Andrew Breitbart RIP--UPDATED

From his his website:: "Andrew passed away unexpectedly from natural causes shortly after midnight this morning in Los Angeles," the note on his website read. "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."

From Wikipedia: Andrew Breitbart (February 1, 1969 – March 1, 2012) was an American publisher,commentator for the Washington Times, author,^[and occasional guest commentator on various news programs, who served as an editor for the Drudge Report Web site. He was a researcher for Arianna Huffington, and helped launch her web publication The Huffington Post.

Arianna? Really?

Most of all he loved attention and found great delight in reposting Tweets he received which were insulting.  At CPAC he went outside and called the Occupy protestors "rapists" and repeated "BEHAVE YOURSELF" dozens of times. Security showed up and urged him back inside, but not before his rants were captured on camera.  There is no such thing as bad publicity, you know.

Today, the right-wing blogosphere is full of conspiracy theories that "his enemies" arranged for special microwave signals to disrupt his heart, thus causing the heart attack that killed him while walking last night. Because he had been hinting at having "damaging video" of Obama in college, Andrew's followers know with certainty that it was Obama who offed him.

This reporter will not stoop to Andrew's level by making ugly comments about him in death like he did about Ted Kennedy. A simple Google search will head you in the direction of that information.  He had kids, and now they don't have a dad.

He was admired by many conservatives. Michelle Malkin, a conservative blogger and television commentator, wrote in a blog post Thursday that his legacy “online and in the conservative movement is built to last.” She called him “a mentor to the next generation of right-wing activists and citizen journalists.”

We sure hope not. 

RR

Comments

[Coiler]

weirdorama

[Finis Hominis]

Again, C'est la vie

[Finis Hominis]

Neil Degrasse Tyson number ten and Davy Jones sits at number one to round out your google trends, while Andrew Brietbart is nowhere on the list. Well, there’s always later.

[Coiler]

"Natural Causes" at 43? Was he eating fatty steaks and scotch every night?

[Joe]

Shocking. 43 is too young to go, but at least it seems like he made the most of his relatively short life.

RIP Andrew Breitbart

[dave, not dave ross]

Coiler, while natural causes is what it is being labeled, there will be an autopsy most likely. In the NYT article, Orson Bean (his father in law, who knew!) stated that brietbart had heart problems last year with no diagnosis. In one third of all heart attacks the heart blows up and you die quickly, i do not think they were able to ever revive him. he was walking in brentwood when it happened and medics were called by neighbors who saw him collapse.

[Pete]

How long til the first doctored video shows up with the "real" scene of Brietbart's death?

[Coiler]

Yeah I saw Orson was his father in law. Odd trivia.

[dave, not dave ross]

Just heard dori's fill in on KIRO mention that brietbart's closest friends on FOX had been urging him to take better care of himself, it looks like he had a chronic heart issue that he ignored.

[Luke Spermbank]

Does this move Limbaugh and Cheney up a slot?

[Mike D]

25 People Who Think President Obama Killed Andrew Breitbart

[LSD]

Obama hated the Monkees too. Very clever.

[A Black man]

I'm sure Hood isn't shedding any tears over this post.

[KS]

He most likely died of natural causes - autopsy will tell.
Orson Bean is indeed his father in law. He would have liked to hear the hate from the left as he fed off of it. He was polarizing no-doubt, but no one had more courage !

[Subway-riding latte drinker]

Yesterday we lost a Monkee, Davy Jones. Today we lost a baboon, Andrew Breitbart.

[Alex]

The man made himself a divisive figure. He chose a very dirty way to make a living and he was a pro at dishing the innuendo and self-righteous disdain. He had no problem with trying to ruin other people's lives for political points. I don't know why I have to couch my feelings in "respect for the dead". He and most of the right wing yakkers certainly didn't do that with Ted Kennedy.

[A Black man]

Wow you liberals so compassionate -- NOT!!

[Mike D]

"Early this morning, news broke that Sen. Ted Kennedy had passed away after serving in the U.S. Senate for nearly 50 years. Soon after, conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart began a sustained assault on Kennedy’s memory, tweeting “Rest in Chappaquiddick.”

Over the course of the next three hours, Breitbart unapologetically attacked Kennedy, calling him a “villain,” “a big ass motherf@#$er,” a “duplicitous bastard” and a “prick.” “I’ll shut my mouth for Carter. That’s just politics. Kennedy was a special pile of human excrement,” wrote Breitbart in one tweet."

link

[sparky]

Interesting...Lawrence O'Donnell just gave a tribute to Andrew, saying that the private Andrew was nothing like his public persona. He said they would meet for lunch and never once discuss politics.

