Breitbart Rule 10: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon

It is rare to see someone on the right agree with Alinsky, but in studying him and also Rule For Radicals, it is clear that Andrew Breitbart had found a way to use Alinsky’s rules to OUR advantage. Hence Rule 10 in his Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries:

10.) Ridicule is man's most potent weapon: Here, Alinsky and I agree. It's the truest of Alinsky's statements, and it's the most effective. Tina Fey, not the MSM, sullied Sarah Palin's image. Chevy Chase brought down Gerald Ford. Jon Stewart brought down Bush.

And we'll bring down Obama, but not unless we're willing to get unserious. Stuffy old white guys wearing bow ties and talking about the danger of national deficits don't get much done - talented people who can translate political chaos into merry pranksterism do.

We have seen the Left roll out a few people to impersonate our presidents or even political heroes. Case in point is Tina Fey with the legendary Saturday Night Live skit where she impersonated Sarah Palin with the ever popular saying “I can see Russia from my House” which many low-information voters think that those words actually came from Sarah Palin’s mouth.

 

That video goes to show that the Left has the keys to pull out the merry pranksterism on America and get away with it. That is one of the ways they won in 2008 and again in 2012. We have to turn the tables and take the merry pranksterism away from them. I had seen a couple of ways that we could do it. One main person who can do such is Reggie Brown who does a WONDERFUL impersonation of Barack Obama.

Another way is what the WWE had done to promote Capitol Punishment, their Pay Per View which was held in Washington DC in June 2011. They had spliced some clips of Obama’s press conferences with questions pertaining to their Pay Per View.

We can do the same in our own way, but the key is to not just talk about it but actually DO it. Instead of being a stuffed shirt spouting off numbers and pretending like we know what we are talking about, we need to let our hair down and just have some fun doing what we do best.

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Rundown for May 11, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they bring the week in news. The House Oversight Committee had hearings on the Benghazi attack of September 11, 2012, and they will review the hearings. Also, the White House talking points on Benghazi were scrubbed 12 times. Why did the White House do that? What are they hiding? All that and more including your calls and Schmuck of the Week..

Come and join us for Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom (which can be accessed at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live) 30 minutes before the show for show prep and also for a meet and greet. If you want to engage the conversation during the show there are three ways to do it:

• Call 832-699-0449
• Skype into OTNNetwork
• If you are on Twitter, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a Liberal. So much had happened this week, and you do not want to miss a single second as we attempt to condense seven days of news into two hours.

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Breitbart Rule 9: Don’t let them pretend to know more than they do

Just as we should not pretend to know more than we do, as I had discussed last week, we should not let the Left pretend to know more than they do. Hence Rule 9 in Andrew Breitbart’s Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries:

9.) Don't let them pretend to know more than they do: This is really the converse of the last rule. Your opponents will pretend to be experts if you don't, but that's okay, because you can always puncture their balloon with one word: why. Asking them to provide evidence for their assertions is always fun, and it's even more fun asking them to provide the sources for that evidence. Attacking the fundamental basis of their arguments if fun, too - if they tell you health care is a right, ask why. Liberals don't have a why, other than their own utopianism and their dyspeptic view of the status quo and America. Reason is not their strong suit - emotion is. Force them to play on the football field of reason.

As Andrew said, there is one word which we can use to puncture the false narrative propagated by the left, and even a few kooks on our own side. That word is why, a simple three-letter word with a lot of power and oomph behind it. If we ask why they think that, then they will have to come up with a reason. As we all know, reason is not their strong suit because they always rely on emotion. Granted, the kooks on our own side say their strong suit is reason, but in the conversations I have had with them, it seems like they do not have a reason except “Read the Constitution!” and “We need to get back to the Constitution!”

THIS is where doing research and knowing what we are talking about comes into play. The more research we do and the more we know, the better we can be at puncturing the false narrative that is out there. I know that in my own conversations at first I had not had a lot of good research on my side to puncture their balloon, but over the past year I had read and listed all of the sites and articles I had read. This way, if people say something that I know is false, I go right to a certain article and show them where they are in error.

