Andrew Breitbart

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I woke up this morning to about ten emails from journalist friends asking if our mutual friend, Andrew Breitbart, was really dead. “Really” was the operative word. Some meant it in the traditional sense: Is it possible for the human inferno that Breitbart resembled to have actually been extinguished at age 43, leaving his elegant wife Susie and his four beloved children behind? Several, however, meant it as in: Is Andrew really dead? Many of us didn’t know if we could trust the announcement, thinking this could be another Breitbart caper, as he always had two or three in his back pocket.

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I'm as shocked as everyone else to hear about the death of Andrew Breitbart this morning. I didn't know Breitbart well, but I knew him well enough to like him a great deal. 

Andrew Breitbart died suddenly last night, much, much too young. He was a good and loyal friend, a happy and exuberant warrior, and a talented and dynamic force on behalf of causes he believed in, and the country he loved. May his memory be a blessing.

Here’s a moving tribute by Andrew’s good friend Jonah Goldberg, who happened to be at the Fox studio when the news broke this morning:

Andrew Breitbart has been releasing photographs of New York Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner throughout the day, and he now reports that he received pictures of a shirtless Weiner from an anonymous source.

I wrote yesterday that cries of racism without just cause and serious proof are damaging to the falsely accused, the political process, race relations, and those who suffer from actual racism. I was talking mostly about the left's cynical and frequent use of "racism" accusations to marginalize political opponents at the time, but the same applies to unfounded accusations of racism from Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart.

The solution to the left's frequent playing of the race card is not for the right to start a racism accusation arms race. We don't need more accusations flying around with flimsy evidence. We need far more consideration before flinging them, on all sides.

Racism is among the worst things one can be accused of in American society, and one should require solid proof before levying it—against white conservative activists or black USDA employees. In the case of Shirley Sherrod, it's pretty clear neither Breitbart nor the USDA nor the NAACP nor the White House had it.

On July 19, Andrew Breitbart posted a video of USDA official Shirley Sherrod speaking at an NAACP event. In that clip, Sherrod told the audience that she had once withheld the "full force of what I could do" for a white farmer because of his race. Shortly after the video was posted Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, reportedly under pressure from the White House, fired Sherrod.

NAACP president Ben Jealous applauded the firing: