Posted on 03/02/2012 9:37:33 PM PST by beaversmom
I woke up this morning to about ten emails from journalist friends asking if our mutual friend, Andrew Breitbart, was really dead. Really was the operative word. Some meant it in the traditional sense: Is it possible for the human inferno that Breitbart resembled to have actually been extinguished at age 43, leaving his elegant wife Susie and his four beloved children behind? Several, however, meant it as in: Is Andrew really dead? Many of us didnt know if we could trust the announcement, thinking this could be another Breitbart caper, as he always had two or three in his back pocket.
By way of greeting, I used to ask Breitbart what kind of evil he was up to.
Most kinds, hed say, gamely.
So one could easily have envisioned this being the latest Breitbart media stunt: Fake your own demise, go missing for 24 hours, thus encouraging all your ideological adversaries to bleat and fume and make asses of themselves just to prove what kind of sonsofbitches you were up against. Let the record show that tasteful blogger Matt Yglesias came through like clockwork, nearly getting ahead of the Los Angeles coroners announcement by crowing: Conventions around dead people are ridiculous. The world outlook is slightly improved with @AndrewBreitbart dead. (Well done, Matt! Perhaps you could pass your thoughtful sentiments on to his fatherless children, since they likely dont follow you on Twitter. Prick.)
But sadly, it was not Andrews last, greatest caper. Breitbart himself, of course, wouldve not only expected such aggression, but wouldve laughed at it, and even egged it along. One of his favorite pastimes was retweeting his own hate mail, which was voluminous. As a partisan warrior and a guerrilla theater aficionado half right wing Yippie, half Andy Kaufman (his Twitter picture at the time of his death was a Jesus-sighting style imprint of his face on a piece of toast) he made it his vocation to make people crazy. Whatever detractors say, or more likely, whatever they spray, Breitbart clearly excelled at his job.
His intensity could alternately be amusing and taxing. When hed call you in the white-hot fever of one of the headline-garnering skirmishes that hed inserted himself into ACORN, Shirley Sherrod, Anthony Weiners schwantz pictorials you knew that you could set the phone down, run some errands, and do some light yard work, then return without him ever realizing that youd been gone. One of the many benefits of being friends with Andrew was that when he was on fire, which was often, there was no need to carry your share of the conversational load.
But at heart, he was in it for more than scoring points for The Movement as he unironically called it. As anyone who has seen his recent CPAC speech knows, Breitbart had the brains, the talent, and the animal charisma to get people to set cars on fire for him, or to run off with him to the desert where he might start his own anti-Obama doomsday cult. But while he believed in what he espoused, perhaps a little too much, he was also in it for other reasons for action, and for amusement. He didnt just hit scandal head-on. He enjoyed coming at it slyly. He gloried in the art of presentation. A few years back, when getting drinks with Andrew, his wife, and Fox News host Greg Gutfeld at a Washington, D.C. hotel, Breitbart showed me his Twitter mug shot.
Since he knew that I despise Twitter on principle, I thought he was deliberately sticking me in the eye. But he wasnt. Seriously, he said. Take a look. Do you notice anything different about me? In the photo, he had newly grown facial hair. He was looking off into the middle distance in a way that did not quite resemble himself.
I dont know, I said. Did you lose weight? Get a haircut?
NO!!!! he exclaimed, with some disappointment. Its exactly like Eric Boehlerts Twitter picture! Im mirroring him! he said of his bête noire from the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters, which regularly tormented Breitbart, and which in turn, was tormented by him.
Theres not a chance I could pick Eric Boehlert out of a police lineup. But theres no way Breitbart wouldve known that. He was a man who both loved and hated with his whole heart, often getting wrapped around the axle of his own narrative. When I looked at his long-suffering wife, asking her what she made of this, she affectionately shrugged her shoulders. The universal loving-wife symbol for, What can you do?
I tried to calm Breitbart down several times, to no avail. A few years back, he told me the doctor said that he needed to decelerate his stress levels. Consequently, he wanted me to teach him how to fly fish. Then he thought better of it. The problem, he admitted, was, Every time I see a tree, I just want to kick its ass.
