In recent years, politics has largely been the way that news channels have defined themselves. Fox News’ brand is built on being a conservative attack machine; MSNBC’s become the home of wonky, enthusiastic liberalism; while Current TV is trying to market itself to a new generation of viewers as an aggressively progressive alternative to MSNBC and CNN worth seeking out affirmatively. If Huffington Post went progressive, it might be smart: it could snag those viewers that Current TV thinks is theirs, but in a model that acknowledges that those same young viewers are also the cord-cutters whose reluctance to pay for cable has an entire industry jittery. Politics could also be a wedge, a way to attract a certain core of viewers who are looking for something specific in their news coverage while HuffPo Streaming Network builds out its strength in other market areas.

But Huffington Post may not actually have to do that, at this point. Now that it’s done consolidating its channels with AOL, Huffington Post has a ton of disparate reader streams in place, reading about everything from the 2012 election cycle, to divorce, to celebrity crotch shots. HPSN can embed relevant programming on the relevant Huffington Post channels, pulling those readers seamlessly over to the programs that their reading habits suggest they’ll like, and hoping those reader/viewers will stick around for the next hour of programming as well. If they didn’t have to explicitly establish a political point of view, that could be a strength in terms of audience development. But it would be too bad from a progressive thinking point of view. If Current TV is going to be tied to the airwaves, it would be great to have progressives working on a new kind of cable news for an audience more dedicated the cords into their routers than the ones into their televisions.

SCARBOROUGH: That is the most shameful demagoguery that I have heard on the campaign trail yet this year. To tell senior citizens that the program that is going to bankrupt America unless we figure out a way to bend the cost curve, is going to be protected forever and can you believe that Barack Obama cut $500 billion from it? It’s just unspeakable…it is unspeakable, because this country is going bankrupt and Mitt Romney is trying to scare senior citizens — you know what? It’s what we called Mediscare in ’95 and ’96. It was pathetic when Bill Clinton did it it’s pathetic when Mitt Romney does it, it’s pathetic when he does it because of Medicare Advantage. Pathetic.

Watch it:

“And Mitt Romney’s on record as supporting Paul Ryan’s plan, which as far as I remember it, actually takes huge, makes huge savings/cuts to Medicare,” New York Magazine’s John Heilemann added. Indeed, the Ryan plan fundamentally transforms Medicare’s structure into a guaranteed contribution program, significantly reduces its growth rate, and actually maintains many of the savings included in the Affordable Care Act. Romney himself has introduced very similar reductions as part of his own Medicare proposal.

The question is how Current can distinguish itself from its competitors in substance as well as tone—and get viewers to connect the dot from the news they’re watching now on MSNBC or CNN to the different product that is Current. It’s one thing to say, as Uygur did, “If you turn to CNN to find out what’s going on in politics, you’re wasting your time,” or another to point out, as Gore did, that “MSNBC has some liberal-oriented shows in the evening, but they have put on the RNC chairman…They start the day with a conservative show,” and another to get them to switch to another product.

Good journalism and good signings help, of course. Gore touted the fact that the network’s won “won every award in journalism.” And certainly one way Current might distinguish itself from its competitors would be to invest heavily in investigative reporting and documentaries. MSNBC’s been expanding its anchored shows, particularly on weekends with the addition of Chris Hayes and now Melissa Harris-perry, and it’s probably true that Current has to fill out its prime-time lineup to keep up. But breaking stories, providing new reported context on major events, and elevating stories that are flying under the radar would be an even more dramatic break with the existing cable model than simply offering a competing brand of analysis. On MSNBC, Hayes has gotten credit from the tech community for doing a segment on the Stop Online Piracy Act: clearly, there are major communities that feel underserved, and could be up for grabs by a network willing to break out of the standard menu of cable news topics.

It would be particularly interesting to know what’s bringing viewers to Current, particularly since David Bohrman, the network’s president, told us that while the average age of viewers for news coverage on the other cable networks was in the 60s, the average age for Current is 47, and for election coverage, it dipped to 36. “If we can mine this, we’re going to have viewers and customers for many years to come,” Bohrman said. Which is true, but the network needs more of them.

