Andrew Breitbart RIP

Here's about 2/3rds of Rush's tribute to Breitbart today:

RUSH: A few words about Andrew Breitbart. I've known Andrew Breitbart since the 1990s when he was working with Matt Drudge to help produce that page, the Drudge Report, each and every day. He grew up in West Los Angeles, surrounded by liberals, father-in-law Orson Bean, the comedian. Sometime during the 1990s, the early nineties, Breitbart had an awakening. He was constantly questioning what was all around him, which was really extreme liberalism, and he became, as many of you in the audience know, a bulldog. He literally was an indefatigable bulldog for the conservative cause. He did things that nobody else has done on the Internet where there are a lot of players. He accomplished quite a lot, much more than a lot of people.

A lot of people get into the business for a number of reasons. His was to effect change. He really sought to effect change above everything else. A lot of people get into it to make a name for themselves. He was about that, too, of course, but he really was about effecting change, and he did on numerous occasions with ACORN, Anthony Weiner, Shirley Sherrod, just to name three of his most famous examples. But he was a bulldog. He was walking outside his home in his neighborhood in Brentwood just after midnight, keeled over. People had talked to him two hours prior, he sounded perfectly fine. They're shocked. Family's stunned. I mean there were some reports of health problems, but there was no indication of this.

So everybody's in a state of shock today trying to make sense of it. And when something like this happens to somebody a lot of people know at a very young age, you could say he died too young by half, he's 43, life expectancy in the early eighties. You're reminded once again, it's become a cliche but it's worth mentioning. You only get one life, and most people don't get as much out of it as they could. Human nature. And one of the reasons that most people don't get the most out of their lives that they can is they can't stop thinking about themselves. And the more you think about yourself the more depressed you're gonna get. Human nature. The more you think about yourself, the less you are aware of things going on outside your sphere. It's hard not to do that, and Breitbart did that.

Breitbart was outside himself in all of his quests. When I say indefatigable, I never heard of him sleeping. I know he did, but he was constantly on the go. He was also a grateful guy and very thoughtful. He was a guest at our wedding in 2010, and about two months prior he sent Cookie a note, wanted to know if she knew who one of my most inspirational figures was. She told him. He presented us with a classic painting of Ronald Reagan, and every year since, every birthday, three birthdays, he has sent me a giant painting, a different rendering of the American flag.

It's a very sad thing to see this happen. And I've been made aware that some of the leftists on Twitter and other blog sites are filled with an unspeakable callous and coarse mean-spiritedness today. When I heard about it I went to some of these sites and I read some of the tweets, some of them from well-known left-wing journalists, Slate.com, you would not believe it, I'm struck. What is there to compromise with these people? Where is the area for compromise with these people? I mean it is really vicious stuff, which, in the end he would have loved and was a testament to his effectiveness and how effective he was.

Even today, the AP in their story/obit of Andrew Breitbart misrepresents him, even in death. And maybe fittingly, given his quest in life, this AP article is a textbook example of the kind of outrageous mendacity in the news media today that he fought against. Even in death the AP cannot refrain from lying about him and misrepresenting him. They treat his posting of the Shirley Sherrod video clip as one of the highlights of his career only in order to use it against him. But Breitbart's clip did not misrepresent her views.

The clip that he posted -- he had the Big Government websites, Big Journalism websites -- the clip that he posted of Shirley Sherrod contained enough of her comments that any fair-minded viewer would realize she was telling the audience about her previous prejudices. This was the case involving all of the mythical black farmers that were signed up for a giant government payout. She and her husband were in on that, and so many of them were not qualified to receive the payment. They all got the payment on the basis of past racism and bigotry and all of this. He exposed Shirley Sherrod, just as he exposed Anthony Weiner's photos, or Anthony's Weiner photos, he exposed 'em. Where's Weiner today? He's walking the baby to the dry cleaners in Queens.

Then there was ACORN. Remember the James O'Keefe videos. That was Andrew Breitbart. They went walking in portraying a pimp and a prostitute looking for ways to scam the system, and there was ACORN telling 'em how to do it. All caught on tape. It caused ACORN to theoretically shut down, and change their name and come back to life as a bunch of separate organizations. The AP article damns Andrew Breitbart with faint praise. It describes him as "an outspoken critic of the mainstream media but was lionized by his fans for his efforts at exposing government corruption and media bias." Now, was he only lionized by his fans?

Wouldn't you think that real-life journalists would applaud Breitbart's efforts to expose government corruption and media bias? I mean, what does the media claim to exist to do? To hold the powerful accountable! "Speak truth to power," is that the phrase? Well, the mainstream media has become part of the power. When that power is held by the Democrat Party, the mainstream media covers up the corruption. He was exposing it. He did more and greater work than Woodward and Bernstein! He should have been one of their heroes. But he wasn't. He should have been given the same kind of hero worship that Woodward and Bernstein have gotten. And unlike the work of Woodward and Bernstein, Breitbart's investigations were actually truthful.