INTRODUCTION

I. Whoever Controls “The Narrative,” Controls the National Political Conversation

When it comes to most of today’s mainstream media we are no longer talking about an entity that reports truth or facts. Everything about the MSM is now about The Narrative. Even though they’re supposedly made up of separate and competing newsrooms, there’s a very good reason why the MSM as a whole is usually covering, emphasizing and amplifying the exact same stories. This is what The Narrative is and its usefulness to the MSM is how it pushes particular stories to the forefront of public awareness in order to further a political agenda — an agenda that 90% of the time is meant to aid the Left and damage the Right.

Another part of The Narrative is what the MSM chooses NOT to cover; what they willfully ignore.

You can see The Narrative at work as I write this. The same MSM that assured us that when it came to Barack Obama, the church he attended for two decades didn’t matter, is now obsessing over a church Rep. Michele Bachman’s hasn’t attended in over a year. Here you have two separate (and wildly hypocritical) narratives at work: one meant to protect a Democratic presidential candidate, the other meant to damage a GOP presidential candidate.

On the other hand, you can also see The Narrative working by what’s NOT being covered today. The same MSM that obsessed over the Valerie Plame non-story is currently all but ignoring Obama’s brewing “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal –mainly because it’s exactly the kind of scandal that can swamp a presidency into paralyzing, under-40 approval ratings.

II. How Alternative Media Created the MSM’s Need for a Media Matters for America

Prior to the rise of the Internet, the Left almost completely owned the narrative. The simple truth is that before Al Gore’s invention was fully realized, other than a few esteemed columnists, the media had no serious ideological competition from the Right. The rise of the Internet, however, changed all of that as citizen journalists — many of whom are motivated by the MSM’s liberal biases — found this new tool invaluable when it came to both debunking the MSM’s latest lie (the most famous being RatherGate) or reporting on stories the MSM chose to ignore for ideological reasons.

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SEIU DRAGGED IN BOGUS WITNESS TO SMEAR GLADNEY!

After a health care town hall meeting in August 2009 St. Louis native Kenneth Gladney was beaten, kicked and called racist names by Rep. Russ Carnahan’s SEIU supporters. Gladney spent the night in the hospital after the beating.

On Tuesday, the two SEIU goons who beat Gladney were found not guilty of any wrongdoing.

I wrote about the SEIU’s “surprise witness” from left field. This surprise witness, who is also an SEIU activist, testified on Tuesday that she witnessed Kenneth Gladney “starting the fight” with two SEIU goons who were twice his size.

The SEIU “witness” was not at the scene. She came walking up with a cane after the fight was already broken up.

24th State wrote more about the surprise SEIU witness.

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“I couldn’t beat them; I didn’t have the resources they had. They had all the money in the world and the backing… I’m just an average man.” — Kenneth Gladney

The trial of the two men who beat Kenneth Gladney almost two years ago came to a close Tuesday afternoon. After two days of testimony, the jury deliberated for forty minutes before Perry Mollens and former St. Louis mayoral candidate, the Reverand Elston McCowan, were found not guilty. McCowan and Molens were members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) when the attack occurred.

On the first day of the trial, Gateway Pundit noted that union supporters were out in force to intimidate Gladney. In the courtroom, the defense planned to turn the court fight into a he-said, she-said because the prosecution did not have video of how the fight started. The defense also argued that McCowan and Molens had a right to self-defense, but that rests on the belief that Gladney instigated the confrontation.

The implication that Kenneth Gladney started the fight is simply absurd. McCowan and Molens are each over six feet tall and weigh north of 200 pounds. Gladney is a cancer survivor who’s about 5′ 6″ and weighs about 130lb. Furthermore, Gladney was there selling buttons. He wanted to make a few bucks. In April of 2009, he was selling Obama paraphernalia. Like most merchants, he sells what the people want and he doesn’t pick fights with his clientele, so it’s absurd to assert that he instigated a fight with McCowan.

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NOT GUILTY- SEIU GOONS CLEARED IN GLADNEY BEATING!

I just spoke with Kenneth Gladney and his wife outside the courtroom. Here is their first reaction—

“I couldn’t beat them; I didn’t have the resources they had. They had all the money in the world and the backing… I’m just an average man.”

Video of first reaction after the verdict:

** It was the prosecutor’s first jury trial.

The Kenneth Gladney beatdown case continued this morning in St. Louis County Court.
After a health care town hall meeting in August 2009 St. Louis native Kenneth Gladney was beaten, kicked and called racist names by Rep. Russ Carnahan’s SEIU supporters. Gladney spent the night in the hospital after the beating.