[Truth-seeker]

Thanks, Mike D. Sometimes posters are forgetful or perhaps a little dense about the behavior of their own. I'm no hypocrite. The guy probably died of an overdose of malevolent spirits. How can anyone live that much hate and dishonesty and not be affected by it? I'm not calling him the things he called Kennedy nor am I changing the facts of his life as he did Sherrod. What I write are verifiable facts.

The world is a better place today.

[Truth-seeker]

So was it about money, Sparky? Or power over people? Or celebrity that comes with what one does well - hate? I often wonder how people can have lunch with bullies and yet disdain bullying.

[Coiler]

The Sherrod libel suit was to move forward next week.

[esl]

RIP Andrew. You fought the good fight against liberal tyranny.

[Mike D]

If he thought liberal tyranny was bad down here, wait till he meets Jesus.

[Tony]

Jeez... Can't we hold off on calling this guy an asshole until he's in the ground?

Andrew Breitbart was not somebody I had much respect for, and I certainly didn't agree with him politically, but good lord... We're talking about a guy wrote a few petty political stories - not a rapist or a murderer.

We've all cried foul at conservatives who attack recently deceased liberals. It seems like we liberals could at least give it a week before we start pissing all over Breitbart's grave.

[Truth-seeker]

Why wait, Tony? Is it all about appearances? Ask Sherrod if she's grieving his death. And there's a difference between the attacks conservatives have made and our authentic refusal to moan his loss. Nobody has done a "Kennedy" attack on him.

Being honest isn't foul. Would that he tried it we might have some sympathy today.

[Harbour City Fund, Ltd.]

"the world is a better place today"........"are you sure you want to go there. "truthseeker"?", he said, cryptically...... Harbour City Fund Ltd.

[Truth-seeker]

The world is a better place today.

[Mike D]

About all I can say is, I feel sorry for his kids, but only because their father willingly made himself a public parriah who made his living dishonestly smearing good people's names. If his kids are now suffering from people saying mean thigns about him, that's why.
So when you see people making vicious remarks about him, blame them but blame him equally, because it's all part of his own deliberate creation.

[Truth-seeker]

I agree, Mike D. Except that I don't consider my remarks "vicious." Honest but not vicious. Vicious is what he did to Kennedy.

[Truth-seeker]

In fact, vicious was his stock and trade. Don't you think?

[Harbour City Fund, Ltd.]

"Thruthseeker's one sentence remark above is as vicious as they come.... she is gleeful over another human's death... that's Rabbi Lapin territory, such a when he said the Kennedy kid death in the ski accident was a "cleansing of the gene pool"...

[Harbour City Fund, Ltd.]

Lapin had a tone of absolute giddy glee and joy in his voice when he discussed the Kennedy clan member death just hours earlier...

[Mike D]

In fact, vicious was his stock and trade. Don't you think?

Posted by: Truth-seeker | March 02, 2012 at 04:19 PM

Absolutely. I wasn't referring to you TS. Some liberal pundits came out today with some pretty rough statements, probably as a reaction to the overly-reverent tributes to Breitbart on the cable channels last night. Matt Tiabbi wrote a firey missive on the subject today, which I fully agree with.

The whole thing is weird. I keep hearing from people who knew him that he was actually a nice guy when the politics were put aside, yet the Kennedy remarks are vile and inexcusable. I can accept that he was a (probably loving) father, but if he really loved his kids why would he do and say such vile things in public and create such bad feeling and discord? Why would he shame his kids like that? Maybe deep down he was a nice guy and maybe if he'd lived longer he would have repented at some point. But as it is he died young, and he left behind a nasty legacy. You reap what you sow, I guess.

[Truth-seeker]

For HCF LTD from Matt Taibbi: But he also had enough of a sense of humor to appreciate why someone like me shouldn’t bother to pretend I’m sad he’s dead. He wouldn’t, in my place. So to use one of his favorite words: Good riddance, cocksucker.* Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

...what I did was exactly the same as what Breitbart had done, and yet they(his fans) still found a way to be unironically outraged on Breitbart’s behalf. I thought: “These people don’t even get their own jokes.”