When I asked about how Current intends to boost those numbers, Bohrman said that he didn’t want to reveal too much about the network’s marketing strategy. But he indicated that the rollout of Granholm’s show would be promoted by an advertising blitz similar to the one that launched Keith Olbermann’s show on Current. And he emphasized the importance of having a full primetime lineup of news programming to match the amount of information on other networks. Uygur also suggested that the way Olbermann’s ratings took off when his show took on a more progressive bent was proof of the power of persistence, and that the space he’d opened up already counted as a success: “it allowed all of us to be on television.”

But I’ll be very curious to see what else the network plans to do to fight for market share. Unlike a network like Starz, which is only in 19.5 million households, Current has 63 million subscriber households. It’s less an access problem than getting people to hit the right channel buttons. Mending fences with lynchpin talent like Keith Olbermann, who will be hosting upcoming election coverage for the network, will help. But so could questioning the model of the business Current is in.

When you left MSNBC, you talked about the limitations of the role the network seemed to want you to play. And your online show’s always seemed very liberating. How much freedom do you feel you have at Current to define your role and the tone of the show?

It appears that I have 100 percent freedom. There has been absolutely no restraint here whatsoever, God bless their hearts. No restraint stylistically. No restraint substantively. It’s been a blessing. It’s not a dig on MSNBC, they do what they do. You’ve got a system over there…the good hosts begin to stray from that and put their own stamp on that. Here we get to start fresh and create a whole different kind of show. I think people will look at and it say this isn’t a normal cable news show

What do you think Current’s learned from Keith Olbermann’s tenure? Has his experience made for a smoother transition for you? Taken together, how do you think you and Olbermann define Current’s brand?

They’ve created an outlet here on television that lets strong folks do strong programming. Nobody’s going to check Keith Olbermann. That reassured me that this was a place where I was going to get to create an independent program.

Did the fact that Current signed Olbermann make the network a more attractive destination for you?

Sure, yeah. That meant that they were making a significant investment in progressive programming and strong independent programming, and they were headed in the right direction.

You’ve talked about the importance of developing younger audiences. How do you plan to do that? Especially on a channel that may not be a regular part of younger viewers’ rotation?

I think we have a younger audience because we do things differently. It’s a much more conversational, relaxed, irreeverant show. It’s not stiff. The whole thing reeks of faith…I just read an article the other day where it says it turns out the younger generation is a little more skeptical. They’re looking for something genuine. So many of the other shows use the same, old, tired analysts. We’ve got different strong progressive analysts.

What do you think of moves like NBC’s hiring of Chelsea Clinton to do segments? Do younger viewers want to see themselves on screen? A certain kind of tone? A style of presenting content?

I’m always amused by how they try to fix real issues that they have by putting a facade on it. We hired a young person! We hired Chelsea Clinton! She’s a young person and she has a famous name! The problem is you don’t understand that you’re doing programming from 1955. So much of television is so fake. If you take a young person and insert it into a fake facade, it reinforces the idea that it’s a facade. You haven’t solved the problem at all…Meghan McCain, like her or dislike her, she has strong views, there’s value in her message. But you want to see someone who’s keeping it real. Wes Clark Jr. , we don’t have him as a co-host because he’s the son of the general. He ran in, what, 2004? It’s been a long time. We use him because that guy is passionate and the audience reacts to him. He reaches his audience at their gut level.

Do you think part of what younger audiences are looking for is programming that’s about dismantling the myth of journalistics objectivity?

I think that overall the media is sick and it doesn’t even know it. And the disease is neutrality. And it drives me crazy when they don’t know the difference between neutrality and objectivity. I think objectivity is a good thing to try for even if you don’t reach it. I think that’s a minor problem. A much bigger problem is neutrality: Steelers and Cowboys play, Steelers win 42-0, I’m not going to say the Cowobys won. I’m not going to say that. It’s not what happened. If you tell me they played equally well, you’ve done a horrible job of bringing people the news. And I think that’s the current state of the mainstream media. They keep calling it even when it ain’t even.

What are your plans to make the show new-media friendly? Will there be a blog? Episodes available as podcasts?

