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Andrew Breitbart Spars with Gwen Ifill Over Race Conference Panel

Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart takes issue with Gwen Ifill over race conference panel, which he said included a 'white race baiter' but no Black conservatives.

Each year, Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree and the school’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice host an annual conference on race on Martha’s Vineyard. Titled “Heard it through the Grapevine,” this year’s panel included Anita Hill, twenty years after she testified at the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Moderated by Ogletree, it also included New York Times columnist Charles Blow, former Virginia governor Doug Wilder, Gwen Ifill, moderator of PBS’s “Washington Week” and white, antiracism activist Tim Wise.

 

The lineup apparently wasn’t good enough for conservative and controversial blogger Andrew Breitbart, who a few days ago tweeted his displeasure with Ifill in particular, Fish Bowl DC reports.

 

“So, my black conservative friends & allies: Are you surprised you weren’t invited to Gwen Ifill/Charles Ogletree ‘race forum’?” he wrote, later adding, “Gwen Ifill @pbsgwen-why is nasty, lying white race-baiter Tim Wise on your ‘race panel,’ but not one Black conservative?”

 

Wise and Breitbart have a history, and the former once suggested on Facebook that Breitbart had been involved in a cross burning when he was a student at Tulane University—if that’s even Wise’s real Facebook page.

 

The panel must have really been bugging Breitbart because Wednesday, at 3 a.m., he lashed out again, tweeting, “Do you defend being on a ‘race panel’ with MANY Black libs, no Black conservatives & Tim ‘I Hope Breitbart’s Family Suffers’ Wise? @pbsgwen?”

 

@pbsgwen finally responded: “@AndrewBreitbart I defend what I SAY. And I quote what people say. In context.”

 

(Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

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