The rehabilitation of Andrew Breitbart is proceeding at the speed of ‘net.
On a day where President Obama’s late mother is said to be copulating with a dog in an awful joke spread by a Montana federal judge, and Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona is holding press conferences on national TV to announce the President’s birth certificate is a “forgery” we have Andrew Breitbart’s death, as covered earlier by ABL.
Here’s my problem. Andrew Breitbart did truly awful things. But his rehabilitation into a great guy begins with crap like this from David Frum:
Because President Obama was black, and because Breitbart believed in using every and any weapon at hand, Breitbart’s politics did inevitably become racially coded. Breitbart’s memory will always be linked to his defamation of Shirley Sherrod and his attempt to make a national scandal out of back payments to black farmers: the story he always called “Pigford” with self-conscious resonance.
Yet it is wrong to see Breitbart as racially motivated. Had Breitbart decided he hated a politician whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower, Breitbart would have been just as delighted to attack that politicians with a different set of codes. The attack was everything, the details nothing.
No. See, no. This is equivocating, self-serving, puerile bullshit of the highest magnitude right here, and it’s the major reason why the ruined wasteland of American journalism that Andrew Breitbart helped to create was allowed to happen because the people who clearly knew better gave him a pass anyway.
Frum is basically saying that Breitbart did racist things, used racist phrases, and played on racial fears and stereotypes, but he wasn’t a racist because he was either playing a character or that he hated everyone equally.
To which I again cry “bullshit”. That is such astonishing white privilege as to be shocking, and it’s all the more terrible because Frum clearly admits in his obituary piece that Andrew Breitbart did really unforgivable things, and still calls him a “loyal friend”. He wasn’t a bad person, he just was playing the game that he helped to create, and it’s really heart-rending that the discourse is in tatters right now, but hey, it’s okay, he wasn’t a racist, he hated women and Muslims and liberals and academics and environmentalists too, so it’s all good.
Sorry Frum. You don’t get to dispense this particular plenary indulgence. You don’t get to posthumously absolve him of his sins. You don’t get to play the “loveable bastard” card. He was a darkness on the American political media scene, and his death left behind a country where you think it’s okay to treat people like animals, objects, or worse just because you feel you can just explain away the behavior as acceptable due to “you can’t prove intent”.
And so you give him a pass, and CNN gives him a pass, and Dave Weigel gives him a pass, and Arianna Huffington gives him a pass, and the GOP clown car crew gives him a pass, and before the election we’re going to have at least one Republican running for office demand that the President be impeached for the “cover-up over Breitbart’s death” and the emails will go flying around and everyone will have a good laugh at the ni-CLANG President and Frum will continue to lament why his party has become full of racist assholes and he’ll shrug and say “The attack was everything, the details nothing” and racism and bigotry and hatred will become that much more acceptable in society because Oh Well What Can You Do, He Said As He Shook His Head.
Frum of course will never figure out that the only thing worse than a bigoted, racist jackass of a liar is the person who excuses that kind of behavior and enables it to happen. And in that very real way, David Frum is a much worse problem with our ass-over-teakettle media than Andrew Breitbart ever, ever will have been.
To be fair to David Frum, he isn’t the only one. Breitbart and his ilk were getting passes from a number of sources. Even more passes are being issued in the wake of Breitbart’s death. And so it goes as we spiral into hell with afterburners alight, we are reminded here that in the end, as it always is, the racist bigoted asshole is the true victim for having to be forced to live in an America with a black President he never wanted thrust upon him.
For tomorrow, the fresh hell of the news cycle begins anew, and Breitbart’s pervasive taint will be all over it and the many, many news cycles to come after. The dead racist guy gets the last laugh in this America. His replacement will invariably be worse.
That’s how the game is played. Hate the game, not the players? I choose to call out the people who make the game possible. That means you, David Frum. You’re a big, big reason why we’re in this hellhole with your fellow travelers finding all kids of ways to justify Breitbart and those like him. You have to in perpetuity, lest you see the abyss staring back at you with your own face.
Each and every last one of the progressive ZOMGDONTSAYANYTHINGBADABOUTHIM handwringers is an accessory to the monster Breitbart’s rehab effort.
Truth is ALL that matters here. Not high-falootin Marquess of Queensberry rules of engagement.
Truth is ALL that matters here. Not high-falootin Marquess of Queensberry rules of engagement.
Isn’t that what Breitbart would have said?
Wouldn’t he have called ABL’s criticism of his style of attack “Marquess of Queensbury rules of engagement?”
You can take Andrew Breitbart as your role model if you like, but I don’t. You think you’re going to make me feel bad about that? Good luck with that.
Except that Breitbart’s relation to the truth was to twist it out of all recognition when he wasn’t lying out of his fucking ass. Your point kind of gets lost against that.