The last time I saw Andrew was just a few weeks ago in what turned out to be one of his last capers: dinner at a swank Chicago penthouse with former Weather Underground terrorists/Obama confidants Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Andrew and I often disconnected on politics. Even though we were both conservatives, his mode was a little ferocious for my taste. We knew this, however. And so, it was never an issue. What was important is that he had the quality that all people I like most have: he made me laugh. Whatever his faults, he was wicked and loyal and funny both sick and dark in the best possible way.
Our party arrived at our economy hotel, which sat next to a highway in the ghetto. It smelled of failure and water damage. Breitbart showed up late, letting me know he was on the grounds by sending a text which read: We have to score some heroin before we head out .Wait, I think theres someone outside my hotel room who can help. We did not score heroin, which neither of us used, though in the hotel bar, we all doubled over as Andrew worked out his shtick during pre-game drinks as he proudly explained to us a new coinage of his Retrobate the process whereby one sexually fantasizes about aged actresses who you once had a crush on, in their younger incarnation.
Our friend, Daily Caller editor Tucker Carlson, had won the Ayers dinner at an Illinois Humanities Council auction, and had brought us along. Tucker and I were a little worried that we had in our possession a human grenade in Breitbart, though if we were being honest with ourselves, thats precisely why we brought him. With Andrew, every day was anything-can-happen day.
As it happened, Breitbart was on his best behavior. Im here to learn, Andrew said facetiously. It was part of the pleasure of keeping company with him. He wasnt just a friend, he was a co-conspirator. Once we arrived at the apartment, much to Andrews and Ayerss chagrin, they got along famously. Just two guys having dinner, finding commonality, even if Andrew regarded it his hidebound duty to passive-aggressively heckle Ayers as he served us plates of hoisin ribs and farmhouse cheeses. (This is the bomb, Bill, Breitbart said to the former explosives-rigger.)
When Ayers asked me what I was reading right now, I told him Moby Dick, which actually lived up to its billing. Ayers agreed, though added, as any good academic would, Youve picked up the gay subtext? Breitbart nearly choked on his tofu and quinoa. You mean in Moby Dick? Andrew asked. Or at this dinner?
Though the dinner took place on Super Bowl Sunday, Ayers and co. abruptly dismissed us before halftime, leaving our plan of attack only half realized, as we were attempting to ease into the evening like gentlemen and polite dinner guests. When we adjourned to the Drake Hotel bar to catch the end of the game and commiserate about how we got rolled, or community organized as Breitbart put it, I still had a list of Ayers questions that needed answering. So as I ticked through my list, I asked Breitbart to help fill in the blanks, in character, as Ayers. He eagerly obliged.
Me: Who taught you how to make bombs? And could you still rig one up if pressed?
Breitbart, as Ayers: Thats interesting. Id like for you to try this Chilean sea bass thats been encrusted with a special Phyllo dough.
The next morning, we rode together to the airport. As usual, I didnt have to do much talking. Breitbart was full of stories and ideas and asides. He sang along lustfully when our cab driver blasted Tina Maries 80s hit Lover Girl. He told me of his super-secret guerrilla PR campaign for the upcoming documentary on him, appropriately titled, Hating Breitbart. He would start an anonymous website asking people to upload their hating Breitbart videos, in which theyd be encouraged to cap on him mercilessly. He would blindly commission for high five figures Obama propagandist Shepard Fairey to put up anti-Breitbart posters all over L.A. Then hed call a press conference, announcing who the sponsor of all the anti-Breitbart animus was Andrew Breitbart himself. It wouldve been a fine caper.
As we took our seats on the plane out of Chicago, Andrew was a row behind me. This I counted a blessing, thinking I could get some much-needed work-related reading done. But no such luck. Andrew asked his fellow row-mate, Would you switch seats with him, so I can talk to him? Andrew often seemed like he just wanted someone to talk to.
