March 20th, 2009, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government and NetRightNation.com this week hosted the first of many New Media events at the Union Pub in Washington, D.C. featuring internet entrepreneur, Andrew Breitbart, who spoke about the urgency for conservatives to embrace pop culture to ensure the survival of the conservative movement, and the Republican Party.
“I really think that the only way that the conservative movement… people that want limited government, the only way we’re ever going to be able to sell the idea is if we learn that the media is the message,” said Breitbart to an audience of new media personnel of not-for-profit organizations, conservative bloggers, and radio staff.
“We have like a ten to twenty year battle on our hands,” the co-founder of Big Hollywood, the group blog that features contributions from high profile Hollywood conservatives, said he tells GOP Congressmen in Washington, encouraging them to “stop acting like your great, great grandfather, and not be afraid of pop culture.”
Breitbart believes the conservative movement must engage in the culture war. “Every single pop culture arbiter,” said Breitbart, citing David Letterman, Jon Stewart, Ellen Degeneres, and others, “they rigged the game so that they win on the media.”
“Over 40 years of that dominance and the conservative movement following Paul Weyrich’s, ‘we lost the culture war… let’s not fight it, let’s not engage in it,’ that’s why we’re in deep peril. It’s not because of our political point of view. It’s not because we don’t have the right ideas,” Breitbart said.
“It’s because we don’t play that game,” he said.
Breitbart is a conservative author and occasional commentator for political news programs. He has appeared on shows such as Real Time With Bill Maher, Dennis Miller and Fox News’ Red Eye With Greg Gutfeld. He is a part-time editor of the Drudge Report and developer for the Huffington Post. Currently, he runs his own news portal, Breitbart.com with the motto “Just The News”.
Breitbart believes that the conservative movement is ready to “open up that golden gate,” and take on Hollywood.
“Hollywood for the last 40 years has been controlled by the left, and I’m here to tell you that there are a lot of conservatives out there—more than you can possibly imagine,” Breitbart declared.
“40 years is too long for there not to be a counter-revolution,” Breitbart added. “And I think that Hollywood is the place, believe it or not, where… it’s going to happen.”
Breitbart stated he knew of “hundreds if not thousands of people who are in Hollywood that you would recognize their names, whether they be directors, writers, or actors, and these people have to stay silent,” citing job discrimination and intimidation.
In addition to his successes on the web, Breitbart is the co-author of the wildly popular book Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon — The Case Against Celebrity. His publisher description of the book reads, “Celebrities somehow believe that it’s their god-given right to inflict their pathology on the rest of us. Hollywood, Interrupted illustrates how these dysfunctional dilettantes are mad as hell… And we’re not going to take it any more.”
Breitbart’s work has been published in the Wall Street Journal, National Review Online and the Weekly Standard Online, among others. He writes a weekly column now for The Washington Times, which also appears at Real Clear Politics.
To watch Andrew Breitbart’s speech, please follow the links below:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCLewax2-zY
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-RGF7DEynU
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNugRrPIhGY
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