Andrew Breitbart Is Dead

This was a Breitbart victory. He made the president look bad. Shirley Sherrod was merely collateral damage.

I was half asleep this morning with the TV on low. The news still jumped across the room. Andrew Breitbart died last night in Los Angeles. Natural causes said the family, though dying in your 40s isn’t the way nature usually works.

Breitbart was a right wing lightning rod. He was the guy behind the Shirley Sherrod video.

If you’ve forgotten, it was a video that made Ms. Sherrod seem racist until it was shown to have been edited entirely out-of-context. The Obama Administration which had done damage control at warp speed was left with egg on its face.

This was a Breitbart victory. He made the president look bad. Shirley Sherrod was merely collateral damage.

Andrew Breitbart first came on my radar in August 2005. I wrote a blog entry about him after I noticed a huge number of links to his site from Drudgereport.

Over the past few years he’s become a much larger media presence.

Breitbart was made for TV. Inviting him on a talk show was like carrying a lit cigarette lighter through a refinery.

I feel bad when people die. Andrew Breitbart leaves behind a wife and children. Tragic.

I will not miss his take no prisoners style of political discourse. Breitbart was the poster child for what’s wrong with our political system today.

Alas, other poster children are probably already waiting in the wings.

9 thoughts on “Andrew Breitbart Is Dead”

  1. Breitbart was a true American patriot. I’m actually glad people (media outlets specifically) are even giving him attention today. He’s worth more than Whitney for sure. IMO he made more of an impact on society. A tragic loss … He was so young.

  2. He was no patriot. He represented everything wrong with American discourse today. He was a liar and a destroyer. To call him a patriot is to believe in the same mythology that equates the Tea Party with the men who conducted the 1773 Boston Tea Party … you know, the one where the colonists said no to corporate tyranny, versus the “Tea Party” of today that defends corporations and attacks anything the creates a more kind and caring society.

  3. It’s sad how political talk brings out the worst in people. A man has died too young and has left behind a family who loved him. End of story.

  4. However you feel about his politics, he is a voice in the political wilderness gone too soon. He should be mourned for his life and family, not the political divisiveness.

  5. His political divisiveness was what he did. It was a large part of who he was. Sure I feel bad he died and for his family but his work was cruel. That was his choice and his legacy.

  6. wow Geoff you completely misrepresented Breitbart on the Sherrod video. It was Glenn Beck who caused the clip to be taken out of context on his radio show and turned it into a smear against Sherrod. Breitbart wrote in his original article that accompanied the video when he released it “Eventually her basic humanity informs her that the white man is poor and needs help”

    If people actually paid attention from the beginning Breitbart’s point was that if the media is going to use innuendo to prove that the tea party is racist – then he was going to hold others to that same standard. What the video shows is Sherrod describing previous racist thoughts she had in her career (before she was employed by the government) to a crowd that claps in approval at the comment about sending the white man to one of his own. The crowd was seen applauding racism. Breitbart didn’t even mention Sherrod’s name until halfway through the article he wrote up on this – he never intended to make it about her.

    Anyway that aside I appreciate that you have the decency, unlike some others, to recognize that a family of four children all under the age of 12 are now without a father. His family never signed up to deal with the kind of controversy Andrew loved to revel in. Politics is a dirty place and all of it becomes immaterial when it come to loss of life. Even Seth MacFarlane acknowledged that in a very heartfelt manner: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/03/05/toast-to-seth-macfarlane-andrew-breitbart-father

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