And so we did, for hours. We talked about his kids, whom he was crazy about. And we talked about one of his favorite films, Grandmas Boy, about a slacker video game tester forced to move in with his grandmother. We talked about his sterling academic credentials (he pulled a solid 2.0 at Tulane, the New Orleans party school), and at his good fortune in finding his way in the world, even if finances were sometimes tight.
We talked about aging, as two middle-aged guys who get into the Bloody Mary cart at 11 in the morning sometimes will. I told Andrew that his good friend, Five for Fightings John Ondrasik, had a hit song called 100 Years about aging that never ceases to freak me out. The protagonist of the song describes the different ages of his life 15, 33, 45, and so on that tick by in a blink. It doesnt help, I told Andrew, that I was 33 when the song seemingly came out yesterday, but that I am closer to 45 now, thus illustrating Ondrasiks point.
In a very rare spell of silence, Breitbart stewed for several minutes. Then, he wistfully replied, Dont worry, man. Its something that bothers me, too. But I have it all figured out. We all need to go to work together every day from 9 am to 3 pm, whether we need to or not. In a classroom. Well even sit at those peninsula-shaped desks, with our pencil sharpeners and Elmers glue. And well do it for nine months out of every year.
Why on earth? I asked, puzzled.
Because, he said. When we were in school, that was the last time we watched the clock, and wanted it to hurry up. The last time it took too long to get to the next thing.
As we parted company at baggage claim, Andrew was still talking (as always) about how we needed to meet for drinks, about his next caper, about a proposed Grandmas Boy viewing party. Neither of us knew that the time we were just speaking of was in shorter supply for him than for the rest of us. Makes me wish we were sitting at our peninsula-desks, stalling the clock.
Several years ago, when Breitbart was in the middle of one skirmish or another I dont even remember which one I told him that I didnt know whether I should encourage him, but that he made me laugh, as always. I asked him when someone finally shot him, Can I read a poem at your memorial service?
I think I should stop, he admitted of his latest caper. But its so fun and the hate mail is something to behold .And of course you can read my favorite poem, William Carlos Williamss The Red Wheelbarrow at my wake. Well my friend, you mercifully didnt get shot. But here you go anyway:
so much depends upon
a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain water
beside the white chickens.
Ive never had any idea what the hell that poem means. And I suspect that neither Breitbart, nor William Carlos Williams, had a clue either. But it doesnt matter. As Andrew held, sometimes absurdity is worth it for its own sake. And as he once wrote to me, I hope people see that Im dead serious about what Im dead serious about, and besides that, its all about a good laugh.
He will be missed.
That is for sure. Definitely one of a kind.
This is just all too surreal.
Already posted
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2853450/posts
This thread is clean. Thank you very much.
It can be cool to be conservative- to challenge and provoke and ring in true with solutions to problems people face everyday raising kids and paying bills.
AB shook us out of the ditch we were in and took it straight to the enemy.
That’s a lesson not to be wasted!
I did search too, but didn’t find it.
Ah jeez, it's gonna get ugly now.
He made it a lot of fun.
PING
We all have family lives and careers and interests, but one hobby should be to advance the cause of Truth. Many ways it can be done, but please people- do something!
Can’t wait to see this! (Warning: profane language)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reIxxGVxuwE&feature=plcp&context=C3cb1818UDOEgsToPDskIZaCF0QkpUJPtNk7EuzhsP
That looks great.
Thanks for posting this. I hadn’t read it yet. So much is being said it’s hard to catch it all.
I’m the same way—appreciate the double posts. It is hard to catch it all and I’m usually on here everyday.
P.S. You’re welcome.
Sometimes they don’t seem to show up in the search. I knew it was posted before because I read it with great interest. Actually I don’t know why I bothered posting - no harm done.
Don't live in the Country, so I can't have any Chickens.
I'll just sit in the Wheelbarrow when it starts raining and eat some Fried Chicken while remembering when I met the late great Andrew Breitbart at Western CPAC back in 2009.
Man, I wish I hung out with the guy.
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