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After a health care town hall meeting in August 2009 St. Louis native Kenneth Gladney was beaten, kicked and called racist names by Rep. Russ Carnahan’s SEIU supporters. Gladney was beaten so badly that he was hospitalized for the night.

Gladney, a cancer survivor, was selected by the Carnahan supporters for the beatdown because he was handing out “Don’t Tread On Me” flags and because he was black.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch reported at the time:

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In the 3rd Congressional District of Missouri, a race for the ages is taking place.  Ed Martin (R), one of the originals involved with the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition and endorsed by that organization, is fighting to replace Russ Carnahan (D), representative of everything the tea party movement has been fighting against.

This was not supposed to be a competitive race.  The district was designed as a safe seat for Democrats, carving out pieces of St. Louis and the union stronghold of Jefferson County.  If it had not been a safe seat, Carnahan’s campaign would have been over a year ago when SEIU goons beat Kenneth Gladney at one of his health care town halls or a few months ago when the state passed the Missouri Health Care Freedom Act with 71% of the vote.

The 3rd District likes politicians that like to politic.  Traditionally, the representatives of this district have been fairly public figures that engage the voters.  This is not Russ Carnahan.  He cannot speak without his constituents laughing at him. He knows nothing about guns in a gun-friendly district.  He sends video of himself to speaker forums instead of showing up.  He does what he is told to do by Nancy Pelosi, and he sends taxpayer dollars outside of his district to support his brother’s windmill farm. (more…)

Progressives – and socialists – will do anything to discredit the Tea Party movement.  Just ask Frances Fox Piven, who, along with her husband Richard Cloward, designed the theory of “collapsing the system” to force socialist principles – primarily redistribution of wealth – onto America.

In a recent interview published on CommonDreams.org, Piven said this of the Tea Party movement:

“It is a media concoction, an expression of white nationalism, a cry of resentment, and so on. But it also reflects a well-funded campaign by the Right that singles out groups like ACORN, the SEIU (Service Employees International Union), the teachers’ unions, and environmental projects, to disable not only the Left, which after all is not at this point strong enough to be much of a threat, but the Democratic Party.”

Remember Kenneth Gladney, the black Tea Party member who was holding “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and viciously beaten in St. Louis by SEIU thugs?  Yep, he was just expressing his inner white nationalism.

As Gladney laid on the ground, getting kicked and enduring racial slurs by union goons—well, that was just a media concoction.

Regardless of the facts, Piven sees a racist around every right corner.  Earlier this year, she said this of Glenn Beck:

“So, it’s an old technique of right-wing ideologues – finding a scapegoat … and attributing things that go wrong in American society to somebody who’s foreign or dark skinned or an intellectual.”

According to Piven, if you oppose the Left’s agenda, you’re obviously a racist.  Isn’t it about time we get past that, Fran?

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The suspect who firebombed Rep. Russ Carnahan’s office last week was reportedly a disgruntled progressive activist employed by democrats. An unnamed source familiar with the case released the information. Suspect Chris Powers reportedly was upset because he did not get paid so he firebombed the Carnahan finance offices at 2 in the morning.

What a complete shock.

Dem operative and firebomber Chris Powers is the sweaty one pictured here on right during a rally for nationalized health care. Powers is was a paid canvasser for Russ Carnahan.

The RFT reported:

Congressman Russ Carnahan held a press conference confirming that the person St. Louis police arrested and released for last week’s firebombing of his campaign headquarters did in fact work for his re-election campaign.

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Last Tuesday August 17, 2010, Rep. Russ Carnahan’s office was reportedly vandalized and “firebombed” at 2 AM in the morning. Hours later police arrested a suspect for the crime and held him for several hours.

Of course, when the “firebombing” was reported local leftists blamed the tea party activists.

Then things got really weird. The police released the suspect and the Carnahan camp went silent. Carnahan employees were seen dumping documents into a dumpster but refused to to talk to reporters. There was a complete blackout on information.

Photo of Carnahan’s office after the firebombing. (Via the Carnahan Office)

Now we know why.

The suspect was reportedly a disgruntled progressive activist employed by Russ Carnahan. An unnamed source familiar with the case released the information. Suspect Chris Powers reportedly was upset because he did not get paid so he firebombed the Carnahan finance offices at 2 in the morning.

What a complete shock.

