March 01, 2012
This is precisely why he was so popular. He made us all feel fearless. For all the petty enemies who called him everything from a homophobe to a faggot, there were a hundred supporters inspired by his bravery. I never saw him even slightly bothered by accusations and even flattery left him unfazed. Once, when a sycophantic colleague parroted Breitbart’s feelings on some random subject, Andrew shrugged and said, “And? You want me to say something glib now?” This made me laugh so hard I convulsed and hit my head on the table because it was totally unexpected. Who calls bullshit on flattery?
The only time I saw him care what anyone thought was when his daughter was mad at him. He was in trouble because he left on a business trip without telling her exactly when he was leaving and exactly when he was coming back. That was one of her rules and he had broken it. “It’s different being in the doghouse with a kid,” he told me before calling her to beg for forgiveness. “With an adult, even your wife, you think, “Yeah, go ahead be mad at me, I don”t care.” Even when you”re wrong. You can”t be like that with a kid.” Then he left the room and talked to his daughter for so long I almost left. When he came back, I asked him how it went and he said, “I think we”re good” while pensively staring at his phone.
Thomas Paine once wrote, “He who dares not offend cannot be honest” and as far as I”m concerned, that’s what Andrew Breitbart was all about. When a journalist accused him of carefully editing an NAACP speech to make a black woman look racist, Andrew relentlessly hammered the guy and proved it was the media who had cherry-picked the quote. When the liberal media was hemming and hawing about rape accusations at OWS, Breitbart ran up to the protestors and screamed, “STOP RAPING PEOPLE” in their faces. You don”t forget a guy like that.
I was on an anarchist hippie farm this summer and was surprised to see Oriana Fallaci books on the shelf. She was a conservative, but she was also a crusader for truth. Henry Kissinger famously said talking to her was “the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press.” It’s not her politics that has her sitting on bookshelves four decades after that interview, it’s her courage. I talked to Breitbart about this on Dennis Miller’s radio show and we both agreed history best remembers the ones who had it worst. I told him he would be remembered forever because he made sure he had a tough time. He ended the interview with, “I hope you”re having a tough time, too,” and I”d like to add that I hope we all are. If there’s one thing we can learn from this man, it’s that the tough have to get going. He inspired us all to stop living in a culture of fear and fight for what’s important: our families, our country, and our culture. I am proud to have known Andrew for the brief moment I did, and his children should be proud of the legacy he left in such a short time.
Tonight, I”m not going to mourn him. I”m going to go out with friends, get drunk, and talk about all his accomplishments. You don”t act defeated when someone such as Andrew Breitbart dies, you fight.
(UPDATE: Gavin has designed and is selling “SO?” T-shirts and is giving 100% of the proceeds to Andrew Breitbart’s family.)
