Andrew Breitbart Is Dead

UPDATE: As can probably be expected, Breitbart's acolytes appear quite convinced that he was assassinated - surely another victim of the Terrifying Black Man who haunts their nightmares.

No doubt, kind of a shocker.

Obviously, it's no kind of "happy" occasion when someone clocks-out at 43 leaving a wife and 4 kids behind; it's easy to forget that someone whose "public face" and/or actions lead most to consider them fairly vile human beings can be someone's father, husband, son, etc. "offstage." I won't pretend to be especially "sad" for Breitbart himself, particularly considering I remember him asking "Why do you grant a bully special status upon his death?" when Ted Kennedy passed away. But for all the negativity that surrounded the man in life, I never heard anyone call him a bad father, so I have to assume his family is crushed by their loss and I feel bad for them.

Breitbart was an early Matt Drudge ally who assisted Ariana Huffington in the creation of Huffington Post; before striking out on his own with a series of websites (most notably "Big Hollywood") supposedly aimed at combating the boogeyman of "liberal media bias." The sites became a rallying point for writers and psuedo-celebrities of the extreme political-right, and really took off a few years ago with an infusion of support for the "Tea Party" movement.

"The Bigs" and their proprietor had their most infamous moments a few years ago, when they published video clips which seemed to show Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod ( making racist remarks, leading to her persecution and resignation. The video clips were later revealed to have been edited from a longer piece in order to radically change the point of Sherrod's words. A defemation lawsuit against Breitbart and his associates remains ongoing. He was also a major player in the bizzare career of James O'Keefe, the video-prankster responsible for the "undercover expose" of ACORN workers - which also wound up being based on edited/cherry-picked video evidence.