Greg Gutfeld: “Seriously, that even made me feel bad for Lerner”
Bob Beckel adds, “…that’s an insult to Andrew Breitbart’s history.”
Our reader poll turned up strong support for Jason Mattera confronting Lois Lerner in her neighborhood, including following her to a neighbor’s door.
Based on the comments to that post, I think the general reasoning in favor was that Lerner deserves to have to answer questions, they do it to us (60 Minutes ambush interviews anyone? SEIU?), and we lose when we don’t fight back and hold them to their own standards.
The general reasoning against was that we are not like the other side, we need to be better, and it was creepy to follow her onto a neighbors’ lawn and to the front door. Asking her questions on the street might be one thing, but running after her is too much.
But Greg Gutfeld on The Fives was not impressed with Mattera’s performance, viewing it as counterproductive. Bob Beckel went further (surprise!) and challenged Mattera to a fight.
Conservative author Jason Mattera’s ambush of former IRS official Lois Lerner has earned plaudits from certain conservative circles, but it was too much for the gang on Fox News Channel’s “The Five.”
Co-host Greg Gutfeld said Wednesday that the video — in which Mattera chased Lerner around a suburban Washington, D.C. neighborhood as she walked her dogs — pulled off the impossible.
“Seriously, that even made me feel bad for Lerner, and I can’t stand her,” Gutfeld said….
In fact, Beckel was so incensed that he’s apparently willing to throw down with Mattera.
“You’re twice as young as I am,” Beckel said in an on-air message directed at Mattera. “You’re a punk. You’re a coward. And my name is Bob Beckel. I would like you to call you any time, any place, and let’s let you and I discuss it ’cause you’re a coward, you’re a punk, you pick on people and you deserve to have your ass kicked. And I wanna do it, so get in touch with me.”
“And bring a knife, punk,” Beckel added later.
Mattera’s response? (via Mediaite):
Mattera told Mediaite he’s willing to confront Beckel, but not really for a fight. Mattera would rather get some publicity.
“Bob Beckel issued a challenge on television to meet me anytime, anyplace,” Mattera said in an email. “I’m naming the place: How about [tomorrow] on The Five? What time would you like me to appear, Bob? I look forward to our national debate on effective journalism.”
Any of this change your mind?
Didn’t think so.
John Nolte at Breitbart.com says Mattera and James O’Keefe are doing the job the MSM won’t. But isn’t there a difference between an undercover video sting (O’Keefe) and chasing after someone walking her dogs?
Bonus Question: In the video from The Five, Beckel claims this was “an insult to Andrew Breitbart’s history.”
True?
I’d have to check every video ever made of Breitbart, but what I remember is Breitbart confronting people on the street and public places, or when those people invaded his space. Give me links in the comments if I’m wrong.
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Comments
And we care about what Gutfield and Beckel think why?
Gutfield is a little guy who wouldn’t have the nerve to ask a difficult question face to face, even with a woman. And Beckel is a dirty joke.
I would love for you to back-up your comments about Greg Gutfeld.
There’s no need to back anything up. Greg IS short. He’s about 5’5
You make an assumption that maybe you shouldn’t!
Huh? Assumption. Naah. I saw it on the internets. 5’5″ (65 inches or about 165 cm for Jimmy Carter)
Google him. It says he’s 5’5, since apparently you’ve only seen him on “The Five,” sitting down.
His humor is very much that of a fairly hostile “little man” who uses “humor” to insult people without getting his butt kicked. Because he’s only “joking.”
Not saying he’s not funny, and fairly likeable, but you have to take his opinion for what it’s worth. Nothing.
I’ll say it again. While I find it interesting that you and others think the request to back up your statements apply to someone’s height. I find it completely ridiculous! No body’s height, weight, color of skin, sex or race have any relevance to their value. You took the opportunity to insult little people, guys, and women with your comments. You even managed to insult “Dirty Jokes” by equating them to Bob Beckel.
You still didn’t back-up any of your comments, excluding height, with any facts just more insulting derogatory commentary that only makes you look petty and weak and not Greg Gutfeld.
Others, including me might think that without providing some facts for your insulting commentary, your opinions are worth even less than Greg Gutfeld’s.
I agree with Greg.
The eternity on the neighbor’s doorstep ruined it.
Belaboring can Beboring.
Lerner should be in jail….failing that, she should be hanging from a lamppost. She’s lucky to live in a time where we’ve been emasculating our men for the past 30 years.
It’s not emasculation per se. It’s civilization, and it requires some compromises. Albeit compromises which have been exploited, corrupted, perverted, and progressive. Also, the far right, or anarchy, serves the interests of the far left (i.e. authoritarian). The right does not engage in anarchy. The right is a revolutionary force.
You correct in that we don’t literally castrate them. But since “emasculation” is also defined as “depriving of strength, weakening”, I stand by my comment.
Emasculated is right, i.e. Boehner, if he had a pair, would have Lerner in the Capitol jail.
Sorry, people, I fail to see ANYTHING illegal, immoral, or fattening in this.
Good grief, people have been accosted on the street or sidewalk since the notebook and pencil were invented. Watch an old movie, for crying out loud.
Figured the clownselor would take the other side, you bonehead.
Here’s a link: http://www.somebullshitfromdailybeast.com Refute that!
Um… uh… BUSH!
(Still filling in for Gus. Burned his hand in the fry grease and he’s bummed because it’s also his fiancee. Man, trolling is pretty easy).
I’m confused.
Would the fry grease be his fiance, or is his fiance his hand?
I mean, I can see either…but it is a bit ambiguous…
Post-modern relationships are…difficult.
Seeking clarity from Gus has proved difficult.
In a minor government cubical or urban basement, a head softly explodes…
Scatological art ensues.
Remember the old “60 Minutes” playbook? Usually they lied and got people to be interviewed on false pretexts and blindsided them with sudden charges and accusers. But when they couldn’t arrange that, they would chase people down in public.
They caught up with one guy outside his church and belabored him.
Where was that fat stupid dry drunk Beckel then? Applauding, because they never put Democrats on the spot.
the only people i had sympathy for were the neighbors she tried to get shelter from.
A lot of the public has lost their patience with whining liberals who like to dish it out, but can’t take it. She should be in jail, not walking the streets. I have NO sympathy for Lois Lerner.
Agreed. But the problem is that the left will not stop doing what they are doing until it is turned on them. If we say “we are better than that”, then we are agreeing to let the liberals get away with anything they think works.
It seems whenever the discourse and civility are lowered, it is due to the so called liberals becoming even more underhanded. If you wonder why Supreme Court confirmations are so difficult, see Bork, Robert and Thomas, Clarence.
Breitbart and and now O’Keefe simply turned the left’s techniques back onto them. The liberals really, really hate that.
So does that mean Beckel is willing to throw down with all the idiot progressives who continue to confront and hound members of the past administration?
I’d wager Beckel never had any problem with Mike Wallace doing the same damn thing.
We have all seen instances of harassment by the press, and nobody likes it. But once in a while, somebody freaking asks for it. Lois Lerner abused her office by harassing people and making excessive and intrusive demands for information. Further, she abused her office by transmitting taxpayers confidential information to others, in violation of the privacy rights of taxpayers and people who contribute to organizations she chose to harass.
After all that, she chose to make a statement of her innocence, and THEN attempt to take the 5th, upon being asked questions about how she performed her job function in public office.
If anybody deserves to have someone follow her and ask questions, it is she.
The “harassment” in the video lasted a few minutes. For those attacked by the IRS the harassment, in many cases, lasted years. Sorry, this doesn’t compare.
Our different takes are interesting.
I have no problem with Lerner being harassed. She’s a loathsome figure. Truly despicable. There’s no government official I’d rather see head off to prison.
That being said, like Greg said, this video is for red-meat devouring carnivores only.
There is no back and forth. We get it. She won’t respond.
To people who think this video “works,” why not make it another 30 minutes longer? 30 minutes more annoyance. Someone needed to yell, “And …. cut” much, much sooner.
Good idea. Bad product. Brevity. Brevity. Brevity.
What is it with conservatives’ comparative incompetence with various media?
Oh, he absolutely over-does it. Once she is running to her neighbor’s house to avoid the questions, the point is made.
But if even her own dog wouldn’t defend her against an attacking stranger, it’s hard to be sympathetic.
It’s the parsing of you and your ilk that have gotten us to the present chaos in, everything.
Dims don’t parse. Conservatives are their enemy. Anything is justified to reach their goal, nothing is sacred, morality, patriotism, honesty, logic, ethics, manners, honor, courage, America, etc.etc….
Empathy for the enemy is self-defeating.
