Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder David Frum weighs in: "In time, Andrew Breitbart might have aged into greater self-control and a higher concept of public service. Premature death deprived him of the chance at redemption often sought and sometimes found by people who have done wrong in their lives and work. And this is where it becomes difficult to honor the Roman injunction to speak no ill of the dead. It’s difficult for me to assess Breitbart’s impact upon American media and American politics as anything other than poisonous. 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?" <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/01/andrew-breitbart-1969-2012.html" target="_blank">http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...012.html</a>
Originally Posted By Labuda I feel sorry for his kids, but could not care any less than I do about him as a person. Losing your dad at a young age SUCKS.
Originally Posted By SuperDry Let me step out on a limb and say that Breitbart was a genius when it came to the modern media age. Despite whatever may be said against him, he was able to figure out the modern communications age and how to use it to manipulate public opinion (not to mention his own wallet) better than almost anyone. He was described as Matt Drudge's "right-hand man." In hindsight, Breitbart came up with something with respect to Drudge that's nothing short of brilliant. If I had thought of it first, I would have done anything that Matt Drudge required of my right hand to be allowed to do what Breitbart did. Newt Gingrich tweeted the following: "Andrew Breitbart was the most innovative pioneer in conservative activist social media in America. He had great courage and creativity." I couldn't agree more. What I'm referring to specifically is how Andrew piggybacked himself to Drudge's success. For those who have not been following the Noise Machine and its workings over the past decade, Drudge Report has become hugely influential. The tricks and techniques that Drudge uses to manipulate public opinion, and more specifically keep the choir to which he's preaching "on message", are very sophisticated. One of those techniques is that he almost never generates original content. That is, almost everything that's reported on Drudge Report is a link to a "mainstream media" news site. This gives Drudge Report the semblance of legitimacy. After all, he's not writing biased editorial pieces, but merely for the most part linking to "legitimate" mainstream media news articles. I'll leave my commentary on how he manipulates public opinion within this context to another post. Getting back to the point of this thread, Drudge sometimes links to content that's exclusive to a particular news source (say, the NY Times) and therefore has no choice but to link directly to that source. But in many cases, he links to a "wire" story that comes from the Associated Press, Reuters, or some other similar source. It used to be that when this happened, he'd simply link to that story's appearance in the NYTimes or some other "mainstream media" source. That's where Breitbart comes in. At some point a few years ago, he figured it out. He got his site licensed as a bona fide member of the wire services. From that point forward, any link from Drudge that was to a wire service story went to the Breitbart.com instance of it. Breitbart gets all of the web traffic, and thus ad revenue, for all the Drudge readers of wire service stories, not to mention promoting his site and himself personally. Brilliant - absolutely brilliant. I can't say that I wouldn't have been tempted to the dark side had I thought of it myself first.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>I'll leave my commentary on how he manipulates public opinion within this context to another post.<< I sure wouldn't say no to you starting another thread on that. Your comments on the noise machine are always illuminating and insightful.
