While we’re discussing fReichtards, blowback, and what the paramedics call a “but I didn’t even know it was loaded!” moment, professional arsehole Matt Taibbi wrote about Andrew Breitbart on his Rolling Stone blog…
So Andrew Breitbart is dead. Here’s what I have to say to that, and I’m sure Breitbart himself would have respected this reaction: Good! Fuck him. I couldn’t be happier that he’s dead.
__
I say this in the nicest possible way. I actually kind of liked Andrew Breitbart. Not in the sense that I would ever have wanted to hang out with him, or even be caught within a hundred yards of him without a Haz-Mat suit on, but I respected the shamelessness. Breitbart didn’t do anything by halves, and even his most ardent detractors had to admit that he had a highly developed, if not always funny, sense of humor…
… and the reaction from the Flash Mob of Angry Stupidity was predictable:
UPDATE: 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.”
__
Those last ones to me were the most interesting because that quote is lifted directly from Breitbart’s own obit of Ted Kennedy, which like me Breitbart ran just hours after his subject died. So that means the writers of these letters knew that what I did was exactly the same as what Breitbart had done, and yet they still found a way to be unironically outraged on Breitbart’s behalf. I thought: “These people don’t even get their own jokes.”…
__
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.
You know the expression “Never get into a pissing match with a skunk”? It’s been upgraded to “Never get into a cage fight with a wolverine”…
***********
ETA: The saddest part is, the only times I ever heard about Breitbart during his days above ground were when he was having a public meltdown, like his recent inexplicable stop-raping-everybody tantrum against the Occupy DC protestors at CPAC. He was Matt Drudge’s drudge, then he used that experience to network his Big Nothingburger sites into a place where more assertively criminal ratfvckers could use their creativity to destroy innocent peoples’ lives and careers. Apart from getting sued by Shirley Sherrod (and I hope his estate loses that one in the most public way possible), Breitbart was just the guy standing behind and slightly to the right of whatever genuinely inventive ugliness was being perpetrated. His place in history, such as there is one, will be as the Peter Lawford or Jackie Kennedy of the Wingnut Welfare Wurlitzer during the first decade of the current century—a style icon for the relentless mediocre, but not an individual even the most desperate scholar would choose for their thesis work. Within a very few years, outside of his family, if he’s remembered at all it’ll be in the same way the butts of Alexander Pope’s Dunciad are remembered, as a target for greater talents.
Short Bus Bully
Who’s the wolverine in this scenario?
Anne Laurie
@Short Bus Bully: Some would say it’s wolverines all the way down!
jharp
Never could quite get the death threat thing. Isn’t that a fairly serious crime? And relatively easy to determine where it came from?
eemom
ok, this time the Washington Post has really, really jumped the shark
Check out the “political cartoon” they published today.
Please, am I missing something here? Is there some version of reality in which this is NOT a vicious and completely unwarranted attack on the President?
I mean I can get the idea that “he should be doing something” — but to suggest that he is ENJOYING the slaughter in Syria??
Silver
Difference between Taibbi and Breitbart? Just to preempt the false equivalence coming up:
Taibbi picks on people much bigger than he is. Breitbart’s the guy we all know from school that punched the special needs kid in the back of the head on the bus because he could.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
Which of the four cartoons are you referring to?
JGabriel
Anne Laurie @ Top:
Or an updated version of the old saying: Never get into argument with anyone who buys ink by the barrel or bandwidth by gigabytes/sec.
.
Raven
@Silver: Thank you.
eemom
@burnspbesq:
The one where Obama is eating popcorn and watching TV.
Tried to link to that one specifically but it didn’t work.
I have since googled and found out the “artist” is an Australian race car fucktard named Gary McCoy whose Obama-hating “work” is regularly featured in clownhall.com.
Soonergrunt
@eemom: The WaPo jumped the shark when they allowed that dipshit Sally Quinn, whose only accomplishment of note was wrecking Ben Bradlee’s marriage to have a column.
Maude
Taibbi seems to be trying to imitate Christopher Hitchens.
Dustin
They went after Taibbi? Damn, they really are that stupid aren’t they?