The Breitfart apologists can do whatever they like to make chicken salad of a little chickenshit like Andrew. All they do is promote mass delusion in their ranks and gives us libruls a hearty laugh.
Enjoy Hell, Breitbart. And don’t worry about that 18″ black rubber Dildo in the closet. O’keefe called dibs on it..
This This This This This This This This This This This This This
… you get the idea.
Amen.
I couldn’t even bring myself to express sympathy for his family. I figure they have been enablers of Breitbart’s hate just like all these media types (including a LOT of folks you and I both follow, Imani) who have been very carefully not writing what they think.
Kudos to you, Imani.
kudos to Zandar. :)
I actually thought the Frum piece was pretty good, and I would hardly put it in the same category as the fawning tributes to this shitpile that you cited on other sites. Frum basically said that Breitbart was an asshole, he was an asshole to most everyone, and had Obama not been black, he’d have found a different way to be an asshole towards him. But he took easy way of being a racist, because he was at heart, an asshole.
Frum didn’t give him a pass. He said Breitbart was a lying shit who brought down his party and profession. The fact that he was a racist was just part and parcel of him being an asshole of the highest order. Being no more of a racist than most other prominent republicans is hardly a compliment.
Agreed. I read the Frum article, and no, it did NOT give Breitbart a pass.
This “rehabilitation of the dead” nonsense has a me running Godwin-esque commentary in my head. I’m too smart to say it out loud though.
But it’s utterly offensive & ridiculous to apologize for this guy now. If he wanted to, he could’ve done it while alive.
As I’ve said before, I only have sympathy for his children since they had no choice about being related to him. But the rest of his “friends” are just asswipes like Andrew himself.
People who hated him when he was alive are now finding all sorts of reasons he wasn’t a complete total jackass. I didn’t like him then. I don’t feel any different now — except for being glad he’s dead. His death just removes a montrous evil from the public discourse. One less canker to deal with.
Ok – I’ll be the wimp here. I didn’t like Breitbart. Didn’t like his tactics, his lack of ethics, his ideology – none of it.
But I would never wish him – or anyone else dead. And I’m sorry if you feel they helped him, but his family shouldn’t be part of this conversation, unless you can directly point to things they did. If it were someone on the left who died that was as equally reviled on the right – and the right went after their family in the ways I’ve seen today, you’d all be jumping on them for being barbaric cretins with no sense of decency.
I don’t agree with the rehabilitation. And I do agree that those who enabled him in the media share a huge portion of the blame for the effect he had. But I think it’s common decency to leave the family out of it, and express condolences for their loss, regardless of what you thought of him.
And for those that would say “the other side would do it without thinking”, well, that would be the point, wouldn’t it. So, stoop to their level, or be the humane people we say we are.
Rail against his actions and their effects. But in the end, a man, a father, a husband died. And that family deserves the proper respect for losing their loved one.
If it were someone on the left who died that was as equally reviled on the right – and the right went after their family in the ways I’ve seen today, you’d all be jumping on them for being barbaric cretins with no sense of decency.
Indeed, we did. When Andrew Breitbart responded to Ted Kennedy’s death by calling him “a pile of human excrement,” we jumped all over him as a barbaric cretin with no sense of decency.
Apparently, different segments of us did so for different reasons. It appears that some of us did so because we believe that it is wrong to behave that way, while others did so because rah rah go team.
Badass rant, Z. Bravo, bravo!!!
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy…karma is a bitch…good riddance to bad rubbish. So when do we get to read this about Beck and Limbaugh too?
I hope they live long enough so that children can throw spoiled food at them. I also want the chance to humiliate them.
Oh, fuck this!
I’m getting my red shoes on and doing a Salsa on his grave!
Here you go. I believe you’ll appreciate it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFl7f_Q3uKM
I’ve never been charitable to that guy. In fact I’ve been getting meaner by the day.
I will admit, I struggled with how to react to the news that Breitbart had passed, as I like many have been taught not to speak ill of the dead. That being said, this is a man that had no compunctions about speaking ill of the dead himself. Example: Tweeting that Senator Kennedy was a “special kind of excrement” after his passing.
This was a man filled with hatred, an obvious bigot, someone that had no concept of truth and honor. It turns my stomach to see the way that many of those that opposed him in life are beatifying him in death.
The world is a better place now that he’s gone. Simple as that. Now if Rush, the entire crew of Faux News, Beck and a few others would take a plane trip together that had sudden engine problems, perhaps then we’d see an end to the style of hack journalism that is practiced on the far right.
The unholy alliance of Breitbart and Aryanna took a brush fire and made it into a forest fire with fanning the flames of outrage. Obviously they cut a deal where Aryanna brought outrage media to the left and Breitbart fanned the flames even higher on the right. They are both right wing opportunists that really only care about $$$.
