To Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of the Washington Post,
Richard Cohen, today:
True, Breitbart was shockingly young, a mere 43, but then in those few years he had done much — a good deal of it revolting and some of it unethical or sloppy.
He claimed enormous credit for revealing that Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) was a flasher, but the so-called crime had no victim and was not in the least way political. Breitbart had ousted a liberal from Congress not in an election or in an exchange of ideas but because he caught him with his pants down. Conservatives cheered. They have, as we all know, considerable trouble with any kind of sex.
Cohen writes this in sneering about the death of a father of four.
He concludes,
A public man should be judged by his public acts. And in Breitbart I can find nothing of value. He thought politics was like war.
What would it take for any editor over there to say, “You know, Richard, maybe you want to take another crack at this one”? Or, “There’s probably a way to make the point you want to make without calling a man ‘revolting and unethical’ — I mean, he did just die suddenly, leaving his wife a widow, his children fatherless, and his friends mourning.” Or, “The man’s funeral is scheduled for today, do we really want to conclude one of our columns with the declaration that his life’s work offered nothing of value”?
But no, that was too much to ask. Just as it was too much to ask for any of the numerous lefties on Twitter to hold their tongues and fingers and just write something like, “I disagreed with him, but RIP.”
But hey, Rush used a mean word, so let’s throw a hissy fit about that for a week.