Last spring, when Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) accidentally tweeted a photo of his erection to his entire feed — the first brick in an infidelity scandal that would include sexting porn stars, nude cellphone pics and Weiner's eventual resignation — the alarm didn't sound from New York City or Washington, D.C.
Instead, it sounded from the haphazard West L.A. offices of renegade new-media mogul Andrew Breitbart.
The conservative blogger promptly flew to D.C., crashed Weiner's press conference and demanded an apology from the shamed Democratic congressman.
Breitbart's distinct West Coastness "created something of a mystique about him among people that cover news and politics in D.C. and New York," says Boston native Charles Johnson, a contributor to Breitbart sites including BigGovernment.com. "They didn't know what to make of this guy."
Johnson describes his former boss as "California casual to the extreme ... an unmade bed of a person."
Many traditional journalists were appalled by Breitbart's ramshackle approach. He was "a street fighter, a bar brawler," says Ted Rall, a New York political cartoonist who often argued online with Breitbart, as so many did. Yet he also employed "this celebrity-stalking, TMZ, paparazzi-type thing," Rall says.
Reluctantly, any major newspaper with hope for 21st-century survival has been forced to pick up juicy online breaks in the Breitbart tradition. Weiner wasn't the first; Breitbart's previous victims include a former official of the U.S. Agriculture Department and public-housing organization ACORN, both forced out of commission after Breitbart posted scandalous (and, in the case of agriculture official Shirley Sherrod, strategically edited) video footage.
The next target in his relentless crusade to take down the "Democrat-Media Complex" was President Barack Obama — until last week, when the ambitious 43-year-old suddenly collapsed while walking in Brentwood, less than a mile from his Westwood home.
Joel Pollak, chief deputy for the Big sites, says an "obsessed" Breitbart was working around the clock on a relaunch of his online empire. On the night he died, he worked late before reportedly stopping by a local bar called the Brentwood to talk politics with perfect strangers. His Twitter feed was lit up until the moment he collapsed.
"I called you a putz cause I thought you were being intentionally disingenuous. If not I apologize," Breitbart tweeted to a law student in Texas not an hour before he was rushed to UCLA Medical Center. The student has since called that final Breitbart insult "a badge of honor."
So how did liberal, politically lackadaisical Los Angeles birth the sharpest tongue in right-wing politics?
"Angelenos, especially of the West Los Angeles variety, especially those who work in the entertainment industry, don't take too kindly to dissent — if you are a conservative, that is," Breitbart wrote in his 2011 autobiography. Yet he chose to live here, save a couple short stints in the South and innumerable flights to the Capitol (which he called "excruciating," because they interrupted his "24/7 digital Wi-Fi life") to show America what he'd dug up next.
It was in his first postcollegiate job as an L.A. script runner that Breitbart was introduced to AM talk radio. Soon after, in 1990s Hollywood, Breitbart was right-hand "bitch" for conservative Internet hero Matt Drudge and played a key role in building one of the most trafficked news sites in the world. "I still see him in my mind's eye in Venice Beach, the sunny day I met him," Drudge wrote in a tribute to Breitbart. "He was in his mid 20s. It was all there."
He became friends with Arianna Huffington, working as a researcher in her Brentwood basement. Years later, joking that he was "the only Republican from Brentwood," Breitbart would puzzle conservatives and libertarians by happily designing and search engine–optimizing his friend's Huffington Post, the left-leaning megasite.
Aggregation; big, fat headlines; split-second uploads; trending topics. Breitbart understood the future of journalism before most news outlets figured out how to link.
Amy Alkon, a rabble-rousing advice columnist from Venice, says of Breitbart's stomping ground: "In a sense, it's still the Wild West." By contrast, in New York, where Alkon used to live, "You need a pedigree to be in some parts of society."
Eccentric international filmmaker Werner Herzog recently argued in GQ, "The last half-century, almost every single important cultural trend and technological trend originated from California."
According to Pollak, Breitbart's chief deputy, once the Big sites got major traffic, the team considered moving to D.C. But in the end, they chose Los Angeles.
"It's like a great romantic story in the sense that it has that tension — the upsides and the downsides," Pollak says. "Andrew made what would have been a monolithic, consensus-oriented, everyone-wear-the-same-color political scene [into something] exciting, suspenseful, controversial."
For a Tea Party conservative whose persona relied on conflict, L.A. was an ideal boxing ring. "You can't really separate him from his liberal environments," Johnson says.
