Conservative liar dies young

[Gob]

Conservative US blogger Andrew Breitbart dies

The conservative American journalist, author and blogger Andrew Breitbart died in Los Angeles of natural causes on Thursday morning, according to an announcement posted on his Big Journalism website. He was 43 years old.

In the three years since launching his network of sites, Breitbart had become what Time magazine called the Internet’s “most combative conservative impresario”, through his antagonistic appearances on cable television and by publishing controversial stories other media outlets wouldn’t touch.

He revelled in baiting the Left and President Barack Obama in particular, who he described in a New York Times magazine interview as a “Marxist”. He strongly championed the Tea Party, whose fortunes rose with his after Mr Obama’s election in late 2008.

Breitbart, a lifelong resident of Los Angeles, cut his teeth as a sidekick to Matt Drudge, the secretive figure behind the Drudge Report, widely regarded as the most influential news website in the United States.

He then founded Breitbart.com, which aggregated news from the Associated Press and other news wires and was heavily linked to by the Drudge Report.

In 2005 he helped launch the Huffington Post, but parted company with its founder Arianna Huffington when her politics moved sharply to the left.

Branching out in 2009, he launched Big Government, Big Journalism and Big Hollywood, reflecting the three areas of American life which he regarded as institutionally liberal and unreflective of most Americans’ view of life.

"Most conservatives are individualists," he told Time. "For years, they've been pummelled by the collectivists who run the American media, Hollywood and Washington. The underground conservative movement that is now awakening is the ecosystem I've designed my sites to tap into."

He quickly courted controversy with a story by conservative student activist James O’Keefe purporting to show employees of the Acorn housing agency giving tips on setting up a brothel to undercover reporters. Its veracity was later questioned when it emerged that clips of O’Keefe dressed as a pimp had been inserted after the event.

Breitbart outraged the Left even further with a heavily edited story about Shirley Sherrod, a black, mid-level official at the department of agriculture. The story gave the impression that Mrs Sherrod admitted in a speech to refusing to help a white farmer 20 years previously whose views made her uncomfortable.

She was duly sacked but the full content of her speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the country’s main civil rights organisation, soon emerged, showing she had in fact worked to save the white man’s farm.

His biggest scoop was the scandal that led to the resignation of Anthony Weiner, a rising star in Democratic congressional ranks. One of his websites was the first report that Weiner had sent obscene images of himself to women over the Twitter. As Weiner issued strenous denials and suggested his Twitter account had been hacked, Breitbart stood firm and was soon vindicated.

A tribute to Breitbart on Big Journalism read: “We have lost a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a dear friend, a patriot and a happy warrior.”


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -dies.html

[dales]

Not too far behind.......

[Lord Jim]

One can only hope...

"Would you like me to shove those fries back in the deep frier to heat them up for you Mr. Moore?"

[BoSoxGal]

Can't say I'll mourn the 'loss' to the political discourse. Though I imagine some snake will slither in to fill the niche.