Thursday, Mar 24, 2011 17:50 ET
War Room
The stupid saga of Andrew Breitbart and the Huffington Post
By Alex Pareene
http://www.salon.com/news/huffington_post/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/03/24/huffpo_breitbartSo! Arianna Huffington -- recently put in charge of all the "content" at AOL following the dial-up ISP's acquisition of her former "liberal Drudge" Internet newspaper -- gave a blog to her old friend Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart helped build the HuffPo, back when he was just another loudmouth Hollywood conservative and not the even louder-mouthed full-tilt culture warrior he is today (thanks in part to training at places like the Claremont Institute). Hundreds of people -- many of them idiots, frauds, and liars -- have blogs at the HuffPo. But the HuffPo actually promoted Breitbart's writing on the front page of the site.
Now, Mr. Breitbart is not just a conservative pundit. He is a crusading propagandist who publishes a wide variety of untruths and smears across his "Big" websites. He is not guilty of having the wrong opinions, he is guilty of being a shameless, race-baiting bully.
So various whiny liberals complained, like always, and the Huffington Post bravely promised to continue promoting the stupid nonsense from Arianna's old friend, in the name of democracy and the free exchange of ideas. ("Ideas" like "NPR and the White House are collaborating to spread the false idea that the Tea Parties are racist" and "the White House is lying about its visitor logs and specifically including the names of famous people in order to embarrass Andrew Breitbart.") ColorOfChange.org organized a petition, the HuffPo dismissed its complaints.
Complaining about the Huffington Post publishing awful, offensive garbage seldom works, because some of that garbage is profitable and some of it is just stuff that Arianna herself seems to like. And Huffington herself is too busy spending big bucks bringing big names to AOL/HuffPo while shuttering dozens of existing titles and letting various less impressive content-providers go to care if a bunch of liberals are mad at her site.