Andrew Breitbart

On Friday, NewsBusters reported Salon editor Joan Walsh saying on MSNBC's Hardball, "I didn’t think it was possible to get lower than Andrew Breitbart, but his spawn have."

In a piece marvelously titled "Is It Possible to Get Lower Than Joan Walsh?" Twitchy reported moments ago that this sparked a new hashtag on Twitter:

Salon editor Joan Walsh took a truly disgusting cheap shot at the late Andrew Breitbart Friday.

Appearing on MSNBC's Hardball, Walsh said, "I didn’t think it was possible to get lower than Andrew Breitbart, but his spawn have gotten lower than Andrew Breitbart" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Appearing on the April 16 "Morning Edition" to discuss what NPR tagged as "the contributions of journalists to global culture," Newsweek/Daily Beast editor Tina Brown worked in a gratuitously crude and error-laden slam of the late "right-wing radical blogger" Andrew Breitbart, who, Brown reminds us "dropped dead in [his] early 40s."

Apart from her crass description of Breitbart's sudden death, Brown got the underlying facts of her complaint wrong, furthering the meme that Breitbart deliberately took Shirley Sherrod out of context and hence was responsible for destroying her career:

New York Times media reporter David Carr's profile of the late Andrew Breitbart, "The Provocateur" was a slightly hostile look at the life and influence of the sleepless conservative activist, that included this unnecessary and petty parenthetical stab: "For good or ill (and most would say ill), no one did it like Mr. Breitbart."

Andrew Breitbart, the 43-year-old conservative media entrepreneur who was laid to rest this week after experiencing a sudden heart attack, rose from an unknown to one of the leaders of the conservative movement in just a few short years. I am proud to have called him a friend.

The swiftness of his rise and his popularity among conservatives, provide a lesson for anyone wishing to understand how to win in the game of politics and media in the 21st Century.

Access to the controversial video released of President Barack Obama embracing a radical professor was prevented by two groups funded by left-wing donor George Soros. The two – WGBH and Harvard University – were granted more than $3.5 million was granted to WGBH and Harvard by Soros’s Open Society Foundations since 2000.

The late Andrew Breitbart’s websites posted the edited version of this video on March 7 and appeared on “Hannity” that evening to discuss it. Breitbart.com Editor in Chief Joel Pollack told Hannity that WGBH refused to respond to inquiries about the video in question. In a video played from Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree’s class, he told the students, “of course we hid this through the 2008 campaign.” If the video was not incendiary, why did he feel the need to hide it from the voters?

Conservative merchandiser Anthem Studios and iOwnTheWorld.com have joined forces to raise money for the family of Andrew Breitbart:

As NewsBusters has been reporting, the liberal media have been less than gracious following the surpising death of conservative publisher Andrew Breitbart.

On Fox News's Hannity Friday, conservative author Ann Coulter said it best. "Even in death he shows liberals in their true colors" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

In a report for Thursday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Andrea Mitchell referred to Andrew Breitbart as "the shooting star of the conservative blogosphere" and contemptuously remarked: "Breitbart, who called Senator Ted Kennedy a villain and worse when he died, called himself an 'accidental cultural warrior.'"

Former Catholic seminarian and left-wing radio host Bill Press took to his eponymous program today and devoted significant attention to the death of conservative blogger and author Andrew Breitbart. It was not all positive, although he did feature guests who had kind things to say about Breitbart's impact on Internet journalism.

"Raised a Catholic, I was taught the great phrase 'Necal [sic] nisi bonum*' you don’t say anything about the dead unless you’re saying good things about the dead. Well, then I should say nothing about Andrew Breitbart because I can’t think of one good thing to say about him." [MP3 clip here]

Andrew Breitbart, the conservative blogger and publisher who died suddenly yesterday was going to really shake up the self-described mainstream media according to a report that he was in talks with CNN to co-host a television show with Anthony Weiner, the disgraced liberal Democratic congressman who famously sent pictures of his underwear-clad genitals to women on the internet.

The idea certainly would not have been out of the realm of possibility for either CNN or Breitbart; the cable network famously invited another disgraced Democratic politician, former New York governor Elliott Spitzer, to co-host a program with moderate conservative columnist Kathleen Parker. Bringing in a real conservative who could hold his own and coherently state conservative beliefs would certainly have been an improvement. The Parker-Spitzer show was a short-lived affair which died soon after it was launched.

New York Times media editor Bruce Headlam was less than gracious after the sudden death of conservative media activist Andrew Breitbart, citing in a Times webcast “his willingness to push the limits of what he saw as journalism, what a lot of other people saw as just stunts and demagoguery.”

Media reporter Jeremy Peters wrote the official Times obituary Friday for Breitbart, who died suddenly at age 43 after collapsing while walking outside his home in Los Angeles: “Andrew Breitbart, Conservative Blogger, Dies at 43.” As a news story it was balanced, but compared to the usual Times obituary it was certainly critical, starting in the third paragraph:

There's been a lot of ugly stuff in the blogosphere as well as various social networking websites such as Twitter since Thursday's shocking announcement that conservative publisher Andrew Breitbart died at the age of 43.

Possibly the most offensive came in a headline from New York Amsterdam News titled "Anti-Black Journalist Andrew Breitbart Dies Suddenly":

And it gets much worse from there...

