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Mickey Kaus, a Democrat who was one of right-wing web mogul Andrew Breitbart's friends from across the ideological aisle, writes at the Daily Caller that Breitbart always believed the charges he was making — and more importantly to me, refrained from spreading unsubstantiated charges his more wing-nutty allies couldn't prove but wanted to float anyway.
I’ve known right-wingers who were like that (‘See, we attack Kerry with this, and by the time he answers we’ve moved on to the next charge!’) Breitbart wasn’t one of them. Yes, he had a jaundiced view of the left, and a pugilistic–I might say, Frum-esque–view of the Middle East. But he said what he though was true, even when that hurt his side or put his own career at risk....I would go so far as to say that Breitbart had an instinctive honesty...I also know that there were plenty of stories presented by the “cohort of young conservative journalists” that he refused to publish because he wasn’t certain they’d hold up.
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Nobody was too unimportant for him to argue with for hours. At the height of some controversy, in which he’d be betting his entire operation on the basis of his gut, I’d be stuck in a jam on the San Diego freeway and there he’d be in his Volvo SUV, stuck too, honking and waving while taking one of his four kids home from school. He was one of those people who had so much energy he seemed ubiquitous. Maybe there was more than one!
I thought we’d all wind up working for him. I didn’t realize until today how unhappy I’d be not to.
Previously at LA Observed:
Andrew Breitbart, conservative LA web publisher was 43 *
