Andrew Breitbart Dead at 43 - Page 2

Originally Posted by tonton

Really? Is that clear?

LIAR.

Even if they met once, then met once ten years later, that doesn't mean they were colluding. You're just hoping they were.

Originally Posted by trumptman

You should look at the history there instead of just lashing out at everyone.

Originally Posted by SDW2001

Obama and Ayres had a clearly association over many years.

Originally Posted by SDW2001

Dude, you're about an 11 on the asshole meter recently. I already told you I don't know the answer. It's not up to me. As for why it's "bad," I don't know what most people think there either. For me, it's not about the person who is dead, but his/her family, friends, etc. No reason to hurt them with negative things while they are clearly grieving.

In the mid-1960s, SNCC, one of the most important civil rights groups of its era, began to split at the seams. Since its inception, the group had committed itself to the eradication of white supremacy strictly through the twin pillars of nonviolence and integration. SNCC members, like their fellow activists throughout the South, endured threats, beatings, bombings, and shootings, all of which they greeted with Bible verses and song. The tactic ultimately succeeded by cutting through centuries of hate and accessing a basic sense of human decency.

But nonviolence exacted a price and, in 1966, its success was not assured. That was the year Stokely Carmichael assumed leadership of the organization. Carmichael had spent much of the early 60s subjecting his body to beatings, tear-gassings, and water-hoses. Committed to integration and nonviolence, he had driven down dark and lonely Southern roads accompanied only by the knowledge that people of his ilk were being vanished there with some unsettling regularity. When Carmichael came to power he, and much of SNCC's membership, had changed their politics. They expelled whites from the group and rejected nonviolence. Eventually there was a quasi-merger with the Black Panther Party and a full-throated embrace of revolutionary violence.

Among the SNCC members to reject that path, were Shirley and Charles Sherrod. Shirley Sherrod had every reason to follow Carmichael. Her cousin Bobby Hall had been lynched. Her father had been killed in cold blood over a land dispute with a white neighbor. Neither killer was punished. Instead, white supremacists regularly visited Sherrod's home intent on terrorizing her widowed mother in silence. But when SNCC split, Sherrod, and her husband, rejected violence and nationalism, despite having every reason to embrace revanche.

When Andrew Breitbart died yesterday, it was natural to turn to the effort he led to injure Sherrod's career and reputation. We all know that in the specific case of the Spooners, Breitbart's facts were wrong. But I want us to consider a greater truth. Sherrod had not simply helped the Spooners, but that she had -- since the days of Lester Maddox -- lived as the exact opposite of the racist Breitbart portrayed. Thus Breitbart did not simply get the facts of an incident wrong, he got the broad facts of an entire human life wrong. Confronted with such a deed, the person who lives in empathy, who sees an aggrieved party as human, must necessarily embrace a firm and full-throated contrition. Instead Breitbart chose, to look for ways to make himself right.


He claimed that the video showed NAACP members cheering for discrimination against whites:

What this video shows ... is not just that Shirley Sherrod, what she said was wrong, but that the audience was laughing and applauding as she described how she maltreated the white farmer. ... The point is that the NAACP, at a dinner honoring this person, is cheering on a person describing--describing a white person as the other.
This was a lie.

He questioned the identity of the very people he claimed to be vindicating:

You tell me as a reporter how CNN put on a person today who purported to be the farmer's wife? What did you do to find out whether or not that was the actual farmer's wife? I mean, if you're going to accuse me of a falsehood, tell me where you've confirmed that had this incident happened 24 years ago. [...] You're going off of her word that the farmer's wife is the farmer's wife?
This was another lie.

In short when confronted with his participation in an immoral act, Brietbart doubled down on immorality. Accused of deception, he elected to deceive further. He took many with him down that path, and by the end we were left with writers parsing the term lynching so as to further malign Sherrod. That their redefinition would have remanded Emmett Till out of the category mattered little. Anything for the home team.

When I heard that Andrew Breitbart had died, I was saddened. It is natural to think of the damage Breitbart did to people like Sherrod by embracing lying as a weapon. But I found myself thinking of the great injury he must have ultimately done himself, for by the end of the Sherrod affair, he was a man lying only to himself and other liars.

By embracing that deception, by neglecting to research Sherrod before putting up a clip of her talking, by electing to see her as little more than a shiv against the hated liberals, he deprived himself of knowledge, of experience, of insight, of enlightenment. That he might learn something from Sherrod, that he might access some power from her life, and pass that on to loved ones and friends, never occurred to him. Publicly, he lived to make himself right -- a tradition that is fully empowered in our politics. Breitbart didn't invent the art of making yourself right. But he embraced it, and then advanced it.