I almost hate to draw attention to this incredibly sad example of the intolerant left over at Rolling Stone, but quite frankly, Andrew Breitbart probably would have eaten this up, and tweeted it back out.  

Correction appended below page break | Breitbart.com's editor-in-chief went right after CNN for its treatment of the late Andrew Breitbart, when asked about the "controversial" journalist's "tactics" in the Shirley Sherrod incident. The interview took place Thursday afternoon during the 1 p.m. hour of CNN's Newsroom.

Joel Pollock, a friend of Breitbart's, accused CNN of telling a story "completely contrary" to what Breitbart actually did, and challenged the network to "rethink" the way it treated him. "I'm going to do an Andrew Breitbart and ask you if CNN has rethought its tactics on the issue," he contended to CNN host Zoraida Sambolin. [Video below the break.]

Anyone who saw what the Associated Press wrote when former Bush 43 press secretary Tony Snow died in 2008 (original AP article; related NewsBusters post) knew that the wire service would do what it could to subtly distort Andrew Breitbart's considerable accomplishments in exposing leftist hatred, duplicity, and criminality. The only question was what form(s) it would take.

Not surprisingly, reporters/distorters Philip Elliott and Sue Manning misrepresented or omitted key elements of the three episodes for which Breitbart will be best remembered -- the James O'Keefe-led ACORN stings; Shirley Sherrod, Pigford lawsuit opportunist; and his exposure (so to speak) of former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner's sleazy online escapades. The 11:44 a.m. version of their report (saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purporses) was bad enough. In their 1:56 p.m. revision (saved here), perhaps egged on by the vitriol which has been posted all day at leftist sites, they descended into cheap-shot name-calling adjectives which would rarely if ever be used to describe activist leftists. In his opening hour today, Rush Limbaugh covered some of what happened during the three key episodes; I will expand on them later in the post:

About three years ago, Andrew Breitbart, who sadly passed away suddenly this morning in Los Angeles, joined the Media Research Center at our 2009 Gala, featuring the annual “DisHonors Awards,” where he accepted the “Media Messiah Award” in jest for Chris Matthews.

The MSNBC host “won” the award for his infamous boast about how “I felt this thrill going up my leg” during a speech by then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

As someone who was one of the best fighters against the left-wing media hegemony, Andrew Breitbart was also frequently victimized by lazy reporters who didn't bother to report correct information about him. This was a particular problem for Andrew because he was such a target for liberals making up lies which got repeated so often, they've become widely accepted as truth.

Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, the media haven't stopped repeating lies about Breitbart even after his untimely passing. Contrary to much of the reporting about him today, Breitbart did not falsely represent Shirley Sherrod, former U.S. Department of Agriculture director of Rural Development in Georgia in relaying a video of her discrimination against white applicants for a farm subsidy program in 2010.

This morning the unexpected news came that conservative internet publisher Andrew Breitbart has passed away. His business manager Larry Solov has posted the following announcement on websites affiliated with Breitbart. [This is a developing story, see below for statements from his former boss Matt Drudge, Brent Bozell, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Michelle Malkin.]

An AP report by Rachel Zoll brought to our attention by a NewsBusters tipster headlines a truly weird assertion about GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum ("Santorum benefits from mistaken religious identity"), and submits as evidence an item in a Christian magazine which in turn has its own weird headline ("Catholic Politicians You Thought Were Evangelical").

It turns out that the Christianity Today item tells us that it's not evangelical Christians who misidentify Santorum, whose Roman Catholic faith is well-known. The entity which committed the misidentification by deliberately including the former Pennsylvania senator on a list of "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America" while acknowledging that he is a Catholic was ... Time Magazine, in February 2005. Thus, there is no support for Zoll's headline claiming that many people "mistake" Santorum's "religious identity," and that he somehow "benefits." Zheesh.

Vulgarian comedian Bill Maher on Thursday made a joke about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney paying a bum for gay sex.

This occurred inside a prominently featured article at the Huffington Post about Wednesday's debate in Arizona (vulgarity warning):

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Exchange erupts in Twitter war with Baldwins from all over the country.

For those that ignore such things, Alec Baldwin, after a brief respite following his embarrassing display on a plane in December, is back on Twitter.

Keeping with his pattern of saying characteristically inane things on the social media website, Baldwin on Saturday called conservative publisher Andrew Breitbart "a festering boil on the anus of public discourse":

As NewsBusters previously reported, CNN's Piers Morgan on Tuesday told Andrew Breitbart that he's "notoriously evil about almost everybody."

The following morning, comedian and syndicated radio host Dennis Miller called Morgan out for this affront likening him to "Norah O'Donnell in an ascot" while advising him to check the Neilsen ratings "to see how long people are bumping into [his] show" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

CNN's Piers Morgan on Tuesday displayed a remarkably horrid bedside manner toward his guest Andrew Breitbart saying "you are notoriously evil about almost everybody."

An obviously shocked Breitbart responded, "Well, I don't think you know me, Piers Morgan. I think we've maybe spent eight seconds together" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Bill Maher had an article published at the Huffington Post's front page Wednesday.

This appears to be an indication the website is going back on the ad hominem attack rule it used to ban conservative publisher Andrew Breitbart from its front page in March: