Andrew Breitbart – 1969-2012

Andrew Breitbart passed away this morning in Los Angeles.

Larry Solov at BigJourno writes:

We have lost a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a dear friend, a patriot and a happy warrior.

Andrew lived boldly, so that we more timid souls would dare to live freely and fully, and fight for the fragile liberty he showed us how to love.

Breitbart gave the conservative alternative media something it needed; a full-time, tireless, fearless crusader, a rebel without a pause.

Liberals hated him, because he and his group of fellow media Visigoths played their game, only better; BigJourno and Big Hollylwood were like the Huffington Post, only not vapid and obsequious to their subjects. Andrew and his protegees did John Stewart and Steven Cobert one better; news, sometimes straight, sometimes satirical, but without the miasma of self-satisfaction in which the lefty shows marinade themselves.

I only met Breitbart once, at a party at Lileks’ place during Right Online last summer:

Lileks, Chad The Elder, Breitbart, Margaret Martin, David Strom, Laura Hemler, Laura's friend Cindy Olson, and the Giant Swede, last summer.

My biggest impression, other than the fact that he’d been pretty much mobbed, with admirers and, er, detractors during the entire event (he was the star of both Right Online and the sad, dyspeptic “Nutroots Nation”, also in town that weekend) was that, as much as he was into, as big a counter-media-culture empire as he’d built, as potent an instrument as he controlled, the greatest adventure of his life was raising his son, whom he very visibly couldn’t wait to get home to see, and whose fourth birthday party was going to be the real highlight of the week.

And it’s for his family I pray, and to them I send my sympathy and condolences.

For the rest of us?

Solov quotes Breitbart in the foward to his latest book:

Three years ago, I was mostly a behind-the-scenes guy who linked to stuff on a very popular website. I always wondered what it would be like to enter the public realm to fight for what I believe in. I’ve lost friends, perhaps dozens. But I’ve gained hundreds, thousands—who knows?—of allies. At the end of the day, I can look at myself in the mirror, and I sleep very well at night.

Breitbart discovered – on a grand scale – what a lot of us bloggers did almost a decade ago; that showing up, that deciding to make a difference, could be the beginning of something great.   For many of us, it has been.  And here’s hoping his example creates a thousand more like him.

Solov:

Andrew is at rest, yet the happy warrior lives on, in each of us.

And that’s the key.  To be a warrior – but a happy one.  A gentleman.  A full, completely realized, multifaceted human being, not a frothing acidic polibot.

He’ll be much missed.  But he’s created thousands of memorials, and God willing there’ll be ten thousand more today and tomorrow.

29 thoughts on “Andrew Breitbart – 1969-2012

  1. “not a frothing acidic polibot”

    I’m stealing that. (Though I liked it better when I thought it said “Paulbot”)

  2. Breitbart will be missed. He knew that the Left was populated by totalitarian thugs and he was not afraid to say so. He gave as good as he got and didn’t retreat.

  3. Leftists detested Breitbart because he knew how to beat them at their own game, without crawling into their gutter.

    One would hope that his last projects were carefully protected and explained to his proteges. He may yet have an impact and I’m sure that would please him greatly.

  4. David Frum:
    “It’s difficult for me to assess Breitbart’s impact upon American media and American politics as anything other than poisonous. When one of the leading media figures of the day achieves his success by his giddy disdain for truth and fairness—when one of our leading political figures offers to his admirers a politics inflamed by rage and devoid of ideas—how to withhold a profoundly negative judgment on his life and career?”

    “Public figures are inescapably judged by their public actions. When those public actions are poisonous, the obituary cannot be pleasant reading.”

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/01/andrew-breitbart-1969-2012.html

  5. Tim,

    Frum – whose grave you would not piss on if he weren’t bagging on a grassroots conservative icon – is absolutely wrong. More, probably, tomorrow.

    And, um, isn’t it ironic that you’d be sniffing about other peoples’ “inflammaotry” “poison?”

    PS. Not only are you a coward, you’re a ghoul.

  6. Gosh, remember how the Left was up in arms when CBS News, Dan Rather, and Mary Mapes tried to take down a democratically elected, sitting U.S. President using forged documents?
    There is no respect for integrity on the Left. In its place they have an enemies list.

  7. Tim doesn’t even have the guts to use his own bile….not that I expect anything more virtuous from a piece-of-shit-corn-hole-sucking-dog-buggering-child-molesting-toejam-eating-douchbag lefty.

  8. Well said, Swifty.

    I bet that you could re-write/parody “Come Together” by The Beatles and ‘dedicate it’ to Tim.