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The recent rants of the leader of the New Black Panther Party, (“I hate white people! Every last iota of a cracker I hate….” ) couldn’t have been more amusing. That is before justifying the killing of some cracker children.

Up until that point his speech sounded like one from a common street-corner nutcase or Chris Rock working out new material for an upcoming HBO special. But it plunged to a new level of low advocating harming children rather than protecting them. To his credit at least his message wasn’t shrouded in feigned concern about childhood obesity like Michelle Obama’s recent speech to the NAACP in which she first glossed over real strides made in this country when it comes to race relations, then focused on inadequate black schools and then launched into what she views as most crucial, the issue of fat black kids. However one has to question – If she’s truly committed to protecting black children from the harmful effects of bad eating habits why she didn’t ask the NAACP to join her in taking the following steps -

• Denouncing the New Black Panther party – After all if young black kids are influenced by them and actually off a cracker baby (as ordered) it would undoubtedly result in their incarceration – where they wouldn’t be served the healthiest of foods.
• Apologizing to Mr. Gladney – Rather than condone the beating of this black tea party member as the NAACP did, Mrs. Obama and the NAACP should instead support him for engaging in independent thought, even if his views differ from theirs. After surviving slavery at the very least haven’t black people earned the right to free thinking? If not, the minds of black people are still in chains which could be a very anxiety provoking concept to black youths – and anxiety commonly leads to compulsive eating.

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I condemn the NAACP. The NAACP was once a noble organization that did some real good with regard to bringing equality for black Americans. But this erroneous, viciously dishonest and seriously misguided resolution has tarnished the reputation of the group. It has also revealed the political ideology that has driven the organization for years.

The NAACP seems now to be nothing more than another arm of the progressive political machine. This has cost the group its integrity. First, a leader calls a conservative black man who was beaten by union thugs an “Uncle Tom” — now this. Have they shame, honor or decency?

I condemn the NAACP. The NAACP’s move to condemn the tea party movement as racist is a scurrilous attack by a group that itself is unambiguously guilty of same. I have spoken at tea party rallies and am in contact with tea party members from across the country, and never have I heard even a whisper of that which we are falsely accused.

The NAACP has a selectively myopic view and short-term memory when it comes to actual instances of what can only be construed as racial bias. How do they explain their tacit silence about the allegations made in the New Black Panthers Party’s voter-intimidation case Philadelphia in 2008? Or talk that they tried to quash the complaint themselves? How do they explain their silence in the verbal accosting and outright attack on the black entrepreneur distributing tea party items at a town hall meeting in 2009? How do they explain their silence pursuant to King Samir Shabazz’s violent diatribe taped by National Geographic calling for the killing of white people — specifically children? Calling tea party members racist because we disagree with Obama begs the question of what they call the vicious screeds of Danny Glover, Harry Bellafonte and Julian Bond spewed toward President George W. Bush?

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Yesterday, the NAACP passed a resolution condemning the “racism” of the tea party movement. They did not pass a resolution condemning the SEIU thugs who beat up Kenneth Gladney, an African-American vendor at a tea party rally. We guess racism is in the eye of Eric Holder.

We Will Not Be Silenced

Last year the Pelosi-Obama regime passed the most irresponsible and damaging piece of legislation in American history – the Trillion Dollar Stimulus Bill. They dumped a trillion dollars into a government sink hole with the promise that they would create jobs. We knew better. We were afraid for our families and our country. We were outraged and took to the streets. We spoke out. We came out. We protested the elites.

We will not be silenced.

On April 15th of last year we met in cities across this great nation. We protested the reckless spending, the record deficit, the bailouts, the careless decisions being made by this radical Administration and Congress. We came out in force, hundreds of thousands of us. We stood as one.

We will not be silenced.

We shocked the elites. We shocked the radicals and extremists. They couldn’t believe that we were speaking out. This wasn’t their plan. They knew they had to react and they lashed out at us. They called us mobsters, Nazis, radicals, and racists. They beat us, and smashed us in the face and bit off fingers. They wanted us to pipe down; to be good little drones as they continued to wreak havoc across this great nation with their radical agenda. But, we gathered on street corners and met them at town halls.

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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). the radical leftist group that labels black conservatives “Uncle Toms”, proposed a resolution at their 101st Annual Convention this weekend condemning the “tea party racists.” This far left organization will vote on the resolution Tuesday at their national meeting.

A racist NAACP leader recently attacked black conservative Kenneth Gladney for being “kissed on the forehead, by a European.”