Great post, Zandar.
It’s not remotely the same magnitude, but I remember Kathleen Parker being all aggrieved over the horrible, NASTY emails she got after bashing Sarah Palin. And I remember thinking “Honey, YOU were the one who wrote a column during the lead-up to the Iraq War about how you wanted to run over war protestors in your SUV (because FUCK YOU HIPPIES AMERICA FUCK YEAH FOAM-RUBBER FINGER # that’s why!) So no — you don’t get to sit there and wail and clutch your pearls over poisonous political discourse when you’ve been in the smelly kitchen stirring the venomous brew.”
I am sick unto death of the people who have been wrong, wrong, wrong — and not just wrong, but tragically so — and the people who have been aiding and abetting the wrongness and evil being given a pass because they’re really just loveable scamps and it’s “just the way they are” (indulgent chuckle, whaddya gonna do, boys will be boys?) If “the way you are” is a lying bag of destructive puke, then guess what? The way you are means YOU SUCK and that doesn’t change once you’re down for the count.
And I’m also sick unto death of people like Shrum (and hell, most of the self-styled “progressives” — Kos, Greenwald, Aravosis, Taylor Marsh, and the rest of the folks who either paid no attention or who thought Reagan and the GOP were just SCRUMPTIOUS during the beginnings of the 80s culture wars), people who have been on the wrong side of history for most of their lives, lecturing ME on what makes for proper discourse. Eat my shit. You enabled this environment when it was clear to a lot of us over 20 fucking years ago with Reagan’s “welfare queen/young buck” racist dogwhistles that the GOP was going full-throttle wingnut.
That should be “FOAM RUBBER FINGER #1,” of course.
But seriously, this whole “let’s give the Prodigal Son a pass” thing for Shrum and the others who aren’t actually parading around in Klan sheets makes me sick. As if all these bastards who are supposedly just SICK about the current state of GOP discouse wouldn’t get all tumescent and wet down below at the thought of a return to George W. Bush-style bullshit “compassionate conservatism” that would let them raid the tax-cut cookie jar and other countries and decimate the safety net even further (while making sympathetic clucking noises over the underclass to prove that they’re not RACIST, oh my no how could you SAY such a thing?)
When I read that Breitbart had died, my first thought was that maybe prayer really does work.
See – ABL is absolutely right. My family DID come over on the Mayflower (can’t choose your ancestors) and no, Breitbart did NOT go after us. We’re not the wealthy descendants (screwed up somewhere) but we have white privilege, and for some idiot to say Breitbart would EVER go after us is absolutely ridiculous! He was a racist through and through.
Look – here’s our dirty secret. Most of us middle and upper middle and upper class white people? Nothing much bad ever happens to us. Oh, the usual vagaries of life, sure – but nothing BAD happens. There aren’t even WORDS of insult for us. Oh? “Honkie” you say? Uh-uh – that’s the word WE made up for Eastern European immigrants. We did not ever face enslavement without foreseeable end, no Holocaust, no genocide and massive theft of our land, nothing. And we don’t want to THINK about what our ancestors did and how much we’ve never paid any mind about it. So we saw that people of color, indigenous folks, survivors – they all got sympathy. Well – we have guilt and don’t want it, so – we will now be VICTIMS! Hey – we’re VICTIMS of, well, Breitbart will figure it out for us, and then we can be smugly self righteous. Christians are persecuted! Affirmative Action is reverse discrimination! We have to hear other languages, and Indians have all that money! Yeah – WE are the victims, and Breitbart showed us the way! Allllll-RIIIIIGGGHHTT!
See? He played a very postive role for white privilege and restoring our anger and sense of victimhood. So to say he wasn’t racist, well, that’s a damn insult to his talent, doncha think?
He WILL be missed. Just not by ABL, not by me. not by any thinking person.
Zandar is right, you mean.
My family DID come over on the Mayflower (can’t choose your ancestors) and no, Breitbart did NOT go after us.
Good point. John Kerry’s family were New England brahmins, too. I certainly don’t remember Breitbart, or anyone else who allegedly “hates everybody,” using coded language about that background.
This may be the best comment I have ever read.
My feeling is, Shirley Sherrod can be gracious about this, and I can too.
At least, that was my feeling before a. the avalanche of people thinking this was their opportunity to rake Ted Kennedy over the coals again started, and b. people started playing the mock-naive “But he wasn’t lying about Weiner, was he, so what do you mean he was a liar?” routine on blogs I read.
Now I’m just fed up, and a little nauseated. The problem with being polite about Breitbart is that he was an icon to people who feel entitled to say whatever they want and spit on whatever grave they please, and you start to feel like a freier for not doing the same.
I say, “I feel bad for his children.”
