The BigJournalism.com editorial panel is attending this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., and it didn’t take long for a media-induced controversy to break out. We expected the mainstream media couldn’t cover a gathering of 10,000 conservatives for an entire weekend without playing the race card at least once, but The New York Times‘ Kate Zernike charged Young America’s Foundation Spokesman and CPAC panelist Jason Mattera with “using racial stereotypes” by lunchtime of Day 1.
We’ve included the video of his speech below, as well as relevant excerpts from Zernike’s New York Times piece. Let us know if you think it was appropriate for her to describe Mr. Mattera using some of the most caustic vocabulary in American life.
We’ll be offering our commentary in the days to come.
Bonus question: Identify with time stamps where Mattera uses the “Chris Rock voice.”
Andrew Breitbart, the founder of Big Journalism, Big Government and Big Hollywood took great offense at Ms. Zernike's characterization of Mattera, and used his acceptance speech for an award from Accuracy in Media to take his shot, calling Zernike a "despicable human being." I'm having some difficulty embedding this video, but here is a partial transcript:
Kate Zernike of the New York Times, are you in the room? Are you in the room? You’re despicable. You’re a despicable human being. You’re the New York Times. What is your headline here? You came to CPAC to get your prey and here’s your prey, Jason Mattera from HotAir and also from Young America’s Foundation. This is the headline: CPAC Speaker Bashes Obama, comma, in Racial Tones.You can watch Breitbart's speech here. It's definitely worth the time to watch the whole thing.
How can conservatives win the youth vote that overwhelmingly went for Barack Obama in 2008? At the Conservative Political Action Conference, apparently, some are betting on using racial stereotypes.It goes into a story that does not express that he used a racial stereotype. It is just built upon a bed of lies. It says that he went into a Chris Rock voice. She’s the one that correlated his voice to Chris Rock. He happens to be from Brooklyn. He’s using HIS voice.
Here is what Zernike wrote in the New York Times:
How can conservatives win the youth vote that overwhelmingly went for Barack Obama in 2008? At the Conservative Political Action Conference, apparently, some are betting on using racial stereotypes.If Mattera sounded like he was imitating Chris Rock (which I really did not hear at all), there's a logical explanation. They are both from Brooklyn. Zernike and the New York Times owe Mr. Mattera an apology and a complete retraction of this baseless hit piece.
In a panel appealing to conservatives under 30, Jason Mattera, author of a forthcoming book called “Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation,” likened the gathering to “our Woodstock.”
“Except that unlike the last gathering, our women are beautiful, we speak in complete sentences and our notion of freedom doesn’t consist of snorting cocaine,” he said, “which is certainly one thing that separates us from Barack Obama.”
After the laughing died down, he added, “Actually, on the cocaine front, I do believe many people in America viewed Barack as they do drugs: it was a substance to experiment with.”
Dramatic pause for more laughter, and then, “But like most narcotics, the hangover afterward has them thinking, What the hell did I just do?”
Mr. Mattera, also a television correspondent for the Web site HotAir, said that Mr. Obama had created the “right opportunity to capture what is perceived as the left’s stronghold on the youth vote.”
Even Obama Girl, he exclaimed, “said her crush has faded!”
He then mocked what he described, with a Chris Rock voice, as “diversity,” including, he said, college classes on “cyber feminism” and “what it means to be a feminist new black man.”
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