

Understand that this film appeared in Google's movie listings, where I saw it, and was advertised in the Los Angeles Times on the appropriate day -- which isn't a particularly difficult thing to verify if, for example, you're a publisher who lives in Brentwood. Rather than dismiss the absurd conspiracy theory or open a newspaper to check its veracity, a bullying Breitbart tweeted this:



I'll say!



Kaus is a respected journalist whose personal archive is rife with solid and delightful pieces. He is, as well, a Web pioneer. He is one of several exceptional writers all of whom hold themselves to journalistic standards far higher than Breitbart ever met, but are seemingly able to see only the best things about his work, and are blind to its most conspicuous flaws. Again, they're mostly people who liked Breitbart personally, and I am inclined to trust in their assurance that he was, despite the side of him I saw, a basically decent and well-intentioned person. In his work, he thought his ends sometimes justified bullying, cruelty, lying, negligence and intimidation. And not just to "destroy the institutional left." Sometimes Breitbart sunk to those depths because someone wrote negatively about a Sarah Palin movie produced by his personal friend. If the reverse had been true, if I'd publicly and falsely accused Breitbart of fabricating an event, how would he have reacted? What nasty things would his fans have thought about me?



'Be the Change' or 'Turnabout Is Fair Play'?







Sometimes he showed a lack of self-awareness. For example, Breitbart once complained to me that I quoted something he said at an event that was supposed to be off-the-record. Perhaps someone explained the event to him that way. Certainly no one ever told me it was off-the-record. He acted very aggrieved about the whole thing, but eventually conceded that it wasn't a big deal when I showed him that he'd said exactly the same thing in a television appearance. I wouldn't have remembered the exchange except for the fact that Breitbart is, after all, a guy who built his Web sites publishing hidden video stings of unwitting subjects. And he excoriated me for quoting a line from a panel discussion he gave before an audience of 100 people?



There were, finally, serious transgressions. Breitbart complained bitterly about charges of racism frivolously made against conservatives. He seemed earnest when he insisted that it is morally wrong to imply that someone is a racist without rock solid proof, and that the media was often unforgivably derelict in fact-checking such claims (like the assertion that rallying Tea Partiers shouted the n-word at passing congressmen). Yet this same man published the Shirley Sherrod video -- an attempt, by his own admission, to prove that some of the people in it were racist -- before he even saw the whole thing! In that case, due diligence would've been harder than opening the movie pages. But every Breitbart fan knows that if NBC or CBS or ABC would've implied his racism by airing a selectively edited tape -- if the full tape later went public, and cast him in a significantly better light -- he'd condemn the whole mainstream media, jabbing a finger in the chest of any reporter in a 10-foot radius, and he wouldn't accept it for a minute if the MSM producer explained, "Oh, our intention was to make the other people in the room with you look racist."



If you're someone who thinks that turnabout is fair play, that when conservatives do something immoral liberals are justified in behaving the same way and vice-versa, I am not going to persuade you otherwise. Suffice it to say that Breitbart sometimes subscribed to that flawed code.



The Tweets



Gandhi famously advised humans to "be the change you want to see in the world." Breitbart fell short of that admittedly lofty standard. His ends-justify-the-means attitude at times caused him to perpetrate exactly the sort of behavior that he'd only recently railed against as vile and corrupt. Sometimes the transgressions were minor. In his book, he points out the idiocy of liberal celebrities who ignorantly spew stereotypes about the entire American right... and then proceeds to write, "I would not be in your life 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."Sometimes he showed a lack of self-awareness. For example, Breitbart once complained to me that I quoted something he said at an event that was supposed to be off-the-record. Perhaps someone explained the event to him that way. Certainly no one ever toldit was off-the-record. He acted very aggrieved about the whole thing, but eventually conceded that it wasn't a big deal when I showed him that he'd said exactly the same thing in a television appearance. I wouldn't have remembered the exchange except for the fact that Breitbart is, after all, a guy who built his Web sites publishing hidden video stings of unwitting subjects. And he excoriated me for quoting a line from a panel discussion he gave before an audience of 100 people?There were, finally, serious transgressions. Breitbart complained bitterly about charges of racism frivolously made against conservatives. He seemed earnest when he insisted that it is morally wrong to imply that someone is a racist without rock solid proof, and that the media was often unforgivably derelict in fact-checking such claims (like the assertion that rallying Tea Partiers shouted the n-word at passing congressmen). Yet this same man published the Shirley Sherrod video -- an attempt,, to prove that some of the people in it were racist -- before he even saw the whole thing! In that case, due diligence would've been harder than opening the movie pages. But every Breitbart fan knows that if NBC or CBS or ABC would've impliedracism by airing a selectively edited tape -- if the full tape later went public, and cast him in a significantly better light -- he'd condemn the whole mainstream media, jabbing a finger in the chest of any reporter in a 10-foot radius, and he wouldn't accept it for a minute if the MSM producer explained, "Oh, our intention was to make thepeople in the room with you look racist."If you're someone who thinks that turnabout is fair play, that when conservatives do something immoral liberals are justified in behaving the same way and vice-versa, I am not going to persuade you otherwise. Suffice it to say that Breitbart sometimes subscribed to that flawed code.



What Was Missing







Breitbart could energize a subset of the base. He could mastermind a tactical victory, winning a news cycle or three. As he did so, he became more loved by the people who agreed with him and more hated by the people who didn't. And for all his purported "courage" and "fearlessness" he'd only debate a certain kind of person, as I can personally attest. When I first challenged him to a public debate, he told me, uncharacteristically, that he had no intention of letting me free-ride on his platform, and that when I had access to a substantial audience of my own he'd be game. Sometime later, when I was writing for The Daily Beast, my editor, Tom Watson, reached out and got him to agree to a written debate, but he postponed, then backed out for reasons he would never explain. Perhaps I shouldn't have



In seriousness, the fact that he didn't debate me personally doesn't mean much, but it is telling that he never squared off, as William F. Buckley did on "Firing Line," against some critical figure from "the other side." In today's America, I actually don't think the pundit games requires much courage. The "happy warrior" talk always strikes me as overwrought and silly. But when Jon Stewart sits down with Chris Wallace, or when David Frum does a Bloggingheads with Jonah Goldberg, or when Christopher Hitchens debated Sam Harris, they were putting themselves out there in a way that Breitbart, who stuck to shouting matches and cable news spots, tended to avoid. Bluster, shamelessness, aggressiveness, a willingness to be confrontational -- Breitbart had all those things. Lots of people don't. Admire that or not, but courage it ain't, and his fans acknowledge as much when they comment on leftists jabbing their fingers in the chests of CPAC attendees.

Among conservatives, it is the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, philosophers like John Locke and Edmund Burke, journalists like William F. Buckley and politicians like Ronald Reagan who are regarded as heroes. All of those figures had a capacity for persuasion and a demonstrated willingness to square off against contemporaries with the strongest ideas contrary to theirs. And the conservative movement's most popular champions don't have those qualities anymore.Breitbart could energize a subset of the base. He could mastermind a tactical victory, winning a news cycle or three. As he did so, he became more loved by the people who agreed with him and more hated by the people who didn't. And for all his purported "courage" and "fearlessness" he'd only debate a certain kind of person, as I can personally attest. When I first challenged him to a public debate, he told me, uncharacteristically, that he had no intention of letting me free-ride on his platform, and that when I had access to a substantial audience of my own he'd be game. Sometime later, when I was writing for, my editor, Tom Watson, reached out and got him to agree to a written debate, but he postponed, then backed out for reasons he would never explain. Perhaps I shouldn't have telegraphed my preparedness In seriousness, the fact that he didn't debate me personally doesn't mean much, but it is telling that he never squared off, as William F. Buckley did on "Firing Line," against some critical figure from "the other side." In today's America, I actually don't think the pundit games requires much courage. The "happy warrior" talk always strikes me as overwrought and silly. But when Jon Stewart sits down with Chris Wallace, or when David Frum does a Bloggingheads with Jonah Goldberg, or when Christopher Hitchens debated Sam Harris, they were putting themselves out there in a way that Breitbart, who stuck to shouting matches and cable news spots, tended to avoid. Bluster, shamelessness, aggressiveness, a willingness to be confrontational -- Breitbart had all those things. Lots of people don't. Admire that or not, but courage it ain't, and his fans acknowledge as much when they comment on leftists jabbing their fingers in the chests of CPAC attendees.

What To Copy, What To Avoid



Breitbart's successors should channel his passion. They should learn from his determination. They should challenge wrongheaded narratives in the media, create platforms that expand the ability of Americans to engage in political discourse, and inject mischievous humor into their work.



They should celebrate the best of what he did.



Unlike Breitbart, they should appeal to the best in people rather than intentionally eliciting their worst; produce journalism that is ambitious in its quality, not just its short-term political utility; refrain from falsely implying terrible things about people based on made up facts or misleadingly edited footage; show courage by exposing themselves to substantive debate with skilled antagonists; refrain from doing anything they regard as abhorrent when it's done by other people; and grasp that focusing on the base's sense of grievance hasn't served conservatism well.



Image credit: Reuters



On Twitter, Breitbart deliberately stoked the worst impulses of his followers in a "look at what terrible people my critics are" project that was perhaps his most nakedly depraved. As Michele Malkin said in her obit, "If he were here, he'd be retweeting all the insane tweets from the Left rejoicing over his death. Even in death, he succeeds in exposing the hate-filled intolerance of the tolerance poseurs." She's right. He would've been glad to have inspired the tweets, and eagerly re-tweeting. But surely that isn't a quality to be celebrated. A religious person might counsel, "love thy enemy" or "turn the other cheek." A Kantian would say, "Don't treat people as a means to an end." I'd say that Breitbart's baiting and re-tweets had no lasting impact on politics in America, but caused thousands of people to feel more anger, angst, and hate in their hearts than they would have otherwise. It was, at bottom, a not very admirable self-indulgence that his fans bear partial blame for encouraging. I've certainly lost my temper on Twitter. And it's sometimes tempting to provoke people in that forum. I get it. I too have sinned! But this is a failing, not a pursuit worthy of the countless hours Breitbart invested, never mind something to be extolled in obituaries.Breitbart's successors should channel his passion. They should learn from his determination. They should challenge wrongheaded narratives in the media, create platforms that expand the ability of Americans to engage in political discourse, and inject mischievous humor into their work.They should celebrate the best of what he did.Unlike Breitbart, they should appeal to the best in people rather than intentionally eliciting their worst; produce journalism that is ambitious in its quality, not just its short-term political utility; refrain from falsely implying terrible things about people based on made up facts or misleadingly edited footage; show courage by exposing themselves to substantive debate with skilled antagonists; refrain from doing anything they regard as abhorrent when it's done by other people; and grasp that focusing on the base's sense of grievance hasn't served conservatism well.

Last July, I attended a documentary about Sarah Palin on the night it opened in Orange County, California. It was a 12:01 a.m. showing, which theaters tend to do only when they expect big crowds. That's what I expected when I drove out to interview moviegoers, but whether due to the late hour, the fact that Harry Potter was also opening that night, or the dearth of interest in the film, which didn't ultimately do very well, I was practically the only one in the theater. I got home late, did a quick write-up in these pages, and went to bed. I woke up to mayhem. As I later detailed , Palin fans bizarrely accused me of conspiring with the AMC theater chain to schedule a secret, unadvertised showing of the Palin documentary so that I could, for anti-Palin propaganda purposes, attend it and cast its debut as a miserable failure. Or something.And this:Understand that Andrew Breitbart had roughly 75,000 followers on Twitter. I probably had less than 4,000 back then. As I later put it, "in three Tweets, we've got a juvenile made up name, an erroneous fact -- my screening was at 12:01 am, not 12:45 am -- plus the false implication that the films were unadvertised, requiring some special knowledge to know about them,the false notion that I committed an unnamed firing offense. Needless to say, Breitbart didn't contact me prior to publishing that. Nor has he corrected any of his numerous errors. But he's a crusader for truth."Every last working journalist in America hates the idea of being falsely accused of fabricating a story -- and having the accusation spread to tends of thousands of people you have no way of reaching to correct the record. It does groundless damage to your reputation. But that is the impression that Breitbart spread, on a lark, without even a shred of evidence, and despite having a spectacularly easy way to check the truth (check the previous day's newspaper) as ever there was.Breitbart's behavior cost me two days fielding press requests, sending journalists a scanned image of the newspaper listing, receiving nasty emails and threats, and otherwise rebutting his lies. Writers from his sites piled on. So I ask Mickey Kaus , how does this square with your insistence that Breitbart "said what he thought was true, even when that hurt his side or put his own career at risk." How does it square with the notion that Breitbart "had an instinctive honesty"? He didn't with me. He never apologized or corrected the record. I doubt he even gave it much thought.I am far from the only one he treated unethically. To cite just one more example, I've written before about Juan Carlos Vera , a lesser known victim of the Breitbart-O'Keefe partnership. I don't mean to pick on Kaus. If anyone has an excuse for missing Breitbart's flaws, it's someone who knew him in Los Angeles for a decade before he launched his "Big" publishing career, saw the doubtlessly legion occasions when hecare about accuracy, and reacted as a mournful friend upon his death. But Breitbart's journalist friends are unfair to his critics and those he wronged when they write against overwhelming evidence that he instinctively championed truth, even while writing, as Kaus does, "I don't know the ins and outs of the Shirley Sherrod mess."