Wingnut says, “HAHAHAHAHA, someone brought up Ted Kennedy, I get to tell more Chappaquiddick jokes!”
I do feel bad for his kids. I’ll be glad when this is out of the news.
Anyone know what happens to Sherrod’s case now?
Imagine all the good times we’ll have when Saint Rush The Pompous’ heart finally overloads on a volatile mixture of Oxycontin, Viagra, cigar smoke, beer farts and halitosis.
Brietbart use racially coded bullshit to take people and organizations down.
If he wasnt a racist himself, that makes him worse, at least the racist believes the shit they do is right, and have some integrity.
He use the racism of others to elevate himself, therefore, he’s a horrific human being by proxy, and I will not go for this beatification by these pundits, left and right
He was a troll, and died like one, rest in piss
Thank you. I was starting to feel bad because I could not dredge up one good thing to say about him.
There is something good you can say about him. It applies to the whole human condition. Eventually people die.
You make some excellent points in this post. I really don’t think propagating racism or using it as a political tool is forgivable, at least not here on earth. History tells us that, just in case we have trouble figuring it for ourselves. Breitbart may have been a good father – I wouldn’t have any idea – but he wasn’t a good, or even decent, man and that should not be glossed over. Happy warrior? That’s not a compliment when you employ the kinds of weapons that he was willing to use.
Where’s the crapulent scumball being buried? I think a regular caravan of “flower-waterers” might be in order, perhaps until the end of time.
I agree with you A.B.L. But my cynicism is more diverse. I believe the problem you’re getting at is a more pervasive one, and the responsibility for it more far reaching.
It’s a given in America that any voice, no matter how extreme, can be heard — as it should be. We also know that journalism, like any other product in the U.S. is capitalistic business based on supply and demand. The core problem is that the journalistic “product” that we U.S. people have come to demand and believe in (which we are supplied) is crap — regardless of the multitude of reasons it is crap, it is just crap. Point is, we the people are the ones responsible for allowing crap products like the Breitbarts of the world to be sustained, and become much more mainstream than they deserve. Pure journalism (unbiased who, what, where, when, why) does not exist in the U.S. because we have come to prefer that which we are given — extremism, sensationalism, etc.
Sure, the journalism world’s movers and shakers (like Frum and the others you reference) probably do deserve more than a fair share of loathing for giving birth to, nurturing, and excusing their crap. But really it is we the collective American consumer who is to blame. No one would have success giving widespread commercial voice to their beliefs if we didn’t sustain them.
I say deep shame on us. It is always easiest to blame the low hanging fruit when faced with complex problems. I think this is a deeper, widespread societal problem with no easy path to improvement. The reasonable, majority of this country needs to get out of lazy mode, and start making grassroots efforts, starting within their own families and communities, to promote and demand reasonableness, collaboration, respect in all aspects of their lives. Wake up silent majority of America.
This is a great post, Z.
I’m in ur post stealing ur creditz.
Even Lawrence O’Donnell gave him a pass on his show last night. I have been growing more and more disenchanted with Lawrence and other MSNBC apologists like Chris Matthews as of late. These media people give passes to Buchy and Tony Perkins as well. They are just showing their own support of the hate spewing crap that these men put out there by allowing them to comment on their shows. When they know damn well what their rhetoric is doing to kids struggling with bullying and their sexual orientation issues.
Well, ever since David Gregory danced like a giggly junior at the prom with Karl Rove, I’ve figured they’re just in thrall to the “Bad Boys.” It’s why the cool demeanor of Obama bugs them so much. To the mental midgets who now make up the pundit set, “talking tough” is all that matters. And then they’re SHOCKED when the mirror is turned on them, as Colbert did in his brilliant press correspondents’ dinner speech. He was so RUDE and INCIVIL boo hoo hoo! Didn’t he know how IMPORTANT they are! They get to be on the TEE-VEE!
The details are nothing to you, Frum, because you don’t suffer any of the consequences.
You guys realize that this post was written by Zander, yes? Just checking in on that point. Carry on.
Or Zandar, I should say. Type. Whatever. Give me caffeine.
PS, excellent work.
Type.
Misspelling “typo” is teh awesome under any circumstances.
Misspelling “typo” in a comment correcting a typo, which appeared in a comment in which you corrected others for an oversight? This awesome goes to eleven.
Er…we do now.
Which is worse? The racist, or the politician who makes dog-whistle appeals to the racist even though they know they are wrong.
Give me an honest racist any day.
The true test for Breitfarts followers is where he will be eulogized. Then buried. Who shows up and will continue to honor him in whatever resting place they got for him. Or will he have a private function where all his adoring fans can weep but not dare acknowledge their presence, and then make sure said resting place doesn’t become a recycled beer depository, have him cremated or buried at sea? Time will tell.