BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski is at it again, providing yummy tidbits for lefties.

I'm not linking to BuzzFeed — no links for you! — but to Memeorandum.

Instapundit threatens to link-starve BuzzFeed.

"The Buzzfeed folks should also be concerned that folks on the right will be less willing to link them in the future, if they’re perceived — as I believe they increasingly are — as lefty agitprop shills."

They put "feed" in their name. Links are the food.

UPDATE: Instapundit objects to my paraphrasing.

Shameful, lowly race-baiting... but who's doing it?

So somebody got a picture of the back of a man — no face, no name — in a T-shirt that says — on the back — "Put the White Back in the White House." BuzzFeed posts the photo with the information that it's a "Getty Images" photo. So we don't even get the name of the photographer. We're told "The Getty Images photo was taken at a Romney/Ryan campaign event in Lancaster, Ohio on Friday." We can't see much of the context. Who's around this guy?

Why put this picture up? Well, obviously, it gets hits for BuzzFeed, which doesn't need any more motivation than that. It does need the utter lack of ethics and decency it takes to throw something this unfair into the public debate. The BuzzFeed staffer who did this post is Andrew Kaczynski, whom we've seen before. (He was behind "Paul Ryan Gets Testy and Walks Out of Interview.") Presumably, he's doing his job of attracting links, and I'm exacerbating the dynamic by linking. But I'm doing this because I have recently criticized Romney supporters for injecting race into presidential politics.

I said it was a mistake for Rush Limbaugh and others to play that Obamaphone lady over and over. Even with no mention of race, I thought the recording was used — with deniability — to stir up racial feelings. My post — "Just How Racist Is the 'Obama Phone' Video?" — got very strong pushback from commenters. People did not want to acknowledge that race had been injected at all. I participated in the comments at first. For example:

Look, those of you who don't see the racial problem are already probably going to vote for Romney. For Romney to win, he has to influence people in the middle who are sensitive to this kind of racial ugliness. You may say my sensitivity is set to[o] high, but I'm saying that I believe the people with my level of sensitivity are much more likely to determine the outcome of the election.

But my commenters fought on, passionately, which showed, I think, how deeply they — like me —  object to racial material. The objection took different forms. I was saying don't use powerful material when it will feel racial to some people, and they were resisting seeing it as racial. Within our disagreement, there was an intense agreement: We object to racial material.

Back to that T-shirt. Who should be condemned here? There's that bald-headed, no name guy. I assume he is a Romney opponent. The reasons for that assumption are oozingly obvious. (Here, Robert Stacy McCain spells them out for you.) He deserves condemnation, whether he's for or against Romney. The photographer deserves condemnation if he has thrown this crap into the public space without giving us a name, a shot of the man's face, or even a broader shot of the people around him. We are deprived of the context we need to think about whether other people at the rally saw it, approved, laughed, shunned him, confronted him.

But Buzzfeed and all the Romney opponents who chose to link to Buzzfeed should be ashamed. They lowered themselves. They saw an opportunity go racial and they took it. Here's Caroline Bankoff at New York Magazine:

This photo of the not-so-subtle look, taken at Friday's campaign rally in Lancaster, Ohio, doesn't really require further description. 

It sure as hell does require further description! Who was that bald man? How long was that shirt-back displayed? Is this a false-flag effort to smear Romney? And why don't you care? Just go ahead and stir up racial fears and ugliness, Caroline Bankoff. Shame on you and everyone else who slavered at the opportunity to serve up this racial obscenity.

Let's judge Paul Ryan.

Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski put this up yesterday with the title: "Paul Ryan Gets Testy and Walks Out of Interview."



Buzzfeed has now changed the title to "Paul Ryan Gets Testy And Ends Interview," because he obviously doesn't walk out, and they've also put this up now:

The reporter knew he was already well over the allotted time for the interview when he decided to ask a weird question relating gun violence to tax cuts. Ryan responded as anyone would in such a strange situation. When you do nearly 200 interviews in a couple months, eventually you’re going to see a local reporter embarrass himself.

So... not only doesn't he walk out, he doesn't end the interview.

Maybe Kaczynski is straining to win back lefty friends after he called "handkerchief" on the Romney "cheat sheet" conspiracy theory.

Anyway, let's focus on "testy." Did Ryan get testy? Ryan speaks eloquently about guns and crime and a need to restore "civil society" to the inner cities, which prompts the reporter to ask "And you can do all that by cutting taxes? By — with a big tax cut?" It's not a terrible question, really, but it does reveal the reporter's liberal mentality. Ryan's civil society — the basis for individual "discipline" and "good character" — is "what charities and civic groups and churches do." That's standard conservative ideology, but the reporter, presumably thinking in terms of government finding ways to rebuild individual good character, leaps to the issue of tax cuts. He can't envision the private groups — charities and civic groups and churches — building civil society. He's got the "you didn't build that" attitude.

So he asks a tax question and Ryan responds as if the reporter had made the assertion implied in the question and says "Those are your words, not mine." That's abrupt. He could have said your question shows that you don't understand what civil society is and explained the deep ideological difference between conservatives and liberals, but the reporter isn't his ideological opponent. He's a reporter, supposedly asking neutral questions, and the implied argument about the role of government would need to be spelled out before it could be refuted.

It's late in the interview, and the off-camera voice says, "Thank you very much." Ryan, yanking out his microphone, says "That was kind of strange," as if the question were a complete non sequitur. And then: "Trying to stuff words in my mouth," as if it were not a question. I read this as a dominating tactic, and the reporter goes beta: "I don't know if it's strange." Ryan mellows slightly: "No, but it sounds as though you're trying to answer my question for me. That's a little odd." And the reporter meekly agrees.

Ryan could have been a bit nicer, but I liked this display of dominance in managing the reporters who are looking to get their sound bites out of him. I'm sure this reporter would have loved to show Ryan stymied by contradictory aspirations about fixing the inner cities and cutting taxes. The reporter tried to get on top and got schooled. I'm okay with that.