Catholic and Conservative Host of Syndicated DaTechGuy on DaRadio on Money Matters & FTR Radio Networks, WBNW AM 1120 Concord WPLM 1390 Plymouth WESO 970 Southbridge (also featuring Roxeanne De Luca, Lisa M & Rebecca!)
Like the conspiratorial “dog whistle” of our statist adversaries’ nightmares, Breitbart’s passing was a call-to-arms for the freedom fighters to ratchet up our defense of the Shining City. ”
I will update this post with a response to his post, “Liz Glover confronts Andrew Breitbart and Dana Loesch over GOProud ban,” since I only just read it today. However, I will point out that the fact that the reason she caught up with him was the dignity and respect he was showing to A Conservative Lesbian thoroughly spoils the leftist narrative. I’m guessing the last thing she expected was to have that argument directly with a conservative lesbian involved and fighting back, literally shoulder-to-shoulder with Andrew Breitbart.
Andrew was constantly the target of homophobic slurs from the tolerant left.
Well. As a typical average nobody, can I just say? It’s awesome when a bigger voice speaks for you. And that’s what Andrew Breitbart did. When nobody-ol’-me attended the Code Red anti-Obamacare rally, and promptly got accused of terrible racism, what good would my little tiny voice have done?
Not much. Enter Andrew Breitbart, who offered $100,000 to anyone who could provide evidence of this supposed outburst of racism. Of course, no such evidence existed. Because it was a lie.
Andrew would not have considered her a nobody. Jonah Goldberg:
60 Minutes won awards for hidden cameras, but when he used the same technique to embarrass liberals, such tactics were suddenly proclaimed ethically beyond the pale. The joke was on the scolds because they had to cover the stories anyway. And the stories got results. Congress defunded ACORN. Heads rolled at NPR. Andrew understood that news and arguments change politics if you can get the news and arguments to the people — and if you don’t let those who don’t like what you say define you.
For the left the messenger justifies the means John Podhoretz:
that I was older and with a longer career in the news biz meant nothing to him, and it shouldn’t have. He understood something I didn’t — that the guildlike nature of media was about to shatter into a million pieces; gatekeepers like me (I was then editing these pages) would have to reconcile ourselves to the entry of amateurs who had something new and powerful to contribute, or we’d be crushed by the shattered glass.
But his vision extended beyond any single duke-out with any one Goliath. He was going after the whole Philistine gang. I remember standing with him on a corner in Westwood for a good portion of one afternoon, listening to him describe his long-term plans. He outlined the unfolding of the Bigs, which had then just begun, and went on to discuss the ways new media could break the Left’s stranglehold on culture and information to give the American public access to something closer to the truth. He even had a plan for a cultural think tank — a Great Good Place in Hollywood — where conservative artists could come for support and protection from the blacklists and beat-downs of the artistic establishment. I would be the think tank’s first president, he told me, an idea I found sweetly amusing then but which only makes my heart hurt now.
He has built an empire, Every blogger who fights the fight is a part of it. Legal Insurrection proves that this is true:
Andrew lived in a world without restraints. He could be who he wanted to be, a luxury few bloggers have, particularly those who blog under their own name and work for others.
I live in a world of restraints, and I envied Andrew’s freedom more than you can know.
Andrew is irreplaceable, but we would serve his memory well to aspire to more freedom of thought and more freedom of action.
I’ve often wondered where to go with this blog. I now know.
To the left celebrating his death, people like William picking up the flag and going forward unafraid is the great nightmare.
Andrew Breitbart’s entire mission, both on Twitter and on his Big sites, was to say to the MSM, you don’t get the final word anymore. It’s now a conversation. We’ll consider what you report, and how you report it, and determine for ourselves how factually accurate it is. How well it matches up with our worldview. How well it matches up with modern “liberalism’s” mission statement that promises tolerance, diversity and multiculturalism — and if you can’t respect your neighbor, simply because he disagrees with you on the size and role of government, you’ve failed that mission statement. And when you’ve failed those objectives, we’ll call you out.
