultation.  Recognition that I had been born, publicly and politically, for the first time.  It was like looking into a mirror and recognizing, This is who I am.  I’m not going to tap-dance around what I believe in anymore. (snip)
I had never been willing to stick my neck out like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity……I had feared what it would be like, feared what retribution would come, feared what the swords and the slings and the arrows and the rocks upon my body would feel like, feared a comedienne whose work I enjoyed mocking me in her presence….
And now, walking out of the Maher show, I realized that what I had feared most–expulsion and derision–didn’t really even hurt, not when you are standing up for what you believe.  I raised my Cactus Cooler in honor of the individual who came up with the aphorism “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”  Nietzsche, by the way……
I had passed what I call the Ann Coulter Threshold:  the point where you understand that Ann Coulter and those like her are standing up for what they believe in, feeling the righteousness of living without fear of missing a dinner invite from Tina Brown or fundraisers with Steve Capus or Ben Sherwood or Steven Spielberg or Jeffrey Katzenberg–or worse, the agony of being excoriated by those conservatives who fret that their liberal overlords will start admonishing them for keeping company with you.  Feeling the thrill of sending a message to these people that we reject their worldview the way they reject ours.
I want to bottle that and get it out to every American.  I want to teach everyone I know that there’s nothing to fear but fear itself, and that there’s strength in numbers.  I’ve been looking directly forward instead of into the rear view mirror, not worrying about what people think of me, and it has empowered me.  And it can empower you.

Breitbart’s Rules every conservative activist needs to use when fighting the left.  (They are explained and expanded upon in the book):

There are two points that were left out of this graphic.  They are:

• Ubiquity is key.
• Don’t let them get away with ignoring their own rules.

To further explain the last bullet point, Believe in the audacity of hope:

Believe in the audacity of hope. It’s too bad President Obama is such a joyless, politically correct automaton, because he’s terrifically agile with his prepared words. To paraphrase his victory speech after the 2008 election, the rise of the New Media alone is not the change we seek – it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you. It can’t happen without hope for America and faith in its people – two things Obama and his leftist ilk don’t have, which is why they try to shut it down in others. We have the power to unravel the Complex and destroy the Institutional Left. It won’t be easy. It will take time and effort, and there will be false starts and roadblocks, but we’ll do it, because we have to do it. Apathy in the face of determined Frankfurt School/Alinsky/critical-theory-trained activists is national suicide.

Here’s my favorite quote from Chapter 10, The Big Plan:  Join Us, the invitation to me, and to Sundance, and to you:

What we need is more heady quarterbacks and risk-taking coaches to take on the powerhouses on the left. We need the revealing stories, the gutsy whistle-blowers, the unfiltered-by-the-Complex journalism. We need you. There is no reason not to play smashmouth ball, day in and day out, on both the political and the cultural fronts. Because, don’t fool yourselves, that’s exactly what they do.

Go forth and “Be Andrew Breitbart”  And read his book!
Here’s an interview that Andrew did with Sean Hannity when the book was released:

“It’s a Citizen Journalism Revolution That’s Going On Right Now, And I’m Trying to be the Pied Piper”

– Andrew Breitbart

 

“ANDREW LIVED BOLDLY, SO THAT WE MORE TIMID SOULS WOULD DARE TO LIVE FREELY AND FULLY, AND FIGHT FOR THE FRAGILE LIBERTY HE SHOWED US HOW TO LOVE.”