Conor Friedersdorf on ‘The Flaws of Breitbartism’
Conor Friedersdorf discusses the first chapter of Andrew Breitbart’s forthcoming book, Righteous Indignation, and he points out that Breitbart actually does what he hates:
There are a lot of ironies lost on Breitbart. The most glaring is his righteous indignation at celebrities who trash people for their political beliefs. It isn’t that he doesn’t have a point. Using mass media to insult half the country is idiotic. There’s just one problem. Breitbart is himself a minor celebrity. How does he treat people with whom he has political disagreements? “I would not be in your life,” he writes, “if the political left weren’t so joyless, humorless, intrusive, taxing, anarchistic, controlling, rudderless, chaos-prone, pedantic, unrealistic, hypocritical, clueless, politically correct, angry, cruel, sanctimonious, retributive, redistributive, intolerant…” In a single paragraph, he gives us the precise behavior he claims to abhor in a form far more concentrated and extreme than any single statement ever uttered by the people he criticizes. Elsewhere, he goes so far as to call the American left “a ruthless, relentless, shameless enemy.”
More than just Breitbart, I think this describes today’s talk radio/Fox “News” conservative