Breitbart knew instinctively, as people in Washington and most other places did not, that movies, television programs, and popular music send out deeply political messages every hour of every day. They shape the culture, and then the culture shapes politics. Influence those films and TV shows and songs, and you’ll eventually influence politics.
The Left had known that for generations, but on the Right, so many people in politics thought only about politics. To Breitbart, that was folly. “The people who have money, every four years at the last possible second, are told, ‘You need to give millions of dollars, because these four counties in Ohio are going to determine the election,’” Breitbart told the National Policy Council in October 2009. “I am saying, why didn’t we invest 20 years ago in a movie studio in Hollywood, why didn’t we invest in creating television shows, why didn’t we create institutions that would reflect and affirm that which is good about America?”
There is one video I shot of Andrew that directly reflects this. It never got the attention it deserved.
It’s significant that Andrew picked his battlefields as a brave and fearless man. When you are fighting what many conservatives believe to be a biased media in their headlines, you are fighting them on their turf, not retreating, surrendering, or simply musing off in your own little protected, right-leaning corner of the media world.
If I had to pick the blogger that most reminded me of Andrew, it would be Dan
A few months ago, I’d called or texted Breitbart about something and left my cell-phone in the kitchen, plugged in to re-charge, while I worked in my home office. So the phone rang and my son Jefferson answered, then brought the phone to me. Andrew and I talked a while and, after I’d hung up the phone, Jefferson said: “Wow, Dad, you know Andrew Breitbart?”
A lot of people knew Andrew Breitbart. He loved to meet people, to hang out and socialize. Among those whom you could call “celebrities” in the conservative movement, he was the most accessible person I knew, no matter how famous he became.
In the Fall of 2008, I was unemployed. In addition to looking for full time work, I was immersing myself in conservative new media. I had heard of Andrew Breitbart through his appearances on Red Eye and his work with Matt Drudge but back then his name wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous as it is today. Even so, when I read a news story that said Breitbart was launching a new group blog called BIG Hollywood, I was excited by the idea. Without expecting much, I emailed him. All I said was that I heard about BIG Hollywood and I liked his idea. How can I help?
Less than ten minutes later, he wrote back.
“Thanks for writing. Here’s my cell number… call me.”
You have to understand, as a blogger I email other bloggers and media people all the time. I never get a response like that so quickly. I was a little stunned but once I had a chance to gather my thoughts I called him and he answered.
“No, no, oh dear God, no”, I gasped, standing in shock staring at the TV that I was walking past in my kitchen when the news it aired stopped me in my tracks. A hand reflexively flew towards my mouth to stifle a sob as the tears fell from my eyes when my little boy came to my side and asked, “What’s wrong mommy? Are you sad? Do you need a tissue?” I looked down at my sweet little four year old and, after taking a deep breath, I told him, “One of America’s Greatest Heroes has died” and my son hugged me and then ran to bring me some tissues.
Great Heroes tend to die young because they fight from the front.
Few people are indispensible to a cause, but Andrew Breitbart was. There is no one else like him around. A good number of commentators have been saying that we should honor him by carrying on his fight using the methods he developed, and they are correct: we must not let his life’s work be in vain because his life’s work was to defeat the malignant forces of the Left and see America restored to the ways of The Founders. However, we have some mighty big shoes to fill, so it will not be easy.
One of the few tributes I disagree with. Andrew entire goal was to be replaceable, to have a 1000 Andrew Breitbarts challenging the media at even the local town level.
It doesn’t matter who we is, kemo sabe. It’s the conservatives at Drudge, the liberals at HuffPo, the leftists at DailyKos, the libertarians at Reason. It’s all of us and Breitbart helped create and grow a series of do-it-yourself demonstration projects through which we can all speak more loudly and more fully.
Yup that’s what he did and he did it for both sides oddly enough.
Via No Moss Here the Franklin Center has this video
I didn’t want to believe it, really. I personally know too many people I’d identify as Democrats, if not liberals, who are too decent to ever express such raw hate and cruelty. But a large chunk of the rank and file of the Left — way more than a small percentage — really don’t believe that their opponents deserve anything resembling basic human dignity or respect.