First of all, the Current show’s going to be very interactive. The last block of the show is dedicated to interaction with the audience. Sometimes it’ll be videos that will be sent in. We’ll constantly be doing polls and asking for feedback, [using] Facebook, Twitter. We’re going to try to gather the sense of the audience every night and have a real interaction with them in the last block of the show. Sometimes the anchors just read the tweets. If [random Tweeter] Bob is saying something, I’m actually going ot have a reaction to it. Sometimes it’s going to be, that’s a good idea. And sometime I’m going to say that’s crazy. We hope that it’s genuine as opposed to forced, which is what I often sense from the anchors who gets asked by their producers to read some Tweets. Last night I did a Reddit chat, and someone asked, ‘if you had to pick a Republican primary candidate, who would you pick?’ And I said ‘That’s a great question, I’ve never gotten that.’ We’re doing practice shows this week and we’ll be answering that question.

And what about getting the show up and online for viewers who don’t get Current as part of their cable package?

We’ve partly solved that through the synergy with the youngturks.com. We’re still doing an online show two hours a day. There’ll still be some crossover on the topics…we might get questions on the online show that we’ll answer on the Current show. [Current's representatives also say that clips of the show will go up within an hour of its air time for viewers who can't get the channel.]

How will your show use content generated by popular online news blogs? Will you be giving a voice to the blogosphere?

No one scours the internet for news and video more than the Young Turks. So we have all the progressive websites that we look at every single day, and we integrate that into the show more thoroughly than anyone else. It’s in our DNA. You get much direct and accurate information. I mean CNN, are you really getting news from them? They never give any context. Often times, it’s a waste of time. That’s why I think the blogs are so much better. ThinkProgress always has what a politician said, here are their previous quotes, here’s their record, and that’s great. That’s why we go to your guys.

And how about the roster of people you bring onto your show? Chris Hayes has done a really nice job putting together diverse panels for his MSNBC weekend show. Will you be doing the same? And what makes for a good guest?

I care so much more about diveristy of ideas and how smart and engaging a guest is. And I am positive, just becuase I’m a progressive in my core that you get the kind of diversity you’re looking for anyway [by doing that]. On the online show you’ve got a Turkish host, an Armenian co-host, our executive producer is African-American. Back in the day, we were kind of Muslim and kind of Jewish. All this happened becuase we were open-minded to who was the best candidates for those jobs.

More important than anything else is honesty. We don’t want talking points. I hate talking points. I want a genuine, interesting conversation. If I get a sense of someone saying something they’re supposed to say and they’re fake in any way, not interesting, there is some chance we’ll secretly ban them from the show.

Are you going to have a ban list?

[In a joking tone] We’re looking forward to creating one. It’ll be the oppositie of mainstream media bans. People don’t know this, but it happens. You get banned if you say something interesting. Here if you don’t say something interesting and dangerous, you get banned. I’d feel bad for the people we ditched.

You’ve pushed the Obama administration very hard from the left. Going into an election years, what are your political goals for the show? How much will you focus on activating your viewers, and in which directions?

I’m very clear on this. My one and only political goal now is campaign finance reform. I think money is the Rosetta Stone of politics. Find out what side the money is on and guaranteed that’s the side who will win. It’s not a Democrat or Republican thing. We had giant Democratic majorities in the House, we had a filibuster-proof Senate, we had a Democratic president, and they were scared of their own shadows. I think we are saying what a lot of people are thinking. It’s exprssed best by a woman I ran into at an airport. She’s not that deep into politics. She was really excited to vote for Obama, but she’s not going to vote in 2012, because after Obama, what’s left to hope? We gave them everything they ever needed, and they gave us 5 percent. If they were real progressives, they should have had a real conversation about single payer. I’m not sure where I would have come out on single payer. But we didn’t have a real conversation about the public option. And then they called it historic health care reform, and that’s one of the bills they did the best on.

As a culture writer, I have to ask: on your Young Turks bio page, you list your favorite movies as Braveheart and Dead Poet’s Society, and your favorite television shows as Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lost, Sopranos, Rescue Me, The Wire, and Deadwood. Do you see common threads running through these works?

I would like to retract Lost. The two themes are honesty. Look at The Wire. is there a more honest show on television? That’s life in Baltimore, and people love it becuase they’re like damn, that’s so true. Name a show that does that, I’m a big fan of. The second theme is live life to it’s fullest and be passionate. I’m very corny about that stuff. I don’t know if it’s my Mediterranean roots. But I’m a passionate guy. I want to do everything I do 100 percent.

What role do you think culture plays in shaping progressive narratives?

Absolutely. Ana Kasparian, she and I do a whole hour of pop culture, basically, and social news. So we’re going to bring that to some degree to Current. As we’ve been doing these practice shows, it’s no holds barred. There are interesting, wacky news stories—what I want to do is deliver some core message through those stories. In a story we did about Lindsay Lohan a year ago, she shows up late to an interview, everyoen’s super-upset with her, and she walks in, and everyone lights up and tells her how awesome she is. That’s an interesting core story about access, whether it’s celebrities or politicians. People need to kiss their ass to get that access, and it warps everything around them. It warps what you see on TV, and it warps the politicians and the celebrities.

“When I was on T.V. …nobody was asking you if you were gay or not. You know, nobody ever asked me in the entire run of my show if I was gay, because it wasn’t part of the social zeitgeist, it wasn’t part of pop culture,” O’Donnell observed. “But then, after I was on a few years, Will and Grace went on the air and that changed everything. And then Ellen came out. You know, it changed. So you have to think that in the 15 years so many things have changed and some parts of the country have not really caught up.” Watch it:

First, the Republican party, which “routinely gets 90 percent of its presidential votes from white America,” will come to an end, especially since crucial GOP states like Texas are “hispanicizing.” Second, the “millions of immigrants, legal and illegal” who “do not bring the academic or professional skills of European-Americans” will replace actual “taxpayers” and suck the government dry. Finally, test-scores will nose-dive because “more and more children taking those tests will be African-American and Hispanic”:

Third, the decline in academic test scores here at home and in international competition is likely to continue, as more and more of the children taking those tests will be African-American and Hispanic. [...] Can the test-score gap be closed? With the Hispanic illegitimacy rate at 51 percent and the black rate having risen to 71 percent, how can their children conceivably arrive at school ready to compete?

Given that minorities are bad at school, Buchanan goes on to warn that the “burden” of academic excellence thus “falls almost entirely on white males.” This is, of course, just the latest attempt of the MSNBC contributor to pass off derogatory, bigoted, and ignorant racialism as analysis. Some low-lights from Buchanan’s long and distinguished history in bigotry:

-Christian Terrorist Was ‘Right’: Buchanan wrote that while the right-wing Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik was a “calculating killer,” he “may be right” about “a climactic conflict between a once-Christian West and an Islamic world that is growing in numbers and advancing inexorably into Europe for the third time in 14 centuries.”

-No Help For White Males: In August, Buchanan complained that President Obama hadn’t hired enough white males to the civil service, saying there is “affirmative action for women, for Hispanics, and for blacks, but none for white males.”

-Too Many Jews: Last year, Buchanan argued that now-Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s nomination meant there would be too many Jews on the High Court bench. “Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats. Is this the Democrats’ idea of diversity?”

-Legal Immigration Is An Invasion: The Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 spurred Buchanan to declare that the shooter, Korean student Cho Seung-Hui, got into the country because legal immigration is “the greatest invasion in history.” We shouldn’t be surprised that “some are going berserk here,” he said.

-Slave Descendants Should Be Grateful: In 2008, asserting that “no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans,” Buchanan says because it was here that 600,000 slaves eventually learned of “Christian salvation” and got “affirmative action,” black people should stop complaining. “We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?”

-Hitler Was Courageous: In 1977, Buchanan wrote that while Hitler was “indeed a racist and anti-Semitic to the core,” Americans overlooked the fact that he “was also an individual of great courage, a soldier’s soldier in the Great War, a leader steeped in the history of Europe.”

-MLK Was A Fraud: In 1969, while Buchanan was working as President Richard Nixon’s speechwriter, he urged Nixon not to visit King’s widow on the first anniversary of his assassination. The visit “would outrage many, many people who believe Dr. King was a fraud and a demagogue, and perhaps worse,” Buchanan wrote, before proceeding to call King “one of the most divisive men in contemporary history.”

-KKK Has Winning Issues: In 1989, Buchanan urged conservatives to examine Duke, a former Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan, and his “portfolio of winning issues.” Dismissing Duke’s history as insignificant, Buchanan praised Duke for taking on affirmative action in “hiring, scholarships, and promotions” and for denouncing “social engineers.” Buchanan said the GOP was “throwing away a winning hand” by embracing Jesse Jackson after the 1988 election, and Duke was “the first fellow to pick up the discards.”

