When one of the leading media figures of the day achieves his success by his giddy disdain for truth and fairness—when one of our leading political figures offers to his admirers a politics inflamed by rage and devoid of ideas—how to withhold a profoundly negative judgment on his life and career?
Especially when that career was so representative of his times?
"Representative of his times" is pretty good. Breitbart helped create the monsters we all know as Matt Drudge, Ariana Huffington, and James O'Keefe. He may not have invented the concept of "truthiness" but he certainly did revel in it.
We eagerly await the forthcoming denunciations of Breitbart's "confrontational style" or how horrible he was for "the discourse" from one or several centrist establishment asshole columnists.
But in the meantime let's not lose sight of the fact that the real problem with Breitbart was that "giddy disdain for truth" Frum talks about. It's not the "tone" that makes for dysfunctional political discourse. It's the lies. And lies can be told pleasantly just as well as they can be told coarsely.
Update: Interesting footnote here. Apparently the habitually intentionally disingenuous Breitbart's last Twitter interaction found him calling Lamar White of all people "intentionally disingenuous."
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