We’re not really people to them. It’s not an accident that New York Times columnist referred to his critics on Twitter as “right-wing lice.” They’re not good, decent Americans who just have some different ideas about how to make the world a better place. They run on hate.
My wife who has all the same interest in politics that I have in Morris Dancing was on facebook yesterday and someone made a remark about Breitbart’s death along those lines. It disgusted her and prompted her to comment.
If these guys are even getting my wife to speak up, then they’re making a huge mistake.
But instead of closing with that junk lets go with two different pieces on Andrew. First the story of the last person to ever meet him:
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Sando says he arrived at the bar in the tony Brentwood section of L.A. around 10 p.m. and soon the empty seat next to his was filled by a man with a familiar face. … Sando says the duo quickly struck up a conversation that would last a little less than two hours.
“He was friendly and engaging,” Sando recalls. “I said, ‘You can’t be very happy with the slate of Republican candidates’ and he said, ‘Why would you say that?’ I said, ‘Well, they’re talking about contraception,’ and he said, ‘The conversation is being framed by the liberal media.’ I said, ‘Well, the media isn’t writing Rick Santorum’s speeches for him.’ We had a back-and-forth for awhile until we said we weren’t going to agree on some things.”…
After the two hours, Breitbart said he was leaving. “We exchanged contact information,” Sando says. “We were going to get together.“
That is Andrew, engaging debating and challenging preconceived notions.
Part of it is his how much he inspired thousands of conservative activists, turned conservatism on its ear and completely changed how we talk about politics – all in a very short few years of prominence. The Left is scared out of its collective mind that Andrew inspired the entire Citizen Journalist Movement. ANDTHEYSHOULDBE.
That is the enduring legacy of Andrew Breitbart and will be a thorn in the side of the left for decades.
the Post couldn’t even muster the curiosity to Google the reaction. Twitter is a reliably volatile forum and collecting reactions there wouldn’t be a fair representation of the reaction among Breitbart opponents, but Slate’s Matt Yglesias isn’t just some guy on Twitter, either, and he tweeted that “The world outlook is slightly improved with @AndrewBrietbart dead.” Some of his opponents did handle the news in a professional and classy manner, including Media Matters for America, which gave a surprisingly humane response, much to their credit. However, that was hardly the norm yesterday, as the Post would have its readers believe — and the fact that they had to premoderate comments gave them a big clue as to what the actual reaction was.
These actions by a national newspaper trying to whitewash their allies is dishonorable and mendacious. I’m sure Andrew would phrase it a tad different.
One would think that 24 hours and 12 updates would be enough to tell the Andrew Breitbart story, but that just isn’t so:
Like the conspiratorial “dog whistle” of our statist adversaries’ nightmares, Breitbart’s passing was a call-to-arms for the freedom fighters to ratchet up our defense of the Shining City. “
I will update this post with a response to his post, “Liz Glover confronts Andrew Breitbart and Dana Loesch over GOProud ban,” since I only just read it today. However, I will point out that the fact that the reason she caught up with him was the dignity and respect he was showing to A Conservative Lesbian thoroughly spoils the leftist narrative. I’m guessing the last thing she expected was to have that argument directly with a conservative lesbian involved and fighting back, literally shoulder-to-shoulder with Andrew Breitbart.
Andrew was constantly the target of homophobic slurs from the tolerant left.
Well. As a typical average nobody, can I just say? It’s awesome when a bigger voice speaks for you. And that’s what Andrew Breitbart did. When nobody-ol’-me attended the Code Red anti-Obamacare rally, and promptly got accused of terrible racism, what good would my little tiny voice have done?
Not much. Enter Andrew Breitbart, who offered $100,000 to anyone who could provide evidence of this supposed outburst of racism. Of course, no such evidence existed. Because it was a lie.
Andrew would not have considered her a nobody.
