Saturday, March 3, 2012

Andrew Breitbart

I feel sad at Andrew Breitbart's passing, and that surprises me. Part of the feeling is due to the fact that he was young and leaves behind a young family. But more than that, I feel that the loss of Breitbart is the loss of a very effective warrior for conservatism.

He was always pretty indignant about liberals, so it always somewhat concerned me that his media appearances might do more harm that good. The Sherrod incident was also a big mistake. The way that video was edited definitely left a different impression of what Sherrod was saying than the full video gave. Breitbart said he received the video edited,and I believe that. As Mickey Kaus points out, Breitbart took steps to correct the record, when he felt it needed to be corrected, even if the correction wasn't in his interests. Still it was probably a mistake not to vet the Sherrod video more thoroughly. The editing obscured the point the video still tended to proved. Sherrod told a story of redemption. But the NAACP crowd's reactions to the parts of the tape that Sherrod later repudiates, showing their agreement with the racist (anti-white, if that "counts") sentiment.

But I think I'm most sad because I'm not sure anyone will do what Breitbart did. He was a great counterbalance to the MSM's gotcha journalism and a very effective warrior against what I guess you could call the liberal establishment. He and James O'Keeffe took down ACORN. The bounty he offered for the jounolist archives and emails went a long way to showing that there was something untoward about it. The reward he offered for any video showing tea partiers shouting racist the n-word did a great deal to discredit that story. He took down Wiener. He did all this with such savvy. He'd never show his full hand, let the target twist in the wind and deny, deny, deny. Only after they'd thoroughly denied, would he completely expose them. He was basically conservative's prosecutor of the liberal establishment and he had a great flair for cross examination. Even in death, he's exposing liberal intolerance. So I am sad, because Breitbart's death is a big loss for conservatives.

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