Kinda makes me wish I weren’t busy with finishing up my Mass Effect1 & 2 playthrough for when 3 comes out Monday night. Between that and the ME3 multiplayer demo I’ve barely had time to heat up the popcorn for the Peak Wingnut marathon.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
Taibbi has a point. Is it respectful to the recently departed to not treat them the way they lived their lives? Breitbart was fiercely proud of his angry assholishness. take no prisoners style, and didn’t much care who got hurt in his jihad against liberalism and liberals.
And I see it like Matt, that under the contempt i had for the dude, was an appreciation that he personified his world view of right wing depravity that few could match, as the sign of the times, for the whole bunch on that side of the pig farm. It is always nice to see the steamy piles as they are. Even Limbaugh couldn’t match the sheer intensity of rage and miscreant logic Andrew reached, in his short and spittle flecked life.
I don’t think he will become an icon, even though some will try to make him one. He was a successful clown, and they never get their due in untimely death, not now, not ever.
Jennifer
Glad to see this caught the attention of a front pager – hopefully because I pimped it in the last thread. It’s nutbars all the way down over there. I’ve been gleefully abusing wingers over there since Thursday.
eemom
@Soonergrunt:
believe me you, I have seen the sucker jump the shark many, many times in the 25 years I’ve been a subscriber.
Maybe it’s just me, but that cartoon just struck me as way off the charts in its ugliness.
Naive and Sentimental
I hadn’t known about Breitbart attacking Ted Kennedy right after his death, that just sort of makes the whole circle complete. Because Breitbart lived by the sword of speaking ill of the dead he disagreed with, I can’t really get upset speaking ill of him in ways I feel are accurate.
Erik Erickson hopefully will live a long life and pass away peacefully, because if he dies while still politically relevant, his remarks about David Souter will mark a similar dismissal for anyone asking for respect for the dead.
Cassidy
Respect is earned. The simple act of dying isn’t incredibly respect worthy.
b-psycho
@eemom: That was even more fucking stupid than I expected it to be.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
It’s over the top, but not out of bounds, IMO. At best, you can argue that the range of what’s considered “in bounds” is broader for Obama than it has been for other recent Presidents. But I’m not sure even that is a valid argument. I remember Conrad and Herblock, and some of what they did to Nixon was pretty extreme.
quannlace
I saw that one in my paper’s editorial section. Couldn’t figure out what he was supposed to have drawn on top of Obama’s head. A fez?
Raven
@burnspbesq: Nixon did it to himself, they just drew it.
Suffern ACE
Uncle. Uncle. Uncle. I’m not one to do this, but could this please be the last post on this guy’s death until something new happens? I mean, next week we’re going to subjected to his final proof that Obama and Bill Ayers have been plotting a racial coup since the late 80s. Can we start talking about him again then.
Raven
@quannlace:
No I’m never gonna do it without the fez on
Oh no
No I’m never gonna do it without the fez on
Oh no
That’s what I am
Please understand
I want to be your holy man
No I’m never gonna do it without the fez on
Oh no
Ain’t never gonna do it without the fez on
Oh no
That’s what I am
Please understand
I want to be your holy man
b-psycho
Since it made the last open thread late…
In case anyone hasn’t been up on going-ons w/ Cato during the Full-Koch Takeover attempt: the Kochs nominated Hindrocket to the board. Seriously.
burnspbesq
My feelings about Taibbi have been amply documented here, but lines have been crossed. RS should be talking to the FBI. Those people need to go down hard.
Jennifer
@Suffern ACE: Maybe we should pace ourselves. After all, he’s going to continue to be dead for the rest of our lives.
Damn, that makes me positively giddy.
Soonergrunt
@Suffern ACE: Well, I can’t promise anything since (being the slow child of the front pagers) I haven’t done MY obligatory “Fuck Breitbart and Limbaugh” post yet.
burnspbesq
@Raven:
That dog won’t hunt. Either there are standards, or there aren’t. You can’t have it both ways.
Raven
@burnspbesq: The hell I can’t. You been on that shit all day.
Litlebritdifrnt
“it’s a Fez, Fezzes are cool” Sorry but it had to be said.
Soonergrunt
Here’s a great dad–the CEO of Carbonite, posting on the company’s Facebook page today:
Mornington Crescent
Here’s an ad for KLM’s Meet and Seat feature, which I found a tad creepy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL2lWn7oup4
burnspbesq
@b-psycho:
This is priceless. More popcorn, anyone?