Jonah Goldberg:
60 Minutes won awards for hidden cameras, but when he used the same technique to embarrass liberals, such tactics were suddenly proclaimed ethically beyond the pale. The joke was on the scolds because they had to cover the stories anyway. And the stories got results. Congress defunded ACORN. Heads rolled at NPR. Andrew understood that news and arguments change politics if you can get the news and arguments to the people — and if you don’t let those who don’t like what you say define you.
For the left the messenger justifies the means
John Podhoretz:
that I was older and with a longer career in the news biz meant nothing to him, and it shouldn’t have. He understood something I didn’t — that the guildlike nature of media was about to shatter into a million pieces; gatekeepers like me (I was then editing these pages) would have to reconcile ourselves to the entry of amateurs who had something new and powerful to contribute, or we’d be crushed by the shattered glass.
But his vision extended beyond any single duke-out with any one Goliath. He was going after the whole Philistine gang. I remember standing with him on a corner in Westwood for a good portion of one afternoon, listening to him describe his long-term plans. He outlined the unfolding of the Bigs, which had then just begun, and went on to discuss the ways new media could break the Left’s stranglehold on culture and information to give the American public access to something closer to the truth. He even had a plan for a cultural think tank—a Great Good Place in Hollywood—where conservative artists could come for support and protection from the blacklists and beat-downs of the artistic establishment. I would be the think tank’s first president, he told me, an idea I found sweetly amusing then but which only makes my heart hurt now.
He has built an empire, Every blogger who fights the fight is a part of it.
Legal Insurrection proves that this is true:
Andrew lived in a world without restraints. He could be who he wanted to be, a luxury few bloggers have, particularly those who blog under their own name and work for others.
I live in a world of restraints, and I envied Andrew’s freedom more than you can know.
Andrew is irreplaceable, but we would serve his memory well to aspire to more freedom of thought and more freedom of action.
I’ve often wondered where to go with this blog. I now know.
To the left celebrating his death, people like William picking up the flag and going forward unafraid is the great nightmare.
Andrew Breitbart’s entire mission, both on Twitter and on his Big sites, was to say to the MSM, you don’t get the final word anymore. It’s now a conversation. We’ll consider what you report, and how you report it, and determine for ourselves how factually accurate it is. How well it matches up with our worldview. How well it matches up with modern “liberalism’s” mission statement that promises tolerance, diversity and multiculturalism — and if you can’t respect your neighbor, simply because he disagrees with you on the size and role of government, you’ve failed that mission statement. And when you’ve failed those objectives, we’ll call you out.
Breitbart knew instinctively, as people in Washington and most other places did not, that movies, television programs, and popular music send out deeply political messages every hour of every day. They shape the culture, and then the culture shapes politics. Influence those films and TV shows and songs, and you’ll eventually influence politics.
The Left had known that for generations, but on the Right, so many people in politics thought only about politics. To Breitbart, that was folly. “The people who have money, every four years at the last possible second, are told, ‘You need to give millions of dollars, because these four counties in Ohio are going to determine the election,’” Breitbart told the National Policy Council in October 2009. “I am saying, why didn’t we invest 20 years ago in a movie studio in Hollywood, why didn’t we invest in creating television shows, why didn’t we create institutions that would reflect and affirm that which is good about America?”
There is one video I shot of Andrew that directly reflects this. It never got the attention it deserved.
It’s significant that Andrew picked his battlefields as a brave and fearless man. When you are fighting what many conservatives believe to be a biased media in their headlines, you are fighting them on their turf, not retreating, surrendering, or simply musing off in your own little protected, right-leaning corner of the media world.
If I had to pick the blogger that most reminded me of Andrew, it would be Dan
A few months ago, I’d called or texted Breitbart about something and left my cell-phone in the kitchen, plugged in to re-charge, while I worked in my home office. So the phone rang and my son Jefferson answered, then brought the phone to me. Andrew and I talked a while and, after I’d hung up the phone, Jefferson said: “Wow, Dad, you know Andrew Breitbart?”
A lot of people knew Andrew Breitbart. He loved to meet people, to hang out and socialize. Among those whom you could call “celebrities” in the conservative movement, he was the most accessible person I knew, no matter how famous he became.