[Mike D]

Also from Tiabbi:

"But I guess no homage is complete without a celebration of the whole man, and the whole man in this case was not just a guy who once said, “It’s all about a good laugh,” but also someone who liked to publish peoples’ personal information on the internet, hack into private web sites, tell lies in an attempt to get his enemies fired, and incite readers to threats against his targets and their families, including death threats. I left all of that stuff out of my obit, but now, thanks to you readers, that’s all in there as well, leaving, for posterity, a much more complete picture of the man."

[Puget Sound Blathers]

Cenk on the Young Turks did a nice show last night on Andrew Breitbart.

John Stewart still had the best take on the Shirley Shirod and Andrew Breitbart

...and the rest of the tape

[Puget Sound Blathers]

as Stewart makes clear with his deft use of humor to reveal truth is that breitbart put up a tape that he received in the mail and then watches as the institutional left go bat-shit crazy. amazing that the naacp, the place where the tape was made, was one of the first to throw shirley shirod under the bus and the role of the obama admin was even more disgraceful. fox news had no role in it. rather it let the other 'networks' play it up big.

[Puget Sound Blathers]

Dave Weigel has an interesting take on Breitbart.

"My long obit of Andrew Breitbart went up last night. Referring to a famous person as a "friend" carries a stench of the name-drop. Pardon me this once: Andrew was a friend. We were introduced by a mutual pal in 2007, when Breitbart.com was an interesting Internet curio, but no one was hassling Breitbart for a TV hit or a second book deal. (His first book, Hollywood Interrupted, sold well, but I'm guessing you forgot it existed.) After 2009, when he became an icon who was mobbed by trackers when he showed up at the wrong places, he remained a friend, calling to talk about new music, calling to pick my brain about a story he was trying to break.

It hit me, after I filed this piece, why Breitbart was so good at understanding the pulse of the reader. He didn't differentiate between the powerful and the ordinary. If you spotted Breitbart at one of the conventions he was asked to speak at after 2009, he was rarely hobnobbing with reporters or other speakers. He was sitting out in public. He would talk to anyone who had a story for him. Plenty of times, he ushered me or another reporter over to meet someone who just told him about something newsy, like a clash with Occupy protesters.

This is rarer than you'd think. If you cover enough political events, you see a lot of speakers, and reporters, clustering amongst themselves, maybe talking to fans, then retreating to talk to each other. Breitbart would drink with friends but bring new people into the mix. This was exactly how his content worked -- there was a flat landscape of news where other media might have put up gates.

Breitbart kept that up in his last public "statement." He tweeted back and forth with Lamar Smith, a guy who never met him, to settle an argument. If you scan Breitbart's Twitter feed, you notice that he did a lot of this.
"I understand the reason I am being asked to comment is because his last tweet was an earnest apology to me," said Smith via email. "Although I disagreed with him profoundly on politics and policy, I will always respect and admire his tenacious wit and his willingness to engage others in provocative conversation. That's what free speech is about, and whether one agreed with him or not, it's impossible to deny his commitment to the First Amendment and the open and free exchange of ideas. I send my condolences to all of his family and friends."

For the Weigle piece, go here: (BTW, Weigle is always a good website to visit if you want to stretch your idealogical brain a bit)

here

[Puget Sound Blathers]

Breitbart was a Board member of GoProud a GayRights organization. However he resigned in December of 2011 over the 'outing' of a Republican strategist who worked for Rick Perry.

"On numerous occasions I have spoken with [GOProud leaders] Jimmy LaSalvia and Chris Barron of the significant impact the practice of “outing” had in my evolution from the political left to the right. I was under the absolute impression that both agreed. I have a zero tolerance attitude toward the intentional infliction of vocational and family harm by divulging the details of an individual’s sexual orientation as a weapon of political destruction."

[Puget Sound Blathers]

First off, Alex Jones is a nut job. I've listened to him before and even in the conspiracy world he is regarded as a bit of a loose canon.

from the Weigel website that Bla'm is using I also thought this part was instructive as to the man Breitbart. Weigel and Breitbart were together at the TeaParty Convention:

"To rant and theorize, with no evidence, about a plot against Breitbart is to do him a great disservice. Two years ago, at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville, I was quizzing Joe Farah about the birther comments he made from the stage when Farah spotted Breitbart and ran to him for help. Breitbart pulverized him.

