I was never terribly impressed with David Frum, even back when he was writing the “Axis of Evil” line for Bush 43. Bush is gone and most of the Axis is still there, with Iran on the verge of nuclear weapons, the Norks still pulling the wool over our eyes, the Taliban’s imminent return to power in Afghanistan — good job, guys. No wonder Obama is president.
Like too many of the Bushies, he was a conservative of convenience — Karl Rove, I’m talking to you — one for whom the gig was far more important than the cause. Inconsistent and distressingly self-congratulatory, Frum now sneers at his former “colleagues” on the right, scuttling away ever leftward, at this point about two klicks shy of David Brock country.
Here is part of his Daily Beast obituary for Andrew Breitbart:
He waged a culture war minus the “culture,” as a pure struggle between personalities. Hence his intense focus on President Obama: only by hating a particular political man could Breitbart bring any order to his fundamentally apolitical emotions.
Because President Obama was black, and because Breitbart believed in using every and any weapon at hand, Breitbart’s politics did inevitably become racially coded. Breitbart’s memory will always be linked to his defamation of Shirley Sherrod and his attempt to make a national scandal out of back payments to black farmers: the story he always called “Pigford” with self-conscious resonance.
Yet it is wrong to see Breitbart as racially motivated. Had Breitbart decided he hated a politician whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower, Breitbart would have been just as delighted to attack that politician with a different set of codes. The attack was everything, the details nothing.
This indifference to detail suffused all of Breitbart’s work, and may indeed be his most important and lasting legacy. Breitbart sometimes got stories right (Anthony Weiner). More often he got them wrong (Sherrod). He did not much care either way. Just as all is fair in a shooting war, so manipulation and deception are legitimate tools in a culture war. Breitbart used those tools without qualm or regret, and he inspired a cohort of young conservative journalists to do likewise.
This is pure Frummery, and I’d like to think Frum knows it, although I doubt it. His overwhelming self-esteem, born of resentment, would never cause him to question his moral posturing.
I’ll leave it to the Breitbart crew — and to Chris Matthews! — to continue setting the record straight about the so-called “deceptively edited” Sherrod videos. It’s Frum’s larger point — that for Breitbart “the attack was everything, the details nothing” — that is entirely false. Andrew and I spent nearly every day for more than a year either in person or on the phone together as we were founding Big Journalism and had that been the case, I never would have worked with him. As for the implicit charge of racism — these days, the last refuge of a scoundrel — that is prima facie absurd.
Frum’s sheer churlishness — he begins his obit by observing:
“Of the dead, speak nothing but what is good.”
It’s an ancient rule and a wise one, but one that does not do justice to the life and career of Andrew Breitbart, dead today aged 43.
It is impossible to speak nothing of a man who traced such a spectacular course through the contemporary media.
But to speak only “good” of Andrew Breitbart would be to miss the story and indeed to misunderstand the man.
– doesn’t come close to the vituperation on display yesterday by such leftist hacks and nonentities as Matt Yglesias, who tweeted, “The world outlook is slightly improved with Andrew Breitbart dead.” But the underlying sentiment is the same.
One somehow expects more class from Frum, who appears to be desperately shredding whatever esteem he once enjoyed. But no, here he is today, tweeting on the death of James Q. Wilson:
An actual giant of conservative thought, James Q. Wilson, has died today.
As Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds just noted over on his site: Schmuck.
I'll bet James Q. Wilson (who again?) never rollerbladed down to a protest and managed to make both friends and enemies.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm curious as to why Mr. Walsh would expect more from David Frum.
For a journalist sucking up to his liberal peers, isn't this kind of obit par for the course, especially since you think he worked in the GW Bush admin. simply to pad his resume?
I guess I must've missed the portion of Frum's career where he pretended to be conservative, because he never struck me as one who was "in it to win it."
I have a strong suspicion that David Frum could not fathom remaining seriously opposed to liberals with a black guy in the White House. He didn't want to have to argue against THAT!
On a TOTALLY unrelated note, anyone know how Kathleen Parker's doing these days?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe more I read you, the more I like you.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseInteresting he'd peg Wilson as a true conservative. Wilson was a giant in the social sciences and political science, and honest, and conservatives often supported him or latched onto his work, but I wouldn't describe the man as conservative. He was a researcher and thinker who followed the facts, and sometimes this lead him to conservative sounding positions. Sometimes not.