In the Fall of 2008, I was unemployed. In addition to looking for full time work, I was immersing myself in conservative new media. I had heard of Andrew Breitbart through his appearances on Red Eye and his work with Matt Drudge but back then his name wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous as it is today. Even so, when I read a news story that said Breitbart was launching a new group blog called BIG Hollywood, I was excited by the idea. Without expecting much, I emailed him. All I said was that I heard about BIG Hollywood and I liked his idea. How can I help?
Less than ten minutes later, he wrote back.
“Thanks for writing. Here’s my cell number… call me.”
You have to understand, as a blogger I email other bloggers and media people all the time. I never get a response like that so quickly. I was a little stunned but once I had a chance to gather my thoughts I called him and he answered.
“No, no, oh dear God, no”, I gasped, standing in shock staring at the TV that I was walking past in my kitchen when the news it aired stopped me in my tracks. A hand reflexively flew towards my mouth to stifle a sob as the tears fell from my eyes when my little boy came to my side and asked, “What’s wrong mommy? Are you sad? Do you need a tissue?” I looked down at my sweet little four year old and, after taking a deep breath, I told him, “One of America’s Greatest Heroes has died” and my son hugged me and then ran to bring me some tissues.
Great Heroes tend to die young because they fight from the front.
Few people are indispensible to a cause, but Andrew Breitbart was. There is no one else like him around. A good number of commentators have been saying that we should honor him by carrying on his fight using the methods he developed, and they are correct: we must not let his life’s work be in vain because his life’s work was to defeat the malignant forces of the Left and see America restored to the ways of The Founders. However, we have some mighty big shoes to fill, so it will not be easy.
One of the few tributes I disagree with. Andrew entire goal was to be replaceable, to have a 1000 Andrew Breitbarts challenging the media at even the local town level.
It doesn’t matter who we is, kemo sabe. It’s the conservatives at Drudge, the liberals at HuffPo, the leftists at DailyKos, the libertarians at Reason. It’s all of us and Breitbart helped create and grow a series of do-it-yourself demonstration projects through which we can all speak more loudly and more fully.
Yup that’s what he did and he did it for both sides oddly enough.
Via No Moss Here the Franklin Center has this video
I didn’t want to believe it, really. I personally know too many people I’d identify as Democrats, if not liberals, who are too decent to ever express such raw hate and cruelty. But a large chunk of the rank and file of the Left — way more than a small percentage — really don’t believe that their opponents deserve anything resembling basic human dignity or respect.
We’re not really people to them. It’s not an accident that New York Times columnist referred to his critics on Twitter as “right-wing lice.” They’re not good, decent Americans who just have some different ideas about how to make the world a better place. They run on hate.
My wife who has all the same interest in politics that I have in Morris Dancing was on facebook yesterday and someone made a remark about Breitbart’s death along those lines. It disgusted her and prompted her to comment.
If these guys are even getting my wife to speak up, then they’re making a huge mistake.
But instead of closing with that junk lets go with two different pieces on Andrew. First the story of the last person to ever meet him:
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Sando says he arrived at the bar in the tony Brentwood section of L.A. around 10 p.m. and soon the empty seat next to his was filled by a man with a familiar face.
…
Sando says the duo quickly struck up a conversation that would last a little less than two hours.
“He was friendly and engaging,” Sando recalls. “I said, ‘You can’t be very happy with the slate of Republican candidates’ and he said, ‘Why would you say that?’ I said, ‘Well, they’re talking about contraception,’ and he said, ‘The conversation is being framed by the liberal media.’ I said, ‘Well, the media isn’t writing Rick Santorum’s speeches for him.’ We had a back-and-forth for awhile until we said we weren’t going to agree on some things.”…
After the two hours, Breitbart said he was leaving. “We exchanged contact information,” Sando says. “We were going to get together.”
That is Andrew, engaging debating and challenging preconceived notions.