That is what took me to sadness. I have experienced curiosity as a primarily selfish endeavor. It originates in the understanding of the brevity of life, and the desire to see as much of it as possible, from as many angles as possible without doing too much damage to my morality. The opposite of that -- incuriosity, dishonesty, the opportunistic deployment of information -- is darkness. Breitbart died, like all of us will, in darkness. But as a media persona he chose to also live there, and in the process has impelled countless others to throttle themselves into the abyss.

I have heard it said by some fellow liberals that Breitbart was in fact a good person, that his public persona was not the same as his private. This kind of praise is so broadly true of most controversial public figures as to be meaningless. And it is irrelevant. Breitbart may well have been an excellent father and a great friend but that is not why we are talking about him. We are noting his death because of the impact he had on our politics and our conversation. It must be said that that impact was for the worse. Any talk of his private life, is an attempt to change the subject and avoid discomfiting truths.

It is wholly appropriate to be sorry that Andrew Breitbart died. But in the relevant business, it is right to be sorry for how he lived.

Originally Posted by br

thanks for answering. I don't think any of his family visits this website so there should be no reason for me to hold back. I think this article pretty accurately captures my feelings on the subject.

Originally Posted by BR

Thanks for answering. I don't think any of his family visits this website so there should be no reason for me to hold back. I think this article pretty accurately captures my feelings on the subject.

Originally Posted by tonton

Really? Prove it. You're making the allegation, now prove it. "Meeting" doesn't equal "association", as I've pointed out. Did Obama ever participate in any illegal activities associated with the WU? Did he ever encourage them? You can not prove this and you're having a wank fest.

Until you can prove it, as long as you're stating this 'association' as fact, you're a liar. Keep lying, liar.

Originally Posted by trumptman

It can be shown they were on the same board for years, lived the same neighborhood and that Ayers has personally admitted to ghostwriting Obama's book. (He always then ironically demands the royalties)

The point is that none of what can be proven will satisfy your hypocritical double-standard related to associations.

You use guilt by association for conservatives and you also use exception as rule reasoning.

For liberals, all these things are excused, even when the association is more than an association but a relationship and even when the exception is more than a one time mistake.

So the point is the proof is that there, understood but no one here cares to waste time proving it to your closed mind.

Originally Posted by tonton

Assuming that all of that is true, is any of that illegal? Immoral? Questionable?

No. It's guilt by association. Nothing more.

From the article:

Observers had speculated that there are enough voters who are complete morons and believe in "guilt by meeting" that the footage could have derailed Obamas hopes for a second term.

Conveniently for the Republicans, those same morons seem to overlook the myriad meetings between neocons and Saddam, neocons and Bin Laden, neocons and Enron, Halliburton, Diebold, Rush Limbaugh (if anyone knows about prostitutes and porn it's bound to be him).

No double standard, really. Honestly. Show me where I've shown to support the guilt by associaton fallacy. Hint in case you're too stupid to realize - I was being facetious about Saddam and Bin LAden in this thread.

No, I don't. You're lying or projecting.. AGAIN.

So now it's a "relationship"? Define relationship. Even if it's a fucking gay sex affair, it still doesn't prove any wrongdoing on Obama's part.
No, the point is that you guys are wanking at the prospect of "damning" Obama for something that proves no wrongdoing whatsoever.

Let's see the videos in question first. My guess is that there's no "there" there.

Originally Posted by SDW2001

You're free to do what you want. Just don't be surprised if speaking badly about someone who has just passed earns you disdain from others. As for the article, I disagree with the last part in particular. Breitbart held the Left accountable when few others would. That is a good thing.

Originally Posted by BR

Why should it earn disdain from others? If the reason is to spare the family, the family isn't being hurt here.

And no, he didn't hold the left accountable by lying, doubling down on lies once they were exposed, and souring the political discourse in this country. His family isn't better off without him, but the country is.

Originally Posted by BR

The Sherrod situation was a complete lie. He double down on it when exposed. He attempted to ruin innocent people's lives. He was a scumbag.

"That's just the way it is" is a really, really shitty meaningless platitude, by the way.

Originally Posted by SDW2001

Dude, you're about an 11 on the asshole meter recently. I already told you I don't know the answer. It's not up to me. As for why it's "bad," I don't know what most people think there either. For me, it's not about the person who is dead, but his/her family, friends, etc. No reason to hurt them with negative things while they are clearly grieving.



He'll look at it, then dismiss and/or deny it. Obama and Ayres had a clearly association over many years. Obama and Rev. Jermiah Wright had more than just an association...they were close for 20 years.

Originally Posted by BR

The Sherrod situation was a complete lie. He double down on it when exposed. He attempted to ruin innocent people's lives. He was a scumbag.

"That's just the way it is" is a really, really shitty meaningless platitude, by the way.

Originally Posted by BR

Why is that?

Originally Posted by marvfox

I HAVE RESPECT FOR THE DEAD!

Originally Posted by marvfox

I presume you have a brain than use it wisely!