Frum is proof that you can fashion an entire career out of the No True Scotsman fallacy. "No true conservative would do ____" seems to be enough of an argument to get him published and on the talkers. His bankruptcy is rather amazing to me, and like the amoral pure leftist shills (e.g. Ezra Klein - "ACA will be cost neutral you fools!" "Everybody knew ACA would cost a lot of money!") what most amazes me is how cheaply he seems to have sold out his intellectual integrity. His only real intrinsic value is the Bush tie; it prevents the right from conclusively disproving his claims to conservatism, and this makes him valuable as a lefty shill to attack conservatives. What a twisted little fellow...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere's Frum being honest again. What a RINO!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePart of Frum's problem is that he's always thought himself the brightest person in any room he entered. Another part is that he expects everyone else in the room to agree with him.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFrum shows not only how self absorbed he is but also how stupid. I for one am not surprised as I never considered the Bushes to be conservatives but simply opportunists sucking off the public. (which is why they identify so much with a similar blood sucking Clinton) What else are they qualified to do? Run a baseball team, play with a fledgling CIA? :)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI believe I'm pretty open to seeing classlessness on our side. ("Oh really? When?" Just off the top of my head, some of the comments about the birth control debate and especially about Obama's approach to Iran have been intemperate and overly aggressive).
But, I don't think I've ever seen anything like what the left has done after the death of Andrew Breitbart. I have never seen a prominent conservative attack a recently dead man. Once. Perhaps it's something about the "culture of life" -- a cliche, surely, but on the other hand there certainly is some strange pathology in a movement that can lash out so viciously at the untimely death of a public figure.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBreitbart called Ted Kennedy a "pile of human excrement" the day after he died. Now, that sentiment may be true, but let's not pretend that conservatives are uniformly respectful of the dead. Breitbart wasn't.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDid Breitbart ever kill anybody?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBetter phrasing: Did Breitbart kill anybody while drunk, flee the scene, blame the victim, and use his family's connections to evade justice?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd then... and then sit in judgment of Clarence Thomas's collegial banter as if that were worse than anything Ted Kennedy himself had ever done with a woman?
Also anybody else remember the drunken Kennedy-Dodd "waitress sandwich"?
Let's face it, Andrew Breitbart was showing the deceased Kennedy kindnesses by (1) not referring to him as the waste product of a creature lower than dogs (sorry donkeys and pigs) and (2) by substituting the more exact Anglo-Saxon word with the more diffuse and a bit more acceptable-in-polite-company word with Latin roots.
That earlier lame attempt at a tu quoque is more leftist FAIL. One sharp remark neither excuses not equates the entire blog posts of hate-spew from the Leftist crowd that is always uninhibited about sneering "Have you no shame?" to silence their opponents.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIrrelevant. Kennedy was a murderer, sure. But the fact is that the very person in question here exhibited extremely poor taste in a very similar situation. Trying to change the subject doesn't adequately address the point raised by the poster you responded to.
This - misdirection instead of answering a charge - seems to be a common tactic here at NRO.
Catpcha: Fish on! Indeed.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusein a very similar situation
That is where you are obviously wrong.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSimilar in that both are dead. Other than that.....requires an impressive amount of shallow thinking to equate the two.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse>This - misdirection instead of answering a charge - seems to be a common tactic here at NRO.
You ought to know.
>Kennedy was a murderer, sure.
Murderer, shmurderer. Obviously no biggee to you. He was a traitor as well. But, admittedly, no one left or right cares about that stuff anymore.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTeddy Kennedy killed a woman.
He drove her into the swim, and let her suffocate to death, purposely never calling for help, because he cared more about his political future than about that lady in his car.
So, peeing on his grave -- literally -- the day after he died would be in perfect keeping with being a gentleman, and would be in complete solidarity with a culture that places the highest value upon human life.
Ted Kennedy was a rapacious pig.
I would disrespect my Maker if I ever paid any respect to such a vile piece of filth.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFrum has never left an impression on me. I should probably loathe him, but he's so utterly inconsequential that I can't bring myself to be bothered.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUnfortunately, he is consequential, as "axis of evil" demonstrates. He's just a deeply dishonest slug. He and his minions still claim that AEI fired him because donors demanded it. He needs to be exposed as often and as thoroughly as possible.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCoining a phrase for someone else to utter isn't really my idea of a consequential thinker.
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