This is also handy in the classic “He said, She said” cases as well. One thing I had been doing since 2006 is saving every conversation I have with people, whether in a chatroom or even on instant messenger. This way if they say something which they had been corrected on in the past I can go right to the file and say that this had been talked about before and that they were wrong then and are still wrong.

We have the tools to force our opponents to play on the football field of reason. The thing of it is do we have the WILLPOWER to confront them and force them to play on that football field of reason, or are we afraid to do it?

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Rundown for May 4, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they bring the week in news. This week they will discuss the White House Correspondence Dinner last Saturday as well as Ben Shapiro v. Piers Morgan Round Two. They will also go over the contrasts of George W. Bush and Barack Obama and speak on the latest battle over ObamaCare.The show’s editorial will feature the latest rule in Andrew Breitbart’s Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries. All that and more including your calls and the ever popular Schmuck of the Week.

Come join us for Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom (which can be accessed at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live) 30 minutes early for some final show prep and also for a meet and greet with whoever enters. If you want to engage the conversation on the air, there are three ways to do it.

• Call 832-699-0449
• Skype OTNNetwork
• If you are on Twitter but do not want to enter the chat., use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN. You can also join the Red, Right, and Blue Twub (Twitter Hub) at http://twubs.com/RedRightBlue

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a Liberal. This is one show you do not want to miss if you are a REAL AMERICAN!

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Breitbart Rule 8: Don't pretend to know more than you do

After giving us a few tips on owning the narrative, Andrew Breitbart also gave us a few tips on how to keep the narrative. Here is Rule 8 in his Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries.

8.) Don't pretend to know more than you do: This one trips up conservatives all the time. We want to argue policy because when we know policy, there's no way they can beat us, because all they have is their lexicon of name-calling and societal expulsion. We have reason on our side.

But just because we have reason on our side doesn't mean that everyone is quipped to be Charles Krauthammer or Michael Barone, policy wonks who can pull facts from the Office of Management and Budget out of every orifice. Most of us aren't experts on the latest budget package or stem-cell line regulation, but that doesn't mean we're powerless - it means we get to play Socrates, asking pointed questions rather than citing facts we may not be sure of.

One of the low points of my media life was getting a call after the nomination of John Roberts for the United States Supreme Court. A producer from CNN's now-cancelled Aaron Brown Show asked me to go on TV and discuss the wisdom of President Bush's choice. I remember taking a Civil Liberties course at Tulane in summer school. As I recall there was a case called Mapp v. Ohio. That was the extent of my then-qualifications to pontificate on such legal matters. I am not sure what demoralized me more: that I was asked to do so by a leading cable news network, or that I readily accepted. Had Wikipedia not been invented, I would have had nothing to say. But I did, and I survived. My takeaway from the revealing moment about the low standards for TV punditry was that if I valued my career, I would only accept media invites where I could dictate the terms of engagement (i.e., bring my own stories, my own perspectives, etc.) or where I could change the subject to war footing.

By avoiding talking about that which I do not know, perhaps I limit my ability to appear on more shows. But I definitely limit my ability to screw up.

Put another way: don't be the guy with a knife at a gunfight. It rarely ends well.

Now this is VERY important in the arena of social media as we look at Facebook, Twitter, and the various message boards and sites that we visit. There are many people out there who claim that they know it all and that their way is the best, but is it really? Now I will get more into that in next week’s editorial but one thing I will say about it is that we might not know everything, but we need to not pretend or give others the false impression that we do.

This is where research comes in. Many out there do not take the time to go into the research and actually back up what they talk about with facts or they do but get it all jumbled up. We need to do our research every time we find an idea or a narrative that people are putting out as false and then disprove it with what we had researched. Then and only then can we beat the progressives and the Alinskyites at their own game.

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Rundown for April 27, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they go through the news of the week. This week they will be talking about the Boston Bomber getting Mirandized, the vindication of Andrew Breitbart, as well as Rule 8 in Andrew’s Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries, and the return of Crossfire (this time with Stephanie Cutter on the left and Newt Gingrich on the right) on CNN. All that and much more including your calls and Schmuck of the Week.