Kenneth Gladney, who was injured in a scuffle at a health forum on Aug. 6, is greeted by well-wishers, including Jeff Tatum, during a protest Aug. 8 in St. Louis. The demonstration was held by members of the St. Louis Tea Party. (Robert Cohen/P-D)

The Kansas City Star reported, via Free Republic:

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will propose a resolution this week condemning racism within the tea party movement.

The resolution, scheduled for a vote as early as Tuesday by delegates attending the annual NAACP convention in Kansas City, calls upon “all people of good will to repudiate the racism of the Tea Parties, and to stand in opposition to its drive to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.”

NAACP leaders said the resolution was necessary to make people aware of what they believe is a racist element within the tea party movement.

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On May 5th, 2010 The Missouri NAACP hosted a press conference and rally on behalf of Perry Molens and Elston McCowan, demanding the county prosecutor drop assault charges stemming from an attack outside Russ Carnahan’s townhall in South St. Louis County on Health Care last August. Molens and McCowan were arrested after the staged Carnahan event in August after they beat, kicked and stomped on black vendor Kenneth Gladney. The two Russ Carnahan supporters and SEIU members also called Kenneth the n-word as they bashed him into the cement.

This press conference in May was intended to drum up political pressure to prevent the jury trial of the two SEIU staff members arrested for attacking Kenneth Gladney in the presence of three witnesses.

Video of the entire press conference was posted online in eight parts and includes speeches by Harold Crumpton (NAACP national board member and president, St Louis City branch), Mary Ratliff, (NAACP state president, Missouri), progressive blogger Adam Shriver (cited as their legal expert), Elston McCowan, Perry Molens, and emceed by Zaki Abruti, UAPO. Also attending the event were a host of self-defined socialist agitators and a self-proclaimed Huffington Post reporter, Jeanine Molloff.

Here is the unbelievable video of the racist NAACP event. The two men accused of attacking Gladney go on trial this month. Elston McCowan, the man standing next to the speaker, can be seen laughing when the speaker says Gladney is not a brother.

Following is the transcript:

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We’ve already noted how two HuffPo reporters ran defense for SEIU: First there was Erica Payne, HuffPo blogger, lover of all things Media Matters, who appeared on Fox News to try to shift blame of SEIU antics onto the tea party.

We’ve also read how HuffPo blogger Arthur Delaney was embedded with SEIU to cover their home invasion of Bank of America employee Greg Baer which terrified Baer’s young son who hid in the bathroom (we’re still waiting for the Carnahan Coffin-Gate drama queens to repeat their hysterics over this but so far, nothing); Delaney became the first to parrot SEIU’s baseless accusation of “conflict of interest” at Fortune columnist Nina Easton after she published her firsthand account, as Baer’s neighbor, of the same protest. Monday we exposed Huffington Post’s own conflict of interest when we discovered that SEIU had paid the site $15,000 categorized as “political activities and lobbying.”

Is this what SEIU money is buying? Two HuffPo bloggers running their media defense? Of course, this could be a routine advertising expense. But, Big Government has learned that the Huffington Post has inserted themselves into SEIU’s most notorious violent incident: the Kenneth Gladney beating of last August.

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People on the left are constantly asking Andrew Breitbart who funds his “operation.”  It’s grown to become rather amusing, actually.  For those of us who are bloggers on The Bigs, we know the truth, we see how things operate. We know there’s no giant conservative-leaning lump of cash greasing this machine.  If that were the case, I for one think Andrew would probably be home with his family even more, rather than traveling around, worrying about advertising or other ways of self-funding this little “hobby” of his, as the left often like to refer to it.

But let’s just look for one moment at where some of that line of thinking comes from on the other side.  I’ve written previously about the birth of Media Matters as a spawn of Rob Stein’s Conservative Message Machine Money Matrix road show, from which the Democracy Alliance was born.  It’s through this organization from which much of the organization’s funding had come; in recent years, more has been spread out across other progressive organizations, but the funders often remain the same names in most cases.  For instance, The Tides Foundation gave Media Matters and their Action Network over $175,000 just last year.  In earlier years, groups like Montclair, New Jersey-based (hometown of Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert) Schumann Center for Media & Democracy gave the organization $500,000.

The donors’ list is vast and diverse, and we plan to cover that in detail in the future.  So I’ll focus in on one set of donors to Media Matters, which is the Labor Unions.  More specifically, in light of some recent posts regarding the Kenneth Gladney incident, I thought it appropriate to revisit donations made to Media Matters specifically by the Service Employees International Union.

