The News Of …

Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart was no respecter of the maxim that one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead – After the death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in 2009, he spewed venom all over the liberal lion’s grave via Twitter, calling him a “special pile of human excrement,” a “villain” and other things we can’t reprint on a family website. So I don’t have any qualms about remembering Breitbart, who died suddenly Thursday at 43, as a closed-minded bully and blowhard who seemed to think he could win debates by shouting louder than his opponent rather than having a better argument, a casual liar who shamelessly destroyed reputations and an unfortunate new species of Internet parasite.
But that’s not really what I wanted to write about. In 2010 – Breitbart told The Times that three events in the late 1980′s and early 90′s galvanized his political consciousness, turning him from an apathetic “jocular goofball” into a right-wing activist. All three seem odd candidates for an epiphany, but one in particular has some connection to my own life, and it’s as good an indicator of any of the way Breitbart’s mind worked – or failed to work.
In 1986, while Breitbart was a student at Tulane University, his best friend, Larry Solov, was attending Stanford. When Solov mentioned that Stanford had an African American-themed dorm, Breitbart was outraged.
“He just matter of factly said there was a black dorm, and I was like: ‘What the friggin’ hell? Are you kidding me?” – Breitbart said. “And then, when I found out that it was not segregation in the sense of white people doing it, I was like: ‘What are you talking about? Why aren’t we working toward the colorblind ideal?’ ”

Andrew Breitbart.

Andrew Breitbart (already an increasingly prominent player in the political and media influence game) never had a moment quite like the one on June 6, 2011.
One of his websites, BigGovernment.com, had caused a sensation when it posted lewd photos of a man that appeared to be U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, a firebrand liberal congressman from New York. Breitbart’s move came after a suggestive photo of Weiner had been posted on the Democrat’s Twitter account, which the congressman repeatedly said was the work of hackers, though he had not offered any evidence.
Some in the mainstream media were wary of reacting to the Breitbart postings. A year earlier, his site was found to have significantly edited a speech from an FDA employee, Shirley Sherrod, making it seem as if she were admitting reverse discrimination against a white farmer.
Adding to the skepticism was Weiner, who offered passionate defenses in a series of interviews and media statements but struggled to offer a clear explanation of whether the photo was of his body and how it could have ended up on Twitter. The pressure built and Weiner opted for the guilty politician’s traditional confessional – the news conference.
But Breitbart arrived and, in a surreal scene, beat Weiner to the lectern. Angry that the congressman had tried to wriggle off the hook by implicating his work, Breitbart defended the legitimacy of his site’s reporting and said he hoped Weiner would apologize for “being complicit in a blame-the-messenger strategy” – which Weiner later did. And, by the way, Breitbart said, he had another “X-rated” image of the congressman that he would not release.
Weeks later, Weiner resigned.
Breitbart’s conservative influence never rose to the level of a Rush Limbaugh. His impact remained around the edges but was profound for the individuals he targeted. He claimed his interest was in creating scandal by exposing hypocrisy on the left, which is why he ended up providing a home to James O’Keefe’s ACORN sting videos, Sherrod’s out-of-context speech and the Wiener photos.
He seemed less interested in the policy or the philosophical underpinnings of the left and the right. Like many happy political warriors, he had the instincts of a first responder. Some people see arguments and trouble and back away. Breitbart ran toward it.

The initial obituaries written about Andrew Breitbart were exceedingly mild given the conservative commentator’s controversial tactics and the many, many people he angered over the years. Hanna Rosin’s “good riddance” to Jan Berenstain in Slate on Monday was more cutting than most of what was said about Breitbart yesterday. How could it be that a woman who wrote about a kindly group of somewhat boring bears would be criticized more harshly upon her death than a man who was recently caught on tape maniacally calling a group of GOP protesters animals and freaks?
One journalist did decide to spill vitriol upon Breitbart’s coffin – Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, who wrote: “Good… I couldn’t be happier that he’s dead,” in “Death of a Douche.” Despite the title and intro, Taibbi’s obit was actually somewhat admiring; he wrote that he “kind of liked Andrew Breitbart” and “respected his shamelessness,” and then listed off some of his greatest hits – exposing the online dalliances of Anthony Weiner (literally) and then hijacking his apologetic press conference; publishing undercover Acorn and Planned Parenthood video exposes that led to the undoing of the former and funding threats for the latter; and seeking to shed light on Occupy Wall Street by publishing their internal e-mails.
But it’s fair to say that the tone of the piece — celebrating, for example, Breitbart’s having a certain body part that is the “biggest, hairiest” on earth — was not exactly respectful.
Many of those writing about Breitbart praised him for “grokking” the ways of the Internet, and knowing how to unnerve his targets and enemies. His fans and supporters learned well from him, marking his legacy and his passing by punishing Taibbi for his piece using Breitbartian Internet tactics and subterfuge. Taibbi updated his piece today with this -
“Well done, Breitbart fans, well done! In less than 24 hours you’ve hacked into my Wiki page, published my telephone number on Twitter, called the Rolling Stone offices pretending to be outraged ‘advertisers’ (anonymous ones, who hung up before we could figure out which ‘ads’ to pull), and then spent all night calling and texting my phone with various threats and insults, many of them directed at my family. “Better grow eyes in the back of your head,” was one; “I’m going to take a shit on your mother’s grave,” was another; a third called my wife a “piece of shit like you,” and many others called me a “pile of human excrement.”