Newsweek Editor Tina Brown Savages Andrew Breitbart On NPR

Tina Brown, Newsweek and The Daily Beast editor, attacked the late Andrew Breitbart in an interview on NPR on Tuesday, calling him a ‘right-wing radical blogger who just recently dropped dead,’ and a ‘provocateur.’ She also referred to his work as a ‘bastardization of journalism’…

During Hitler’s German, there were 50 foreign correspondents in Berlin, which is an incredible index of the golden era of journalism. What we have, of course, in the era of today with Andrew Breitbart – the blogger, the right-wing radical blogger who just recently dropped dead in the early 40s – was, of course, the absolute opposite. It’s really the degradation, in a sense, of the journalistic ideals of a William Shirer. It was the absolute opposite. Breitbart didn’t report anything. What Breitbart did, really, was he was a provocateur. He was a death by 1,000 tweets. He was, you know, quite happy to take the flying sound bite – any sound bite – and misapply it in its context and create an absolute mayhem for the person concerned like he did for poor Shirley Sherrod who was the obscure official in the Agriculture Department. He gave the impression by the cutting of her words in a tape that he released that she was giving racially motivated financing decisions when she was doing the opposite. So this was really a, kind of, bastardization through the format of Web and tweeting and simply using the Internet as a tool for activism.

I heard this... It was a savage take down, and well deserved... Where were these words when he was a constant active threat to journalism? Brave Tina Brown. Speaking the truth when it does the least amount of good. But it is always nice to hear truth, I guess, especially on the radio.

I know. I didn't mean to take away from Major Tom's comment either. It wasn't there yet when I hit 'post'. I would like to see somebody tell all about what an asshole Breitbart was, but it's probably still too soon.

If the sum of a person's life involved exalting the powerful, abusing the powerless, and generally making the world a lousier place, speak as much ill of them as you want - just do so in a way that's truthful, and reinforces how utterly unworthy of admiration their chosen life was.