WEBCommentary Contributor

Author: Michael J. Gaynor
Date:  November 22, 2009

Topic category:  Government/Politics

Sarah Palin: America's Solution/Andrew Breitbart: Bluffer?


It sure seems that unless Doug Giles was wrong and Ms. Giles and O'Keefe understated the cost of their project, Allahpundit is right and Breitbart's out of "Pimp and Pro" "bullets."

Sarah Palin

The November 23, 2009 issue of Newsweek includes an article title and a subtitle as well as a photograph of Sarah Palin, in jogging out fit, beside an American flag. Obviously the cover is designed to send the message that she's sexy, but not suitable to be the President of the United States.

Title: "HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE SARAH?"

Subtitle: "SHE'S BAD NEWS FOR THE GOP--AND FOR EVERYBODY ELSE, TOO."

Photo taken for Runner's World, June 2009.

Will a photo of President Obama in his bathing suit on a Hawaiian beach grace the next Newsweek cover?

Of course not.

Those who think that Newsweek is out to help the GOP must watch NBC/MSNBC tv.

Of course, Newsweek is NOT trying to help the Republican Party.

Newsweek plagiarized the title from a 1959 song.

The heroine of that song was GOOD NEWS!

Wikipedia:

"'Maria', sometimes known as 'How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?' is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The Sound of Music.

"This song is sung by the nuns at Nonnberg Abbey, who are exasperated with Maria for being too frivolous and frolicsome for the decorous and austere life at the Abbey.

"This song gave its title to Andrew Lloyd Webber's reality TV series How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?, in which TV viewers voted for a contestant to play the lead role of Maria von Trapp in his London revival of The Sound of Music....

"When Oscar Hammerstein II wrote the lyric for this song, he followed the lead from a line in the dialogue that Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse wrote in their script, describing Maria's flighty ways in the Abbey. In particular, he was taken by the detail of her wearing curlers in her hair under her wimple. Hammerstein asked if he could incorporate their dialogue into the song, and they allowed him to do so because 'if you tell a story in a song, it's so much better.' When writing the lyric, Hammerstein knew he needed adjectives for the nuns to describe Maria. He has confessed that his vocabulary was never big, but the simple adjectives he uses to describe Maria's character proved a success."

Bulletin for Newsweek: Maria was a great success.

Wikipedia on Maria von Trapp:

"Maria Augusta Kutschera....entered Nonnberg Abbey, a Benedictine (Roman Catholic) monastery in Salzburg, intending to become a nun. While still a candidate for the novitiate, she was asked to teach one of the seven children of widowed naval commander Georg Ludwig von Trapp and his first wife, Agathe Whitehead von Trapp, who had died....

"Maria and Georg were married on 26 November 1927.

"Trapp lost his fortune in 1935.... Austria had been experiencing economic pressure as a result of German pressure and other factors.

"....the family began turning its love of music into a career. After performing at a festival in 1935, they became a popular touring act. Shortly after the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938, the family moved to Italy and then to the United States....

"Initially calling themselves the 'Trapp Family Choir', the von Trapps began to perform in the United States and Canada. They got attention when they performed in New York City at The Town Hall on December 10, 1938. The New York Times wrote: 'There was something unusually lovable and appealing about the modest, serious singers of this little family aggregation as they formed a close semicircle about their self-effacing director for their initial offering, the handsome Mme. von Trapp in simple black, and the youthful sisters garbed in black and white Austrian folk costumes enlivened with red ribbons. It was only natural to expect work of exceeding refinement from them, and one was not disappointed in this.'

"After an unsuccessful engagement with Charles Wagner, they signed on with Frederick C. Schang. He thought the name Trapp Family Choir was too churchy and otherwise 'Americanized' their repertoire and at his suggestion, the group changed its name to the 'Trapp Family Singers'. The family, which by then included ten children, became famous in a new context and was soon touring the world."

Note that Maria overcame economic hardship and Nazi persecution to become an American success story.

Sarah Palin's been vilified and economically harassed by the Far Left since she was chose by Senator John McCain to be his vice presidential running mate.

Neither Maria nor Sarah was to blame.

Their evil persecutors had no shame.

To their persecutors, neither lady succumbed.

More reason for their persecutors to feel bummed.

WARNING TO THE FAR LEFT:

Maria adjusted and then became an even bigger success.

Sarah's repositioned and reloaded, creating Far Left stress.

Judging Sarah by her enemies, she's truly a sensation.

She may be exactly what's needed to save the American nation.