Join us for Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom (which is located at http://www.ownthenarrrative.com/live) 30 minutes early for some last minute show prep as well as a meet and greet. If you want to engage the conversation during the show, there are three ways to do it:

• Call 832-699-0449
• Skype in to OTNNetwork
• If you are on Twitter but unable to be in the chatroom, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a Liberal. This is one show which is stacked full of information that you do not want to miss.

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Breitbart Rule 7: Engage in the social arena

One of the best things I like about Andrew Breitbart in the short time I had followed him on Twitter prior to his untimely death is how engaged he was on Twitter. And with that in mind, he made Twitter (and indeed Social Media as a whole) one of the key points and rules in his Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries.

7.) Engage in the social arena: My first instinct about Facebook was my first instinct about Twitter was my first instinct about MySpace. I was right about MySpace - it sucks. I was definitely wrong about Facebook and Twitter.

Using my "ubiquity" rule, the citizen journalist isn't always reporting in the ledes, headlines, and paragraphs form. Sometimes a tweet or a re-tweet can grant an idea more legs. Sometimes a status update can lead to the mother lode. Yes, there are slick advisers falsely promising a social networking Gold Rush, but well-socially-networked person can soon carry more weight than a household-name columnist at your local news daily.

Building a movement used to take time, but now it can be done in a few hours with with the right connections and the right posts on a few websites. Take, for example, flash mobs. These are gatherings spawned over the Internet on hours' notice, and they gather thousands of people, whether it's for snowball fights or for rioting in the streets of Philadelphia.

The Tea Parties have used the power of social media to get their message out there in a new and incredible way. There are no leaders to the Tea Party, which is a great thing, and there's no formal program to the Tea Party - it's truly a party of the people, and originally, it was based on conservative people partying. If any liberal attended a Tea Party event, they'd be shocked to see that it isn't a KKK rally; it's a social gathering of thousands of like-minded people of all races and ages, people looking for others who believe in the same values.

It's also particularly true in Hollywood, where socializing is the basis of business. That's why I've tried to put people in Hollywood together, and it's already spawning actual creative projects. Seek out other people and build an army.

If you think on it, this rule is a culmination of the three prior rules. After all, Andrew’s fourth rule was about not letting the Complex use their PC lexicon to characterize you and shape the narrative, which is what the Left has been known to do on Social Media. His fifth rule was about us controlling our own story and not letting the Complex do it, which is all about owning the narrative. And to wrap up the trifecta, his sixth rule was all about ubiquity being the key to keeping the narrative. Now, what is one way to do all of this? The best way I can think of is by using the power of Social Media to defeat the Left and own and keep the narrative.

On today’s show, I will be having a panel on this very topic. On it will be the following:

• John LaRosa – Partner of Four Tier Strategies, LLC ( http://www.fourtierstrategies.com/)
• Stephen Maloney - Admin of a few Marco Rubio groups, former Romney supporter, Social Media advocate
• Miryam Shabak - Admin of the Facebook Group Help GOP Master New Media 4 Victory
• Diane Sori - Purveyor of The Patriot Factor (http://thepatriotfactor.blogspot.com/)

If you want to engage the conversation, there are three ways you can do so:

• Call 832-699-0449
• Contact OTNNetwork on Skype
• If you are on Twitter, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and  #OTNN 

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Rundown for April 20, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Daniel Richardson (filling in as producer for Justin Kendall) as they present a very special show. Today they will delve into how Social Media and how conservatives can use it to bolster victory in 2014 and then in 2016. This will be a show panel, and the panelists include John LaRosa of FourTier Strategies, LLC, Diane Sori of The Patriot Factor who has had problems with Facebook, Stephen Maloney who is a Social Media advocate as well as the Administrator of a few Marco Rubio groups on Facebook, and Miryam Shabak who is the Admin of Help GOP Master New Media 4 Victory group on Facebook.