The dims, rinos, ISIS, Ebola, Endovirus 68 understand this.
You and your ilk, don’t.
she abused the power of her position and won’t be held responsible by this “crashed hard drives? OK” regime. She’s living on a fat pension supplemented with the same taxpayer money she abused. She needs to be hounded to the end.
Hell, she disgusts me so much, I’d hound her past “the end”.
>To people who think this video “works,” why not make it another 30 minutes longer? <
yes 30 more minutes of the people harassed by lois lerner and how much time and money that was stolen from them by lois lerner.
Regarding his comment “…that’s an insult to Andrew Breitbart’s history.” Beckel has absolutely no standing to invoke Andrew’s name, beliefs, or actions.
If Bob Beckel goes into a knife fight with Jason Mattera they’re going to have to weave him back together just to take corpse ID fingerprints.
Gutfield. What is wrong with you? Lerner is a criminal. Do you feel bad for the criminals who are now in prison too? Explain yourself in detail, please. And as for Beckel, he’s just a big mouth who threatens but does nothing.
Democrats do this to conservatives all the time, to elected officials, appointed officials, and private citizens. But most of the time they are just hammering them on things they disagree with. In this case, this person refused to testify in front of congress on an illegal matter. I will not feel sorry for her, the main stream media should have already hammered her. Of course, the main stream media should have already put to bed the gender pay gap and the college rape epidemic, along with many other things, so no help there.
“…we lose when we don’t fight back and hold them to their own standards.”
A large part of criticism of lefties is their low–and non-existen–standards. Adopting their standards isn’t a good thing.
JohnPomeroy
While I find it interesting that you assume my issue is with Greg Gutfeld’s height. The bigger issue is, is it okay to call someone a coward and weaker than “woman” without backing it up? Maybe it’s just me.
To repeat, if your enemy is willing to do anything to win and you are not, you lose. F**k the moral implications. Of COURSE one prefers to remain civil, but that takes two, and in current politics, our opposition is disturbingly willing to do anything. Their leader, our president, has zero problem looking the country right in the eye and lying. Repeatedly.
So, if your enemy is willing to do anything to win and you are not, you lose. You can keep the moral high ground in a forever losing battle or, against your better angels, you can fight fire with fire until you win.
Sometimes even the preacher has to pick up a weapon.
Absolutely.
The only interview I’d like to see is the one where Lerner has to come out of her cell to the prisons visitor area. Who gives a cr@p if she was inconvenienced in any way while living on our money.
Re the 30-minute-longer comment: well, no, the video wouldn’t have worked if it had gone on 30 minutes longer. It went on just long enough for us to see Lerner hounding her convalescent neighbor instead of simply turning around and going home.
The GOP needs a tough, canny Rhett Butler to get it through these disastrous times. Instead, it is overrun with Ashley Wilkses, pining for a lost era when their gentlemanly virtues would have been admired by all and their easy, insulated life would have gone on without disturbance.
Have you noticed how the left barges ahead outrageously and relentlessly, ignoring criticism, and achieves its aims while the right dithers and falls back and turns on itself whenever it detects criticism from anyone anywhere?
I’m cheering the Matteras and O’Keefes, however awkward they may be; the Old Guard that is too fastidious or afraid to shoot back is no good to our country at all.
Unfortunately, this split within the GOP will probably continue to lose elections.
Huge missed opportunity.
He has her cornered in the ring and he just keeps throwing the same boring jab, repeatedly.
An endless loop of the same telegraphed punch.
In the preparation for this video, he couldn’t think of some funny uppercuts?
Some funny hooks?
Some funny overhand rights?
Bereft of any good jokes, how about a bag full of props? Even the pathetic comedian Carrot Top could elicit a few giggles with a bag of erased hard drives I imagine.
I’d like nothing more than to see her splayed on the canvas.
But I felt like I was the dope who’d been roped into thinking something good was coming in this video. In the end, I couldn’t wait for the bell.
Squandered opportunity.
In this journalistic Jetsons age, so many conservatives seem to favor the Flinstones’ Joe Rockhead–RNC consultant’s Bam!-Bam! approach to media. I give up.
LukeHandCool (who goes weak at the knees upon seeing Betty Rubble. What a babe.)
Two words about your lame “missed opportunity”
Ebola.
Endovirus 68.
Take your missed opportunity and put it where the sun don’t shine.
