The chronically choleric Andrew Breitbart is well known for his histrionics and hyperactive bluster. One need look no further than his recent psychotic tirade aimed at Occupy protesters in Washington, whom he castigated as rapists and murders, to understand the depths of his dementia.
On his BigGovernment blog yesterday, Breitbart uncovered a disturbing conspiracy involving David Brock, the founder of Media Matters. Apparently a photograph of him that was published in a 1997 issue of Esquire Magazine was allegedly scrubbed from the Internet with the help of co-conspirators at Google – and probably George Soros, ACORN, Sesame Street, and, of course, the White House.
Breitbart is convinced that, because he can’t find an online copy of a picture from a fifteen year old magazine, he has stumbled onto a liberal media attempt to rewrite history. What is it that Brock would be trying to hide by suppressing this (rather interesting and artful) photograph? Breitbart is attaching some profound significance to this picture that most other observers would simply regard as photographic melodrama – the sort that commonly appears in culture pimping publications like Esquire.
To hear Breitbart tell it, this photo depicts “an otherwise boring political subject [who] is happy to take off his clothes and tie himself to a tree in the name of fighting the VRWC [vast right-wing conspiracy].” Breitbart exclaims “What narcissism! What delusions of grandeur!” And he asks “Who else takes a homoerotic picture Fabio-style and tied to a tree?” He is proud of himself for rediscovering this photo “with all its narcissism and desire for fame, adulation and martyrdom.” If I didn’t know any better I might have thought that Breitbart was referring to his own adventures in periodic pictorials. Here is Breitbart in the March 2010 issue of Time Magazine:
Andrew Breitbart: Booze, Bath, And Beyond
What narcissism! What delusions of grandeur! Who else takes a homoerotic picture, naked in a bubble bath, in the name of fighting the VLWC? Breitbart’s hypocrisy is only matched by his conceit. For a raving egotist like Breitbart to accuse others of narcissism takes mega doses of chutzpah. Breitbart is so self-involved that he wrote in his biography (see my review) that “I didn’t want to react to the news at all. I wanted to be the news.” And he has succeeded in that ambition in the most embarrassing sense. Like the dweeb who repeatedly slips on a banana peel, Breitbart has become famous for falling on his ass over and over again. He’s a one-man Three Stooges.
[By the way, If you try to search for that photo of Breitbart on Google you will have great difficulty finding anything other than one or two blog postings. And this photo is only two years old. It must be some sort of conspiracy between Breitbart, Time Warner, and the Koch brothers to suppress such an unflattering and nausea-inducing portrait. Come to think of it, it may be a public service.]
If that isn’t enough, Breitbart says of Brock that “Only in a world without opposition can Brock be safe—so he must destroy it.” Breitbart offers no support for that statement. On the other hand, Breitbart’s destructive tendencies are well documented. He once swore to “bring down the institutional left” in three weeks. That was over two years ago so I’m assuming the institutional left doesn’t have much to worry about at this point. In his biography, Breitbart also maligned the faction of the media that he regards as his opposition as worse than Al Qaeda.
Like all of the other critics of Brock and Media Matters, Breitbart leaves one thing out of his extended diatribe: Any evidence that Brock has done anything untoward, unscrupulous, or unprincipled. Media Matters is a resource for documented conservative bias in the media, often without editorializing. But Breitbart makes a big show of personal attacks without bothering to provide a single example of any wrongdoing on the part of his victim. He is a relentless smear-monger who has no respect for the truth.
Breitbart also has no respect for people who have just eaten. And on that point I would like to apologize for having posted that photo of him bathing. I felt it was my journalistic responsibility, but I now regret the subsequent gastrointestinal distress it may have caused some readers.