When you look at the timeline of events and the media calendar in general leading up to the Gladney incident last August, it’s difficult not to conclude that there was collaboration amongst White House staff, components of Big Labor, and certain liberal media outlets.  However, we know that all will continue to deny it.

Further, just as the flurry of media activity finally starts to wind down a bit around October last year, this is when SEIU makes three separate donations to Media Matters totaling $50,000, under the classification of “Communications”, according to the SEIU LM-2 report. (In reviewing other LM-2s for several previous years, this appears at least to be the first time that SEIU has donated to Media Matters, and there does not seem to have been another donation recorded since these.)

This is the type of funding that I would question in return to Media Matters.  With their membership being so low and their unfunded pension expenses so high, can the SEIU really afford to be randomly donating funds to an organization like Media Matters?  Perhaps SEIU purchased advertising on Media Matters’ website, but then I’d think it would be categorized as such, as others ad expenses in the LM-2 were.  If not advertising, if not random donations,  then what’s the reason for SEIU having donated these funds?  One could logically conclude that Media Matters performed a service in return.  Only they can answer that.

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Certain conspiracies have been winding their way through the more desperate and hungry parts of the blogosphere; various liberals have alleged that I, Andrew Breitbart, and others “lied” about Patricia Redington’s handling of Kenneth Gladney (who still hasn’t received justice) and Kelly Owens’ cases.

This is the problem when one is driven not by intellectual curiosity, but by a pronounced obsessive bitterness, when bloggers’ content is based upon fruits from scavenge and bias, as opposed to actual investigation which requires more skill, demonstrated by 24thState, in a post which requires full reading. This lack of attention to facts was exhibited last week in a hastily-written piece – too hasty to bother confirming the identity of the intended target – on Crooks and Liars. The cogs in the machine each provided cover , a crack in any flank, according to their rulebook, is invalidation of their own. But as for the matter of Gladney and Redington:

They’re wrong, as usual, but then the Soros and SEIU funded Media Matters has never been interested in the truth.  I speak to this because starting that night, August 6th, I’ve been collecting the information on the Gladney case, from public statements to health records to statements from public officials, and just last week, I delivered much of that information to the prosecutor overseeing the case.

Aside from all of this, I’m glad to see, for the first time, real interest in one of the most under-reported hate crimes in America in the past several years. I’m glad that liberals have mustered up enough interest to ask the questions they couldn’t be bothered to ask last fall when they were too busy trying to cover up the crime against a black man. Perhaps they will also ask why it took Redington so long to talk to witnesses, or about this:

The hospital records were not the complete medical records.  Gladney went to his personal doctor, the one paid by coverage through his wife’s insurance (despite a report and non-correction you might have read in the St Louis Post Dispatch).  Pat Redington’s office had no way of knowing this because prior to them bringing charges, they wouldn’t meet with or speak to Kenneth Gladney, or any of the witnesses in the police report.  Thus prior to the charges being brought, Redington’s office couldn’t check the full medical records.  They didn’t know of the existence of the full medical record.

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These medical records were important, because Redington’s failure to press timely charges was excused by the complexity of the case.  And yet, the information the counselor’s office had was no different the day they pressed charges, then it was on August 12th.  In other words, Redington’s claim of dozens of witnesses and multiple arrests was intended to be an excuse.  The truth is there was no, and I repeat this strongly, NO, investigation from the counselor’s office.

Those on the left stated an aversion to name-calling when they decried when conservatives declared certain of the administration’s politics to be socialist, tossing around words like “liar” and “racist” seem to be excepted from their double-standard, even when those against whom they rail have the advantage of possessing information on the story and not just SEIU rhetoric.

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Andrew Breitbart has been very generous with space on this blog defending me and telling the story of how I was beaten by SEIU thugs.  Once again he has reached out and offered me an opportunity ask for your help.  Below is a letter from my brother, Keith Gladney, and it describes my life at this place and time and what you, the Big Government readers who have continued to support me for months and months, can do to help me get back on my feet.

Thank you very much for your time.
Sincereley,

Kenneth Gladney

*************

The process for contributing to the Kenneth Gladney Trust:

1) Go into Bank of America; you cannot call to use a credit card over the phone.
2) Ask the teller or service rep pull up the name “Kenneth Earl Gladney Trust.”
3) Tell them you are a contributor or you want to donate to this trust.
4) Give them the dollar amount, and that’s it.
5) Please REMEMBER! The trust is not under “I Am Kenneth Gladney.” (more…)