Litlebritdifrnt
@burnspbesq:
And in other news Orly Taitz is posting on her blog that the judges who have ruled against her should be taken to the gallows. I shit you not. Why that bitch has not been disbarred goes to the great shame of the CA State Bar, apparently to them calling for judges to be executed is not a disbarring worthy offense, who knew?. I have it on good authority that the FBI have been informed.
burnspbesq
@Raven:
If you want to succumb to that kind of hypocrisy, that’s your affair.
JPL
Fox is having a forum or something and TPM is covering it. link
Felanius Kootea
@Mornington Crescent: I found it to be quite creepy actually. I’m hoping people will have a chance to opt out of being “found” by some crazy stalker type.
WWSaintBreitbartD
Has professional arsehole Matt Taibbi ever corrected his claims of
The Iraq surge is a failure and the Iraq war is lost.
The turkey GW Bush served was plastic.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Soonergrunt:
Like I said, do NOT piss off the Daddy of a daughter, they tend to get REALLY, REALLY protective. I should imagine that Ms. Flukes Daddy is sharpening his knives right now.
Raven
@burnspbesq: I’m not succumbing to shit, Nixon was a murdering, racist fucking scumbag. No cartoon could have been worse than what he was.
burnspbesq
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I don’t think you hear me disagreeing. The practical problem is that the State Bar has to go to the Legislature every year to get its budget and fee structure approved, and the wingnuts in the Legislature have never hesitated to fuck with the administration of justice to make non-germane political points.
Raven
Duke’s makin a run.
Martin
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Depend on the dad. Some are better at keeping that in check. I’m not one of those. I was probably about 3 minutes from prison after something the kid next door said to my daughter some years back. Fortunately Mrs. Martin was around and yanked me back in the house, but I had my shovel in my hand and I was going to use it.
burnspbesq
@Raven:
And the point of that cartoon is that Obama is personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Syrian civilians. You can agree or disagree, but the larger point seems to have whizzed right by you.
lamh35
@Soonergrunt: Amen. I believe that at first Carbonite was saying that they were “reevaluating” their advertisement on Rushbo’s show, and they would make a decision after a “face to face” with Limpballs.
I’m thinking that the CEO’s two daughters had a “come to Jesus” moment with dear old dad and the writing was already on the wall even with the apology.
Good on him.
burnspbesq
@Raven:
Too little, too late. The real Carolina showed up tonight.
Suffern ACE
@soonergrunt- you know, there are some cultures where NOT ever mentioning the dead again is the greatest insult possible. Its the kind of cultural change I could get behind.
Carl Nyberg
The Right whining about Breitbart being treated badly rings a bit false.
Adam Andrzjewski, a Right Wing activist in Illinois, posted a FB link to a page that began…
Breitbart was a hater. That’s why the Right loved him.
It’s disingenuous for the Right to memorialize him as a hater and to complain that others are noting that he was a hater.
RD
@burnspbesq:
My second favorite maneuver, after going down slow.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Martin:
He he. My DH is grateful that I was around to drag him back when someone did the same thing with one of his daughters. Personally I think Daddies of daughters are the most dangerous creatures on the planets, well that and rednecks with weedeaters.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
We sometimes say at times like these that “the good die young.” This ain’t one of ’em. Bravo Taibbi.
WyldPirate
@Maude:
Spaghetti Lee
That horrible, disrespectful librul spoke ill of the dead! Let’s threaten to kill him and his family!
Petorado
Nice work Breitbart Youth.
Taibbi’s insults were actually an homage to the man. Breitbart wanted to be whatever pisses off liberals, updated hourly. Taibbi’s epitaph essentially said Andrew succeeded at his life’s work, however reprehensible it was. The wingnuts didn’t get the joke.
The Syria cartoon, man, that’s effed-up.
burnspbesq
@WyldPirate:
“I thought he was always trying to imitate Hunter S. Thompson.”
And that’s a big part of his problem.
burnspbesq
One more good game tonight: BYU – Gonzaga at 11:00 Eastern on ESPNU.
Spaghetti Lee
@eemom:
The Wapoo is getting bloodthirsty. We haven’t started a new war in years! How do you expect poor Bill Kristol to get a stiffy now? So they’re bringing out the big guns: weapons-grade concern-trolling accusing everyone who doesn’t support All War All The Time of wanting those poor civilians to die! Obviously, they’d be much safer if tens of thousands of troops stormed the country and invaded Damascus.
Mnemosyne
@burnspbesq:
Yes, because Nixon bombing Cambodia is exactly the same thing as Obama not invading Syria.
Have you ever met a false equivalence you didn’t love?
trollhattan
Taibbi lived a good while in post-Soviet Russia. There’s nothing the Spin and Marty edition of the Republican mafia can do to scare him, given who and what he experienced there. Breitbart was never more than D-list and that makes his winged monkeys a rather feeble lot.
RD
@burnspbesq:
Only degenerate gamblers care what happens between BYU and Gonzaga.
Is that how you lost your job?
scav
And there’s old WA Caucussing its life out and no one paying attention (unless the sites only acting wonky for me, maybe you’ve all covered this by now). Dogged on Gold in 2nd even
magurakurin
@burnspbesq: And he only imitates HST in style not spirit. Because I’m pretty goddamn sure if HST were still alive today he would be a full on Obot. He would realize that, despite Obama’s flaws, he is one of the best who has ever climbed up and out of the sick and twisted fever swamp that is US politics. MT, not so much.
MikeJ
@scav: Hell, I know Republicans in Washington and none of them are paying attention.
MikeJ
@burnspbesq:
I’ve said it before: the worst thing Thompson ever did was make it look easy.
Jennifer
More potential good may come of Breitbart’s death, too: Breitbart Attack Muppet Dana Loesch may end up having to go back to work at Taco Bell.
Billy Beane
For those with short memories here is just one of the reasons all I have say is FUCK BRIETBART. The best thing he ever did for the world was die and become worm food. At least worms are useful.
http://www.americablog.com/2012/03/andrew-breitbart-on-ted-kennedys.html
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan:
I saw one of his followers called him “our Samuel Adams”. The combination of dangerously little knowledge and bloated self-importance is, to quote Madeleine Kahn, simultaneously funny and sad.
Suffern ACE
@spaghetti lee- we have always been at war with Baloachistan. Well first, we need to create Balochistan. Then figure out how we are going to defend Balochistan from its enemies.
RD
@Jennifer:
Yup. One of his grief-motivated copycats does something extremely stupid and ends up in federal prison for the next 20 years
samara morgan
@Billy Beane: no, the best thing he did was die early so the rest of us were spared the twin horrorshows of Big Education and Big Science.
eemom
@efgoldman:
exactly. As I said above, THAT is where it crosses the line.
Cacti
What’s the difference between Andrew Breitbart and a dead skunk lying in the road?
Skid marks in front of the skunk.
samara morgan
@RD: what conservatives dont seem to understand, was AB alienated every demographic except white conservative christians.
yelling YOU GO TO HELL at the head of the NAACP isnt going to attract the black vote, and his epic performance as Angry STOP RAPING sandwichboard guy is not exactly calculated to bring in the youth vote.
scav
@MikeJ: well, the numbers didn’t seem to be that big so I’m not surprised by the lack of thrills on the ground. But, this being the innertubes, I expected more arm-waving. We must all be worn out. Upper appendages worn down through overuse. Quite ármless, to quote at least 2 Doctors.
Ben Franklin
Andrew Breitbart; Death of a Douche.
It takes balls, Taibbi. Well done.
Yutsano
Am I the only one who noticed this?
I thought Taibbi was a confirmed bachelor with a long-time companion. Did something happen when I wasn’t looking again?
Joel
@Maude: I wonder, sometimes, if he’ll become an unhinged wingnut like him in the end, too. Doubt it, though. I don’t see Hunter S. Thompson in his future, either.
Ben Franklin
@burnspbesq:
Fuck you, burnsie. The New Journalism had many adherents,
Check your USC diploma, at the fucking door.
Suffern ACE
@eemon- I suppose it would be better to have him sit there with his eyes closed and his fingers in his ears, but then it wouldn’t have made sense to draw him sitting in front of the TV.