Andrew Breitbart

Breitbart on "Hannity":

"There’s a lot of hypocrisy and the dust has settled for ACORN and at the end of the day they’ve recognized that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, has not initiated an investigation into ACORN after we now have seven tapes. There were five initially that came out, ACORN was defunded by the Senate, was defunded by the House, lost its link to the Census; while all that damage occurred, Congress didn’t come in to investigate them, obviously not the Attorney General’s office, and they’ve now realized let’s get back into business because they realized that the dust settled and they were not being investigated, it was Hannah, James, and me who were being investigated, that’s why we’ve been forced to offer this latest tape."

"Oh my goodness there are! Not only are there more tapes, it’s not just ACORN. And this message is to Attorney General Holder: I want you to know that we have more tapes, it’s not just ACORN, and we’re going to hold out until the next election cycle, or else if you want to do a clean investigation, we will give you the rest of what we have, we will comply with you, we will give you the documentation we have from countless ACORN whistleblowers who want to come forward but are fearful of this organization and the retribution that they fear that this is a dangerous organization. So if you get into an investigation, we will give you the tapes; if you don’t give us the tapes, we will revisit these tapes come election time."

DOES Breitbart have more ACORN videos starring Ms. Giles and O'Keefe?

Allahpundit, at HotAir.com, in "Breitbart to Eric Holder: Investigate ACORN or we’ll release more tapes — before the election" (November 20, 2009): "Hardball, Breitbart style; skip ahead to 4:30 of the clip if you can’t wait. It’s not even his demand that’s the most interesting part. It’s his assertion that 'Not only are there more tapes, it’s not just ACORN.' Whatever can that mean? Did they pull this scam on other lefty outfits? Or does he mean that other lefties, perhaps politicians, were implicated in their dealings with ACORN? Or … is it all a bluff? I say: Bluff. (But a crafty one!)

Maybe not crafty.

News Hounds, "Andrew Breitbart Trying To Blackmail The Obama Administration With ACORN And Other Videos," by "Ellen" (November 20, 2009): "You’d think that if Breitbart really had something big on ACORN, he would have released it a few months ago, when he had maximum media attention, rather than withhold it until he could use it as ammunition against a personal foe. Or you’d think he’d at least have the good sense not to broadcast his self-serving machinations. Judging from the very edited video Breitbart presented last night, one suspects that the real reason it was withheld was because it did little to effectively incriminate ACORN. Breitbart, on the other hand, incriminated himself even worse. Near the end of the segment, he told Hannity that he had more videos and 'not just ACORN' that he threatened to release during the 2010 election cycle unless the Department of Justice opened a federal investigation into ACORN. With video."

The ACORN "star" of the last video (Lavelle Stewart) first described what ACORN did and then said "what I can do for you on a personal level having nothing to do with ACORN...." But for that, the last tape would have been much more impactful.

It's hard to believe that there are more "Pimp and Pro" tapes AND what Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe and Ms. Giles' father, Doug Giles, publicly stated about the "Pimp and Pro" sting on ACORN.

The sting included both the east and west coasts and reportedly cost only $1,300. (Right after the sting broke, it was announced that an accounting of the $1,300 would be posted at BigGovernment.com, receipts included, but that has not happened.)

In addition, the sting reportedly was conducted starting on July 24, 2009 and ending in late August 2009. Doug Giles, in "No, It Wasn’t My Idea for Hannah Giles to Dress Like a Hooker and Infiltrate ACORN" (September 19, 2009 ): "The truth of the matter, from a timeline standpoint, is that they hatched their plan in May of ’09, fine-tuned it from May 20th – July 23rd, and then launched July 24th, fully accomplishing their mission by the end of August. And that’s a fact to all those for whom facts still matter."

Doug Giles also said elsewhere that the dynamic duo visited eight ACORN offices and that there were technical problems at one site, so there would be no video as to that office.

Videos of visits to eight ACORN offices have been released (counting two Los Angeles offices separately). Thus, Allahpundit's conclusion that Breitbart was bluffing is credible, unless others conducted an ACORN sting or stings that Breitbart has been holding in reserve. But, as "Ellen" pointed out, not using your best ammunition when going to war with ACORN and receiving the most public atttention seems foolish, and Breitbart claimed that the last video was released because investigations of himself and the ACORN videos stars "forced" them to release the last tape.

It sure seems that unless Doug Giles was wrong and Ms. Giles and O'Keefe understated the cost of their project, Allahpundit is right and Breitbart's out of "Pimp and Pro" "bullets."

Michael J. Gaynor


Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.


Copyright © 2009 by Michael J. Gaynor
All Rights Reserved.


© 2004-2009 by WEBCommentary(tm), All Rights Reserved