  9. I am sorry for anyone’s death.
    In life, however, Breitbart was fact averse and an ugly human being. He was willing to lie about anyone whose politics did not align with his own, and did everything he could to profit from those lies. Frum had it correct.

    But it is still a loss to his family and friends, and their loss and grief deserves consideration.

  10. He was willing to lie about anyone whose politics did not align with his own

    Which is SO much worse than calling someone a “liar” when they don’t agree wtih the chanting points you regard as unimpeachable fact.

    Right?

  11. Whenever a leftist rips Breitbart, Berg’s Seventh Law is further validated without fail.

    Never has Breitbart’s reporting been constructively criticized by a leftist. It’s nothing but ad hominem attacks, which is proof positive that he was always right on the mark.

  12. But it is still a loss to his family and friends, and their loss and grief deserves consideration.

    Cut the crap, Dog Gone. If you thought Breitbart’s family and friends deserved consideration, you wouldn’t have come in here and poured bile out of your dainty little decanter.

  13. Yeah, DG.Sorry to say, dropping by someone else’s elegy for the barely-departed to pee on the headstone is a little bit…

    …ghoulish?

    All too typical on the left, unfortunately.

  14. People Dog Gone does not think are “fact averse and ugly human beings”:
    Psychopath David Brock
    Gold digger Arianna Huffington
    Misogynists Bill Maher, Ed Schultz, and Keith Olbermann.

    Leftists seem not to be able to understand that not liking someone’s politics does not make them a bad person. By all accounts Breitbart, during his life, was personally well-liked by those he knew. Compare this to what you hear about the personal lives of people on the left. Michael Moore, for example, is known for abusing the people who work for him and for making friends only with people who can help his film business. The “Blue collar hero” seems to have fired more people than Mitt Romney.

  15. Well put, Terry.

    I don’t like Bob Beckel’s liberal stance, but he is decent man that can argue his position without vitriol. I don’t ever recall him disrespecting a conservative opponent. This is also true of Doug Schoen. Of course, Doug is more of a conservative liberal. I’m sure that there are others, but these are the top of mind people that prove that there are liberals that respect other views.

    I will miss Andrew’s wit and writings. May he rest in peace and may God bless his family.

  16. Beckel only insults people who aren’t in the room with him. Otherwise he is as bad as any of them.

  17. A fitting response to Dog gone’s classles and tacky comment, from Jonah Goldberg, re Breitbart:

    One thing that he [Breitbart] and Bill [Buckley] shared was this basic contempt for the premise that the mainstream liberal elite institutions in the United States are in a position to judge and adjudicate the worth of conservatives. That they are in a position to judge our souls. That if we disagree with liberals, that proves that we are somehow wanting or lacking in compassion; lacking in humanity. That is a fundamental thing that enraged Andrew, this idea that if you disagreed about public policy, if you disagreed about how to organize society, that proved you were a racist. That proved you were a fascist. That proved you were a homophobe. It was the fundamental bad faith of the leading liberal institutions that controlled the commanding heights of this culture that infuriated him. And he refused, at the most basic level, to give them that authority over him or his ideas, and that is was fueled his Righteous Indignation, as his book title called it.

    http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2012/03/01/you-can-give-this-day-back-to-the-indians/

  18. Mr. Breitbart was (and still is) hated by the ugly left because of his devastating effectiveness.

    ….and it was (in part) as easy as pointing a camera in the left’s direction, and showing the world how they really operate.

    To the left, this isn’t supposed to happen. To these arrogant, hateful leftists, the natural order is that the left gets to smear, slander, and bat conservatives around…..and be as corrupt as they want to be.

    Mr. Breitbart was our champion. Today is a sad day. Tomorrow, let’s hit these leftist bullies twice as hard as they hit us.

  19. Dog, I said “piece-of-shit-corn-hole-sucking-dog-buggering-child-molesting-toejam-eating-douchbag lefty”, not “mind-numbingly-ignorant-piece-of-shit-corn-hole-sucking-dog-buggering-child-murduring-toejam-eating-douchbag lefty”.

    You are dismissed. Go back to your dish until called.
    .

  20. Mitch Berg wrote:

    Read center-lefty Mickey Kaus’ refutation of Frum and, by the way, both of you.

    Wouldn’t do any good. Liberals believe that Breitbart was a bad person because of what he believed in. Whether he was right or wrong doesn’t make any difference. It won’t change what he believed in, so it won’t change their opinion of him.
    Nothing Breitbart did in error comes close to doing the damage to public discourse and the democratic process that the Rather-Mapes forged TANG documents did, yet those two are still heroes on the Left because of what they believe in.

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