Jennifer
@samara morgan: As LittlePig noted over at TBogg’s, any day now we can expect Andrew Breitbart’s Big Hell to come online.
Ben Franklin
@magurakurin:
Yeah. HST would be an obot. Are you incontinent? Because I sure smell a lot of shit coming from your direction.
Jennifer
@Yutsano: Taibbi isn’t gay, if that’s what you’re asking. I think he did get married within the last couple of years, but on that point I’m not entirely sure.
gbear
@Jennifer: Has James O’Keefe made any kind of statement since Breitbart’s death, or has he run off to hide his sorry and vulnerable ass away from the people that he scammed (and their lawyers)? He’s gotta be shitting bricks now with his sugar daddy gone.
priscianusjr
I never heard of this Gary McCoy character before, but I’ve been checking out his cartoons just now, and actually, they’re ALL like that.
gbear
Oh powers-that-be, could you please remove me from moderation? Thanx.
burnspbesq
@Ben Franklin:
It would be the best sex of your life, but I have standards, and you’ll never meet them. I require an IQ of at least 12 in my partners.
Yutsano
@Jennifer: I know he’s not gay, but he mentions having a long-time girlfriend. He may have pulled the trigger some time in the last year. Or she gave him an ultimatum.
Joel
@Jennifer: Maybe her husband can keep the family afloat with his rapping career.
angler
Thanks for posting on Taibbi.
He suffers from the same disease of other popular liberal journo/bloggers–compromised by the need to keep his sources happy and by the opinion of other in the lime light journos–but he had the self respect to recognize what he was up against after the fact.
Josh Marshall and Sully, for example, bent over backwards to say what a great guy Breitbart was. TPM went farther and scrubbed its comments and banned anyone criticizing. Taibbi tried to be clever in praising Breitbart, and that was lost on the horde. Marshall and Sully went for the straight ass kiss. They can rest easy not having their phone numbers published, but really they aren’t appealing to the readers on this, but to the DC village, currying its favor by showing regard for a beloved member of team Red.
That praising Breitbart, who made his bones by contravening journalistic integrity, gets you some cred in DC says it all about the world we live in.
Amazingly David Frum had more balls on this score. Posting the following link in the comments got me banned at TPM: http://www.newser.com/story/140876/breitbart-leaves-poisonous-legacy.html
RD
@samara morgan:
My first impulse would be meh, but Dana Loesch is vengeful.
Ben Franklin
@burnspbesq:
Dredging the swamp is how lawyers do it. The slime makes it unnecessary for lube.
Mike G
If you want something even more hilariously acidic, check out Mark Ames’ response to Brietbart’s death. Ames wrote for The Exile newspaper in Moscow with Taibbi years ago, and was recently a target of an abortive attack by Breitbart:
http://exiledonline.com/mark-ames-1-andrew-breitbart-0-exiled-editor-does-dirty-chicken-dance-on-breitbart%e2%80%99s-grave/
Peregrinus
@Yutsano:
When he changed the format of Taibblog he mentioned that he was a guy living in the suburbs with his wife and dog. Something must’ve happened.
Ben Franklin
@Mike G:
Dang….HST would be proud.
burnsie could play the owner of Fat Fred’s Trout Farm, in the next movie with Johnny Depp.
angler
@Mike G: +1
Soonergrunt
@WWSaintBreitbartD: One does not correct things that are true. SATSQ.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@angler:
Most media types have Daddy issues. Conservatives represent Daddy. And Daddy must be pleased, at all costs. This is America, after all.
BTW, Breitbart was a worthless asshole. Our world is ever so slightly less disgusting with his absence.
eemom
@Mike G:
“even more hilariously acidic” is kind of an understatement:
Also lays it on a tad thick about how he totally WON whatever little pissing match Breitbart had going with him, but wev. He certainly does make Taibbi look like Miss Manners.
mick
fyi apropos of nada: im in beijing. Rolling Stone is blocked in Beijing. so is Digby and Daily Howler.
obviously BJ is not incendiary enough to capture the chinese censor’s attention! more incendiary please!
Ben Franklin
Here’s HSTs farewell to Nixon. Keep in mind, this is 1994 and Thompson is a shadow of his former self.