Join us for Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom (which is located at http://www.ownthenarrrative.com/live) 30 minutes early for some last minute show prep as well as a meet and greet. If you want to engage the conversation during the show, there are three ways to do it:

• Call 832-699-0449
• Skype in to OTNNetwork
• If you are on Twitter but unable to be in the chatroom, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Tell an Independent The battle for 2014 and 2016 is crucial, and it starts with who controls Social Media

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Breitbart Rule 6: Ubiquity is key

It is one thing to own the narrative. It is another to KEEP the narrative going. And for that you might need a little help. Hence, Rule 6 in Andrew Breitbart’s Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries.

6.) Ubiquity is key: As a capitalist and as a web publisher, pageviews are a desired commodity. But when playing for political or cultural keeps, impact matters most. And, when ABCNBCCBSCNNMSNBC and the dailies are working against you and ignoring you, ubiquity is a key weapon That means developing relationships with like-minded allies or even enemies and news junkies and allowing them to share in the good fortune of a good scoop.

While the crux of a story can be weaponized and launched on one of my websites, there are often peripheral angles that can be developed elsewhere with a separate but related media life of their own. For instance, the acorn story was unbelievably complex. A key component of exposing the scandal was a detailed analysis of ACORN's structure and its past scandals. I knew legal minds were needed to weigh in on these aspects. Patrick Frey, who runs the indispensable Patterico website, created a parallel line of attack, not just against ACORN, but against its myriad defenders, who lied and misdirected to try to kill the story. The ACORN story couldn't have been the success it was without others - talk radio and alternative news outlets that were invested in the story and could deliver scoops of their own. So I planted scoops with what business school types would call my "competitors," and I watched the story explode, my pageviews would go through the roof, and my brand flourish. Sometimes the best ideas are counterintuitive.

I love living in Los Angeles and not DC, because in DC there are too many fighting over too little ground for their own fifteen minutes. The scarcity mentality is strangling the growth of the conservative movement. From outside DC, I can see that ubiquity is about growing the pie for everyone, spreading the stories, the channels of distribution, the resources around so that the entire movement can benefit, because our chunk of the public square gets bigger and bigger each time we break something huge.

While we all have different viewpoints or perspectives as to what conservatism is, one thing to remember is that we are all in the same fight. That is what the Left does, and they succeed by coming together for a common purpose. The problem is that conservatives are so divided that it gives the Left a chance to gain the edge on the narrative. Note what Andrew had said: “developing relationships with like-minded allies or even enemies and news junkies and allowing them to share in the good fortune of a good scoop.” That means spread it around. If you find something newsworthy, it does not help to keep it to yourself. Rather, post it on your social media tools and get the word out there. In next week’s editorial I will go more into how to engage in social media as Andrew has it as his Rule 7, but developing relationships with like-minded people who are also news junkies can allow them to share in the fortune of a good scoop is key.

One of my good friends who likes to share in the fortune of a good story is Patricia Baber, who used to be my co-host on this very show. She is one who hunts down stories on relatively unknown sites and put them out on Twitter, then it gets picked up by her followers and spreads to others. I even do the same thing when I do my news aggregates on my rant blog. But on that I do not take all the credit for it but rather give credit to Robert Stacy McCain of The Other McCain who has a blog entry entitled "How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog.” In fact, Stacy has Rule 2 which he calls the “Full Metal Jacket Reach-Around" where he says:

Reciprocal linkage is the essential lubricant that makes the blogosphere purr with contentment. If somebody's throwing you traffic, you should either (a) give them a link-back update, or at a minimum (b) keep them in mind for future linkage. Because you don't want to end up on the wrong end of a kharmic unbalance in the 'sphere, where you're always taking and never giving.

The Other McCain has a whole plethora of articles and the like to link to on your own blogs and also on Social Media outlets. I know I usually do it, but the past couple weeks I had slacked off because of certain things away from the computer. However, I am making a concerted effort to go back to doing it. The key is, will you be ubiquitous or will you be a loner in this war?

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