“Prove it!" [said Breitbart]
“Prove what?” [said Farah]
“Prove your case.”
“I should prove, what, a birth certificate that may or may not exist?” Farah had gotten irritated. “That’s ridiculous. You don’t even understand the fundamental tenets of what journalism is about, Andrew. It’s not about proving things. It’s about asking questions and seeking truth.”
Breitbart tensed up after that insult. “Right.”
“I know you’re not a journalist, so that’s fine. But don’t diminish people who’ve been doing this for 35 years.”
“So you’re going to go on record saying that I’m not a journalist?”
“Are you? I’ve never heard you claim to be. Are you?”
“I’ll let it be answered by you.”
“Well, I knew Drudge didn’t consider himself a journalist, so I assumed that you were. … I don’t know, I’m not trying to insult you.”
“You did.”
You can apply the same lesson -- prove your case -- to what happened in Los Angeles yesterday morning."

[Mike D]

I'll always remember Breitbart for one of his last public appearances, at the Occupy rally outside of CPAC a few weeks ago. Screaming over and over at the top of his lungs, "STOP RAPING PEOPLE!! STOP RAPING PEOPLE!!" like a mad man while being dragged away by security. His madness, while horrific, was also wonderful, because it perfectly encapsulated the modern conservative mindset. Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4od4QQVK1o

[Coiler]

Even Bill Maher, who has had Breitbart on numerous times never mentioned him last night during the regular show and only on "Overtime" in which they spent about 30 secs.

[Puget Sound Blathers]

Breitbart was the driving force behind the Drudge Report which gets 3 million hits a day and the creative force behind the Huffington Post which just sold for $315 million.
Fairly impressive credentials and demonstrate the breadth of this man, beyond the ability to take out a sitting congressman or get a democratic congress to vote to defund a long term ally like ACORN.

[KS]

The modern conservative mindset is such a vacuous term - Rush Limbaugh is a microcosm and many conservatives have a different mindset. From that video, he merely exposed the Occupy movement once again for the dregs on society and human excrement from their actions that many of them (not all of them) are.

He was very adept at getting in the heads of modern day leftists including Bill Maher. Breitbart could engage with the left and liked doing it. I lauded him when he outed and exposed the truth about ACORN - he could be devilishly clever as he was there, but he gave us the truth about the parasitic nature of that organization.

Surprisingly, gotcha and election politics bored him and he believed it much more important the affect the culture instead of the political process, because the culture directly impacts the political process. For his relatively short time on this planet, his credentials were impressive.

[RQ]

His madness, while horrific, was also wonderful, because it perfectly encapsulated the modern conservative mindset.

Posted by: Mike D | March 03, 2012 at 04:58 PM

This comment is a perfect example of how liberals love to take the extreme and purport that it's the norm. Ridiculous.

[KS]

from the Weigel website that Bla'm is using I also thought this part was instructive as to the man Breitbart. Weigel and Breitbart were together at the TeaParty Convention:

"To rant and theorize, with no evidence, about a plot against Breitbart is to do him a great disservice. Two years ago, at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville, I was quizzing Joe Farah about the birther comments he made from the stage when Farah spotted Breitbart and ran to him for help. Breitbart pulverized him.

“Prove it!" [said Breitbart]
“Prove what?” [said Farah]
“Prove your case.”
“I should prove, what, a birth certificate that may or may not exist?” Farah had gotten irritated. “That’s ridiculous. You don’t even understand the fundamental tenets of what journalism is about, Andrew. It’s not about proving things. It’s about asking questions and seeking truth.”
Breitbart tensed up after that insult. “Right.”
“I know you’re not a journalist, so that’s fine. But don’t diminish people who’ve been doing this for 35 years.”
“So you’re going to go on record saying that I’m not a journalist?”
“Are you? I’ve never heard you claim to be. Are you?”
“I’ll let it be answered by you.”
“Well, I knew Drudge didn’t consider himself a journalist, so I assumed that you were. … I don’t know, I’m not trying to insult you.”
“You did.”
You can apply the same lesson -- prove your case -- to what happened in Los Angeles yesterday morning."

Posted by: Puget Sound Blathers | March 03, 2012 at 10:31 AM

Great story, PS. His tenacity with Farah showed that he could be relentless in his pursuit of the truth even when the truth didn't favor conservatives and didn't back down. He was not only a warrior, but a happy warrior. It should also be added that Peter Schweitzer, who exposed the preponderance of insider trading in Congress and caused 60 Minutes to cover it as part of his book; "Throw them all out !" worked for Breitbart.

[Truth-seeker]

This comment is a perfect example of how liberals ...

Doesn't your comment do the same?

...relentless in his pursuit of the truth...

Sherrod? ACORN? O'Keefe?

[Coiler]

I hope Sherrod cleans out his estate.