I dedicate this to burnsie, who seems to carry a torch for both Nixon and Thompson, for unmentionable reasons.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/8699/
“Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing — a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that “I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon.”
I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, and I am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.”
Suffern ACE
@mick: Power to the people! Self Determination for Taiwan! Free Tibet! The Chinese Parliament has more billionaires than our own Congress-talk about a capitalist oligarchy! General Tsao’s Chicken is authentic and much better than any of the native slop! (how was that?)
pseudonymous in nc
@angler:
Remember when TPM did investigative reporting instead of SEO-driven story-of-the-hour bullshit?
[sigh]
Yutsano
@Suffern ACE: You fergot Tiananmen Square was a slaughter of peacefully protesting citizens by the government. The Muslim oppression of Uighurs in Xinjiang, absolute destruction of the environment, and such.
pseudonymous in nc
@Peregrinus:
He was profiled recently in, of all places, Town & Country magazine. One thing that the VF piece on The Exile noted was that while Ames spooned speed into his coffee in Russia, Taibbi snorted heroin.
Suffern ACE
@Yutsano: Look, I don’t actually want the site banned in China. Think – if everyone in China clicked here just once in the next month, we might get some better ads on this site.
angler
@pseudonymous in nc: It’s been a sad decline. Not sure when they fell off the cliff for me, sometime in 2009, but GW Bush was Josh’s muse, and with him gone TPM more or less resembles Marshall’s original ventures for the American Prospect in the 1990s. Center left CVW recycling.
Ben Franklin
How could I have forgotten this excerpt…?
“Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.”
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@angler: Interesting. I keep checking TPM, but it’s been meh for a long while now. The site is maddening, because they’ll headline the same story in five different ways. And they’ve dropped the crowd-source journalism that helped break the US Attorney story.
Just not much there worth reading any more.
geg6
@Ben Franklin:
You and I don’t agree on many things, but that is my favorite obit of all time. Truly a masterpiece. By THE master.
angler
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: Exactly. Trolling for page clicks, goosing Palin when she was still a draw, horse-racing the primaries, just a big decline for what promised to be a prototype of lfet-leaning investigative journalism and opinion.
Cap'n Magic
Let’s not forget that Taibbi is writing for a music magazine and not Pravda or the Grey Lady. After all, as those dittoheads and others of that ilk will constantly chime when you cite RS, MotherJones, et al., is that they “Aren’t a credible (news) organization.”
Anne Laurie
@Suffern ACE:
I was actually thinking about this — the only times I ever heard about Breitbart during his days above ground were when he was having a public meltdown. Things like charging out of a restaurant to attack DFHs who turned out to be protesting against the abuse of child soldiers, or his recent stop-raping-everybody tantrum against the Occupy DC protestors at CPAC. He was Matt Drudge’s drudge, then he used that experience to network his Big Nothingburger sites into a place where more assertively criminal ratfvckers could use their creativity to destroy innocent peoples’ lives and careers. Apart from getting sued by Shirley Sherrod (and I hope his estate loses that one in the most public way possible), Breitbart was just the guy standing behind and slightly to the right of whatever genuinely inventive ugliness was being perpetrated. His place in history, such as there is one, will be as the Peter Lawford or Jackie Kennedy of the Wingnut Welfare Wurlitzer during the first decade of the current century — a style icon for the relentless mediocre, but not an individual even the most desperate scholar would choose for their thesis work.
bk
@burnspbesq: As did the real Duke.
Another Halocene Human
@Maude: Taibbi has more talent in his left pinky finger than Hitchens did in his entire body. Hitchens was a pretty good debater but not the best thinker, professing to be all about reason and logic but actually led around by base and petty emotions such as the desire for revenge and delight in the suffering of others. His own work is plagued by insecurity and name-dropping, as if his only merit was the rarified circles he was dropped into by dint of his parents’ connections.
Taibbi is a hard worker and a kickass reporter and has no pretense. What you see is what you get.
I used to go to nydn.com just to read Taibbi. I can’t recall ever seeking out Hitchens’ columns. If I read his writing it was only because he had pissed someone off and there was another mini-furore. I did watch videos of him because he could destroy weak debaters in person. With Stephen Fry backing him up. On a topic upon which there is very little doubt.