(Photo by Gage Skidmore)
For simplicity’s sake, it was tempting for me to disregard Andrew Breitbart as just a bully. (Though, as we’re coming to recognize, even schoolyard bullies have long lasting negative impacts on their victims.) But the fact of the matter is his mean-spirited and brash style of activism lead to the undeserved downfall of real people.
Andrew Sullivan, in a remembrance of Breitbart, asked his readers to remember Breitbart as a human being who did have a mean streak, but was still a real person. I’m inclined to do so, but in doing so we must remember the biggest impression he made in public life. You don’t have to be a liberal or Breitbart’s enemy to recognize how much harm that legacy left on political discourse and in the mainstream normalization of hatred in America. Ta-Nehisi Coates has a wonderful entry that fleshes out this point.
The Red Notes 