The parents of the children that have been murdered by the policies of a treasonous American government, deserve more than your sympathy for their perpetrators.
I have no idea what Ebola and Endovirus 68 have to do with what I said.
I just hope whatever you’ve got isn’t catchy.
F^^k Lerner. She deserves harassment until she is in jail. I like Gutfeld, and he is a very short guy (he has said so), but he is wrong on this one…
Beckel? Fat Ass Beckel? He should not be challenging anyone to a fight. One needs to be able to move a bit to put up a fight.
To me, the proper comparison is an ACORN inspired mob showing up on a banking executive’s lawn chanting demands while the family cowers inside. Mattera was impolitic but never threatening.
And I can like Greg Gutfield even when I disagree with him.
“The general reasoning against was that we are not like the other side, we need to be better,”
Taking the high road, being better than them, isn’t working. It hasn’t worked for at least 10 years, maybe longer. So time to try something different. Or we can keep “being better than them” as they herd us into re-education camps.
Making her avoid answering questions while walking her dog is fine, and makes great video. If she no longer feels comfortable about leaving her home, because some reporter may be on the sidewalk, too bad. She abused her authority at the IRS and at the FCC. The sidewalk is public space. If she has to hire a dog-walker and huddle inside her house, I have no sympathy.
However, following her onto private property is another matter. The reporter should stay on the sidewalk. It’s enough.
Shame on you Gutfield. Didn’t think much of you before, now I think even less. Big mouth, little man.
When our values are the same maybe we should agree to disagree on tactics!
The democrats have succeeded in turning us against each other even when we agree!
If anyone’s still interested in this thread, Jason Mattera was also body-slammed by one of Harry Reid’s bodyguards after asking how Reid amassed such a fortune working in the government.
I’ll concede going after Lerner like he did may have been low (not agreeing, just conceding the possibility), but at least he’s willing to ask the tough questions other reporters refuse (or are too intimidated) to ask.
Archer, that one in the Senate building looks like Mattera was slammed into a wall for merely asking questions in a place where asking questions is okay. It wasn’t private property. Reporters should continue doing that kind of thing.
Right. I had never heard of Jason Mattera before he accosted Lerner in her neighborhood, but the linked WND article shows that the Lerner thing may not be representative of the body of his work.
If most of it is like the Reid incident, then the Lerner incident may be a black mark on an otherwise decent record – though it could easily be the other way around. Having the courage to ask the tough questions is a rarity among reporters these days, and regardless of how you might feel about the Lerner incident, Mattera demonstrates in both these cases he’s willing to do it, sometimes even at personal risk. That’s something worth pointing out, I think.
Honestly I’d like to see Lerner, Reid, Holder, the head of the EPA, Hillary, Jarrett, and Obama all handcuffed to chairs and “interviewed” for a couple of hours by SF members…. think we could get a statement out of them that way?
Mattera was wrong because he had no business being on that couple’s property and no business putting their words or his face on camera while they were at home and protecting their property. It was wrong. Flat out wrong.
Buy a clue: It has absolutely nothing to do with Lerner and everything to do with the rightful holder of the property.
His treatment by Reid’s goon was outrageous.
Lois has ruined a lot of people, and I say that she knew what she was doing. She could have defended herself. These were simple questions. I would only feel sorry for her if she was mentally handicapped. Maybe that is what her sympathizers are saying.
Cool aide drinker Beckle isn’t fit to shine Breitbarts shoes.
He should shut his pie hole about real Americans.
So sad about Gutfield. He’s been a beacon of lite and humor in the media darkness. Success is spinning on him if he is heartfelt in his “seriously”.
She and her ilk should all be enjoying the fall pastels in prison for treason.
I usually cringe at Jason Mattera’s tactics, mostly because he uses false pretenses to approach someone, pretending to be a fan, or sympathetic to their cause, before blasting them. But, oddly enough, merely being a relentless, tough interviewer to this loathsome scumbag criminal doesn’t make me cringe, at all.
To all those who suggest he shouldn’t have chased her up to the neighbors’ door, I couldn’t disagree more. If he hadn’t done that, we never would have seen just how little her neighbors think of her. To have the neighbor woman refuse to let her inside, and the old guy say he didn’t want her in his house, was priceless footage that never would have happened if Mattera hadn’t been persistent. A win for the good guys, with credit to Mattera. No amount of humiliation would make me feel sympathetic to that evil witch.