Part of it is his how much he inspired thousands of conservative activists, turned conservatism on its ear and completely changed how we talk about politics – all in a very short few years of prominence. The Left is scared out of its collective mind that Andrew inspired the entire Citizen Journalist Movement. AND THEY SHOULD BE.
That is the enduring legacy of Andrew Breitbart and will be a thorn in the side of the left for decades.
the Post couldn’t even muster the curiosity to Google the reaction. Twitter is a reliably volatile forum and collecting reactions there wouldn’t be a fair representation of the reaction among Breitbart opponents, but Slate’s Matt Yglesias isn’t just some guy on Twitter, either, and he tweeted that “The world outlook is slightly improved with @AndrewBrietbart dead.” Some of his opponents did handle the news in a professional and classy manner, including Media Matters for America, which gave a surprisingly humane response, much to their credit. However, that was hardly the norm yesterday, as the Post would have its readers believe — and the fact that they had to premoderate comments gave them a big clue as to what the actual reaction was.
These actions by a national newspaper trying to whitewash their allies is dishonorable and mendacious. I’m sure Andrew would phrase it a tad different.
[...] check out DaTechGuy’s Andrew Breitbart round-up, especially the video he took that he says has not gotten enough attention — he is correct, [...]
It was said about Milton Friedman, I think, that you knew how important he was because even if people hadn’t heard of him, they knew of his ideas. I’m pretty sure that if I were to tell my dad that Andrew Breitbart died, and that this is a huge deal, he would respond with, “Who is Andrew Breitbart?” But if I were to say, “The guy who took down ACORN and Anthony Weiner, the guy who offered $100,000 to anyone who had cell phone video of racist remarks made by Tea Partiers, the guy who [etc]” he would know who I was talking about.
I think Andrew would be surprised by the outpouring of attention…surprised and pleased. He made a difference in all of us. He is who Lisa and I saw in Mesquite, TX in 2010 that brought us to CPAC last year. He inspired those he spoke with and he had a real talent of talking to everyone. I will miss him.
As for the plan by some Kossacks to get the Westboro Baptist Church to protest Breitbart’s funeral, I am pretty sure Andrew would say: Bring it on! If only that they revealed again how vile they really are. I think he would treat such a protest as a badge of honor.
I wish this was all an elaborate hoax and Andrew Breitbart will surprise us in October with a bunch of great stuff. Sadly that is not the case.
[...] check out DaTechGuy’s Andrew Breitbart round-up, especially the video he took that he says has not gotten enough attention — he is correct, [...]
[...] Watch this video. Hat tip to Datechguy. [...]
Thanks for the link, Peter.
Nice post!
I need to link you more often
Thanks for the link and the quote, Peter. Andrew Breitbart sure did touch a lot of lives.
It was said about Milton Friedman, I think, that you knew how important he was because even if people hadn’t heard of him, they knew of his ideas. I’m pretty sure that if I were to tell my dad that Andrew Breitbart died, and that this is a huge deal, he would respond with, “Who is Andrew Breitbart?” But if I were to say, “The guy who took down ACORN and Anthony Weiner, the guy who offered $100,000 to anyone who had cell phone video of racist remarks made by Tea Partiers, the guy who [etc]” he would know who I was talking about.
What a tragedy.
I think Andrew would be surprised by the outpouring of attention…surprised and pleased. He made a difference in all of us. He is who Lisa and I saw in Mesquite, TX in 2010 that brought us to CPAC last year. He inspired those he spoke with and he had a real talent of talking to everyone. I will miss him.
americaisconservative.blogspot.com
I am feeling low today, but I find watching this helps (a bit)
As for the plan by some Kossacks to get the Westboro Baptist Church to protest Breitbart’s funeral, I am pretty sure Andrew would say: Bring it on! If only that they revealed again how vile they really are. I think he would treat such a protest as a badge of honor.
I wish this was all an elaborate hoax and Andrew Breitbart will surprise us in October with a bunch of great stuff. Sadly that is not the case.
Thank you, Peter, for linking to my site. This is a wonderful tribute to Andrew.
- Jeff (@ChargerJeff)