-By Warner Todd Huston
Last Friday, The Illinois Policy Institute disinvited Dana Loesch, the editor of Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism site, from a breakfast event that was to be held over the weekend on Saturday.
The Illinois Policy Institute was holding the event in conjunction with the Independent Women’s Forum and Smart Girl Politics and was to be a “discussion on women, liberty, and America’s future.”
Loesch was disinvited due to a small controversy over what she said Friday on her Saint Louis-based radio show on KFTK 97.1 FM. Loesch took umbrage over those criticizing U.S. Marines that were filmed urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
Loesch was incensed at those complaining about the conduct of our soldiers and went into one of her patented rants about how she didn’t care if our solders urinated on the corpses of our enemies. “I’d drop trou and do it too,” she said of the incident.
Loesch went on to say, “Do I have a problem with that as a citizen of the United States? No I don’t.”
During the rest of that Friday many progressive sites (like Politico) went after Loesch for her comments.
Loesch herself has said that the left’s attack on her is all unfair. “There is a difference in advocating for the Marines to break the law, which I didn’t do, and defending them from overly-dramatic hysteria,” she said.
Sadly, this faux controversy gave the Illinois Policy Institute cold feet for the weekend breakfast meeting and they told her she was no longer welcome at the event. Worse, the group never even made a public comment on the disinvitation. They just, in the dead of night, disinvited her.
FTR Radio had the opportunity to interview Andrew Breitbart this weekend and got his reaction to the disinvitation of his editor. Needless to say, he felt the Illinois Policy Institute had abandoned “our own” with its actions.
“It’s one thing to not having people coming to your defense, it’s another thing to watch — as they are with Dana Loesch — throwing her under the bus actively. And there’s a group, I believe it’s called the Illinois Policy Institute, built an entire event around fundraising to bring people in to see Dana speak today, on Saturday. And just last night they disinvited her because of the pressure coming from Politico making it its number one story, Huffington Post making it one of its top stories, this is part of the activist left making a mountain out of a mole hill.”
Andrew is exactly right. We need to stand behind our own and get a little perspective in this fight against the left. Loesch’s comments were not the sort of outrageous comments that should have gotten her disinvited from the event. This is not to say that we should stick by anyone that is ostensibly on our side no matter what outrageous thing they say. But let’s not fold like a cheap tent with every tiny controversy, shall we?
What Dana Loesch said was nothing compared to things said by the left in America. And they never disown theirs. Why are we so quick to throw ours under the bus?
I’ve known Dana for several years, now, and have also posted many times at BigJournalism.com under her editorship. She’s a firebrand prone to humorous rants used to make her conservative points. But she is not someone that we should be ashamed of. She is not our version of a Ed Schultz, for instance. By his measure, she is tame, indeed.
The Illinois Policy Institute should be ashamed for its weak spine.
Dana Loesch and myself at TeaCon 2012
** UPDATE **
Dana Loesch Replies to the Illinois Policy Institute’s Disinvite
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.
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