-Gays Are Satanists: In 1990, Buchanan said the AIDS epidemic proved “our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide.” He still views homosexuality as “unnatural and immoral” and marriage equality as “an Orwellian absurdity.”

-The Dishwasher Liberated Women: In another book, he wrote “the real liberators of American women were not the feminist noise-makers; they were the automobile, the supermarket, the shopping center, the dishwasher, the washer-dryer, the freezer,” which all freed up “Mom” to spend more time reading.

And yet, Pat Buchanan is still a contributor for MSNBC — the same network that suspended another contributor for calling the president a “dick.” It begs the question, just what exactly does Buchanan have to say to make him too toxic for TV?

Even before his defenestration from MSNBC and his move to Current, Olbermann’s ratings were falling. In 2010, Olbermann drew an average of 1 million adults and 268,000 adults aged 25-45 during the 8PM hour (that first number was down 11 percent from 2009, the second, down 25 percent in the same time period).

Olbermann wasn’t alone in his woes at MSNBC, though his numbers were slightly worse than some of his colleagues. Rachel Maddow’s numbers fell between 2009 and 2010, too, down 6 percent overall and 14 percent in that coveted demographic of younger viewers. And MSNBC saw its viewers between 8 and 11PM go down 9 percent overall and 18 percent in the demographic. In the same time period, for the same viewing hours, Fox News saw a slight but slower decline, falling 5 percent overall and 6 percent in the demographic. And CNN, which is now challenging MSNBC for that third-place, looked like it was in free-fall. Its number of overall viewers in the 8-11 hour was down 36 percent, and its number of young viewers was down 37 percent, to 184,000.

But this September, MSNBC pulled in 269,000 viewers ages 25-45 in the prime-time block, up modestly from an average of 249,000 in 2010. But CNN’s made a dramatic improvement, lifting its young viewers from an average of 184,000 for the primetime block in 2010 to an average of 257,000 in September 2011. The Times piece from which I’m drawing those numbers doesn’t break out Fox’s numbers for the full month of September, but looking at day-by-day data on TV By the Numbers, they appear relatively consistent with the figures the network pulled in 2010, when it averaged 2.4 million people total and 612,000 younger viewers in primetime.

So Olbermann’s numbers and MSNBC’s were declining at the time he left. And even in the context of Current’s smaller viewership, he’s continued his downward slide. MSNBC is available in 78 million households in the U.S., while Current is available in 60 million. But absent the network profile of MSNBC, Olbermann’s ratings initially fell more than the 23 percent that might have been the difference between the two networks and have continued downward. The week of Olbermann’s launch on Current, an average of 354,000 people total and 131,000 in the demo tuned in. The next week, after the novelty wore off, it was down to an average of 253,000 total and 93,000 in the demo. By August 1-5, those numbers had fallen to an average of 208,000 and 85,000 in the demo.

With all this context, it’s not totally clear to me that Olbermann, even if he’d stayed, would have reversed his ratings trend—and the network’s. Olbermann’s departure was messy and public. But while the resulting vacancy may have prompted CNN to shake up its lineup, it wasn’t the only thing affecting MSNBC’s viewership. How to get the network growing significantly in prime time is a question that’s much more complicated than one hour, and one anchor.

Clinton, citing his own background as a Southern Baptist, said that American evangelical Christians like Perry often believe that the West Bank belongs to the Jewish state of Israel.

Clinton, who referred to the West Bank several times by its bibilical name Judea and Samaria (the name also used by Israel’s settler movement), noted that Christian evangelicals are often more hardline on these issues than are most Israelis:

I also believe that Rick Perry — look, that’s my culture. I’m from next door. There is an enormous resevoir of support for Israel in the Christian evangelical community. And a lot of them believe, as some of the more militant settler groups do, that God meant for all of Judea and Samaria to be in the hands of Israel, and that Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak, when he was prime minister, and all the — and Shimon Peres and everybody that’s signed all these peace agreements have violated the biblical mandate by wanting to give the West Bank to the Palestinian State. [...]

That’s what they believe: that Judea and Samaria is a what God intended to be Israel. So, those Congressmen that were over there working on Netanyahu during the break, they’re more militant than the Israelis are — or than a lot of them. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if Rick Perry really believes that. I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands of people that never miss church on Sunday in Texas who believe that.

Earlier in the interview, Clinton expanded on his view of the congressional delegations that traveled to Israel last month sponsored by a group with close links to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the flagship of the Israel lobby in Washington. A week after a Democratic delegation, a Republican delegation followed. The 55-member GOP trip was the largest ever to go to the Jewish state. Clinton said their message was that Israel could continue to occupy the West Bank indefinitely if a Republican was able to take the White House:

[Perry's statement] was good politics and it was sort of like the trip that 70 — I think there were 70 [sic] Republican House members that went to Israel during the break and basically said, “You guys do whatever you want. Keep the West Bank. We’re comin’ back. We’ll have the White House and the Congress and then we’ll let you do whatever you want.” I believe that’s essentially what was going on.

Watch the video of the Clinton interview:

FEEHERY: I think we all feel for his wife right now. You know, Democrats think back to Gerry Studds…

MATTHEWS: He says his wife knew. He laid it out on her.

FEEHERY: Which is terrible. Terrible mistake.

MATTHEWS: But maybe she’s party responsible if she knew about it?

MACMAHON: She’s not responsible.

FEEHERY: She’s not responsible. Come on, that’s ridiculous.

Watch it:

Near the end of the broadcast, Matthews backtracked: “Putting a bit of the blame on her, I don’t think that’s fair. I hope I didn’t give the impression that I agreed with that. I certainly don’t. This is his problem. People love people, they marry them despite their faults.”

For what it’s worth, Weiner did not say that his wife was aware of his recent conduct and only told her that he’d been lying about it this morning.

But in any event, it’s safe to say that his wife is not in any way “responsible” for Weiner’s inappropriate conduct and dishonesty. As Weiner himself noted, “I came here to accept the full responsibility of what I’ve done.”

President Obama is going to be visiting Joplin, Mo., on Sunday but you know what they’re talking about, like this right-wing slut, what’s her name? Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she’s a talk slut. You see, she was, back in the day, praising President Reagan when he was drinking a beer overseas. But now that Obama’s doing it, they’re working him over.

Schultz can certainly disagree with Ingraham on policy, but her personal life has nothing to do with disaster relief in Missouri. Schultz’s crass remarks about Ingraham were an ineffective way to make an important point. For a leading progressive commentator, they’re unacceptable. Ed Schultz, who has criticized conservatives for their sexism, should apologize to Laura Ingraham during his show tonight. And he should remember that there’s more to building a progressive movement than attacking regressive conservative policies. Respect for women and women’s issues is a core fundamental value, and should never be compromised.

Though Breitbart admitted last year that he had taken the video out of context, he walked that back today, refusing to acknowledge his wrongdoing when Shuster pressed him on it:

SHUSTER: You yourself have acknowledged that you took the Shirley Sherrod video out of context, didn’t you?

BREITBART: No, I –, … No! No! No. I gave her her redemptive story. […]

Because what happened, I gave the context in the article. You acted, and the media acted, like the video dropped out of nowhere.

Listen here:

The video Breitbart originally published shows Sherrod telling a story about reluctantly helping a white farmer while she was a state worker in Georgia. The full video, however, reveals that the clip was part of Sherrod’s larger narrative about the importance of moving beyond racial biases. In a July 2010 interview with Newsweek, Breitbart acknowledged that the video was selectively edited and taken out of context:

Do you agree that the edited video took things out of context?

Well, yes. But I put up what I had. It granted a great portion of her redemptive tale, but not all of it. If I could do it all over again, I should have waited for the full video to get to me.

In one of several borderline ridiculous comparisons that went unchallenged, Breitbart told Ratigan yesterday that he considers himself “the Upton Sinclair of the mainstream media,” comparing himself to the muckraking journalist who highlighted numerous social injustices in the early 20th century. His passion, he said, is holding the media accountable, and it angers him when reporters fail to present “exculpatory evidence” to back up their stories. Ratigan, meanwhile, fawned over Breitbart throughout the interview, calling him a “sharpshooter who’s good” and an “incredibly passionate and effective man,” and mysteriously saying he didn’t “even have an interest in debating the issues” with Breitbart.