The ugly echo chamber of Hannity and Breitbart is why women wait so long to report abuse

“All I know is that I can’t sit back and let this continue, let him continue without the mask being removed.”

.. Their reward for this public-spirited bravery?

To be smeared as liars.

To be the objects of vicious criticism about their private lives — their marriages, divorces, and bankruptcies.

.. This incident happened almost 40 years ago, goes the outraged refrain. Why are these women only coming forward now?

.. “She did not go to them — they called her,” Corfman’s mother, Nancy Wells, told Breitbart.
.. We were meant to recoil in horror, I guess, at how Post journalists committed treasonous acts of journalism. Yes, they persuaded their sources to go on the record, sometimes by making the case that there is a greater good to be served.
“Neither Corfman nor any of the other women sought out The Post. While reporting a story in Alabama about supporters of Moore’s Senate campaign, a Post reporter heard that Moore allegedly had sought relationships with teenage girls. Over the ensuing three weeks, two Post reporters contacted and interviewed the four women. All were initially reluctant to speak publicly but chose to do so after multiple interviews, saying they thought it was important for people to know about their interactions with Moore. The women say they don’t know one another.”
.. Fox News’s Sean Hannity brought the network’s legal analyst, Mercedes Colwin, on his show to blast women who accuse powerful men, saying that they mostly do it for the money.
.. Then, bringing the trashing full circle, Breitbart offered the Sinclair-owned station a megaphone with this headline: “Alabama ABC Affiliate Can’t Find One Voter Who Believes WaPo Report about Roy Moore in Man-on-the-Street Segment.” (Speaking of journalism basics, it’s almost always pointless to stick a microphone in front of random people who often have only heard the general outlines of a developing story.)
.. Of course, it’s not The Post’s credibility that’s really under attack here. It’s that of the women themselves, who had the courage to be named, quoted and shown in photographs.

Laura Ingraham Is Ready to Rev Up Fox News

Ms. Ingraham honed her craft in college at The Dartmouth Review, the undergraduate right-wing journal that earned national recognition (and some revulsion) for stunts that, in hindsight, presaged the antics of Breitbart reporters.

.. “All the way back to Dartmouth, I was part of the insurgency,” she said.

In an era before mainstream acceptance of homosexuality, Ms. Ingraham assigned a reporter to attend a meeting of the campus gay students’ alliance and published a transcript of the proceedings, naming names. Years later, she apologized, citing in part the experience of her gay brother and his partner, who had AIDS.

.. “Laura represents her own unique brand,” said Christopher Ruddy, who runs Newsmax, a Fox News competitor. “She comes out of the milieu of talk radio, where the economics of that business have driven a lot of hosts who were moderately conservative to be a little edgier.”

.. She had been encouraged to back Mr. Brat by a producer, Julia Hahn, who went on to write for Breitbart and now works in the White House.

.. Asked if she is bringing a Breitbart viewership to Fox News, Ms. Ingraham responded: “I wouldn’t call it a Breitbart audience. I would call it America.”

“I like Tom Wolfe’s description of the country,” she continued. “There’s America. The coasts are like the parentheses. In between is the country.”

Bill Mitchell Breaks the Internet

The once obscure online radio host now leads Trump’s army of Twitter pundits.

.. Donald Trump’s unconventional candidacy has dragged together a ragtag band of boosters, a new celebrity subclass born out of online obscurity. Bill Mitchell, online radio upstart and Trump’s unofficial Twitter mascot, is its king.
.. And despite an appearance of self-parody, he is genuinely devoted to Donald Trump’s candidacy.
.. His Twitter following ballooned from 124 (per his recollection) to over 96,000. In February, MIT Media Lab ranked him the top ordinary citizen influencing the election—number 26, after politicians and media networks.
.. attracted the attention of conservative talk radio hosts, who began booking him as a frequent guest.
.. Mitchell’s decades working as an executive recruiter honed his communication skills, he told me. And being a bachelor left him enough time to obsess over his favorite news sites, Breitbart and the blog of Gateway Pundit
.. His mother was a public-speaking professor, and he loved musical theatre as a child.
.. Would he consider a career with Trump TV? “If they ask me!” he says
.. Trump surrogates—ones Mitchell swore I would recognize but declined to name—call him for one-liners before their television appearances. They’ll use his “zingers,” and he gets no credit, happy just to do his part.
.. Trump detractors who find Mitchell ridiculous fail to comprehend his rhetorical style. “They don’t understand that I quite often speak in symbolism,” he explained.

.. Mitchell’s detractors in the Clinton campaign are mainly robots, he claims. If they’re stormtroopers, Mitchell analogizes, “[Trump is] like Han Solo. Han Solo started out a smuggler, ended up being galactic hero, you know.”