"Andrew delighted in pissing people off," Alkon says. "And here is a whole town of them to piss off."
In fact, his fight was more cultural than political. Breitbart always preached that Hollywood was the heart that kept the Democratic Party alive, financially and ideologically. He wasn't as interested in policy as in the media industries that held the power to popularize political ideas.
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What I loved the most about Andrew Breitbart is the way he could make liberal/progressives heads explode. And even in his death, he is still doing that very same thing.
Hell, read some of these comments. He is laughing his ass off.
I don't think where he is , he is laughing his arse off . I'm sure he was surprised by his own death. Didn't he say Kennedie was a piece of human excrement ( the tweet is online in his own account ). This applies to him as well.
The moment I saw the headline, I knew what Pat Robertson always says, must be true: Eventually God strikes dead and punishes those who work against the Bible. If anyone broke the Golden Rule to Do Unto Others, As You Would Have Them Do Unto You, it was the piece of shit that walked the earth for a blessedly short period of time: Andrew Breitbart.
I know its not very Godly to be glad someone is dead, but the fact that God struck down this pathetic, egotistical, money-grubbing, opportunistic, media whore.... well, as they say in some quarters, its a "good thing".
Now we can all return to our lives and Breitbart will soon be forgotten as ever having lived on the planet. It is exactly what that scumbag deserves.
Breitbart was an extraordinary douchebag with about as much talent as Dennis Miller and Rush Limbaugh combined. He fancied himself quite the caustic wit, but in the end was simply a novelty whose tired claims had long ago run their course.
There are plenty of LA natives politically on the right, and most of us know well to sit down and shut up. Thankfully Breitbart wasn't bullied by left-wing fascists. There was a popular bumper sticker in the 60's and 70's when I was growing up, in the Valley and LA wide; so to all those intolerant bigots on the left: "WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA. NOW GO HOME!"
Really great commenters you have here, LA Weekly. At least the author of the piece seemed to appreciate AB. The man was a fighter and the other commenters are cognizant of that but refuse to acknowledge it.
BTW Teddy Kennedy was a piece of shit. Google 'waitress sandwich' if you don't believe me. ;)
His only 'value' as a 'conservative' came from his living in liberal LA - like other Hollywood conservatives, he avoided actually living among his supposed like minded individuals in the Old South, the trailer parks of the Sun Belt, the Nixonland of the OC. He was a fraud, a simple egoist, whose one trick was a 'rebellion' against his birth and upbringing, without giving up in the least any of its advantages.
Breitbart lowered the standards of public discourse to a level which were despicable. He intentionally edited the video of Shirley Sherrod in order to change reality 100% by falsely showing her as a racist, resulting in the NAACP's condemnation and in the Sec of Ag'a firing her. Breitbart did not make an innocent error, but he deliberately and knowingly lied to the entire world about this woman, irreparably harming her career -- and for what? Does anyone know what motive any person could have to single out a wonderful person who explaining a personal error and how she realized her mistake and how she set out to rectify her wrong? Breitbart rewarded Ms. Sherrod's humanity by trashing her worldwide with a doctored video which he knew for a fact was 100% contrary to the truth.
There are times when people who engage in vile behavior are labeled psychopaths, but others will object to the label as it removes the odious moral stench which emanating from the person. As to Breitabrt, he is one person who should not escape moral condemnation by a mental health designation. Certain behaviors are so outside the bounds of human decency and are so under one's control that society needs to express its moral outrage. Breitbart had hours to contemplate the evil he was abut to commit.
Breitbard supported the complete perversion of truth when it came to ACORN with the falsely edited James O'Keefe videos. Breitbart supplanted Truth with Lies -- that was his modus operandi. Breitbart did not redeem himself by dying.
Most of society refuses to do repudiate Breitbart's descent into the gutter and refuse to contemplate how they thereby damage the nation's moral fiber. Many people on the right wing praise him, while at the same time they claim that liberty becomes with responsibilities. How about the duty not to wantonly harm other people? I guess setting out to destroy another person's career for no reason other than his own self-aggrandizement doesn't count. Others in the middle and to the left focus on his passion forgetting that Joe McCarthy had passion. Passion is not a license to destroy.
Societies who glamorize the ignoble and the base do so at their own risk.
He made his name by hunting down African Anericans and lynching them in any way he could find. He was a Klansman without the hood. Good riddance!
This guy called Ted Kennedy a piece of shit when he died.
So I have no problem saying, loudly, good riddance you racist liar.
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