When Andrew Breitbart, an Internet media mogul, died during this past week, the media found itself in a peculiar position. On the one hand, they didn't want to sound crass or unprofessional in their obituaries for the man. But on the other hand, Breitbart himself had a history of taking pride in speaking ill of the recently dead and never held back in his own commentary while claiming to enjoy making enemies. And many of the people who would be commenting on this occasion had themselves been targets of his pen and of his campaigns to "destroy" them personally and professionally.

So, what to do on this occasion? Gloat now that their enemy is dead? Say a few things about how at least he was entertaining sometimes, as one sometimes says of athletes who do questionable things but make interesting headlines in the process? Mention that his family will miss him? Breitbart himself claimed to be a "performance artist" rather than a serious journalist. But then so do certain heroes of the left, such as John Stewart, even while his show begins to become an influential comment piece and a genuine source of news for many young people, and people on the right like Glenn Beck also claim to be entertainers. Can everyone just go with the "I'm an infotainer, so no standards apply to me." line and then call it a day on ethics and standards?

I don't think so, not in this age when the line between entertainment and news is so blurred. But I will focus here on the less broad question of how to deal with the "new media" age of super proactive trolls like Breitbart. In a way, we Internet people have a certain long familiarity with the type that these journalist people struggling to comment on Breitbart may lack. In our own chan board, forum and social network communities, people like Breitbart who send out spies to pretend to be friends long enough to gather information that will later be used against opponents is an old story. People use smurf accounts to do shit like that all the time in Internet communities. Of course, the weirdos who go that hard core in their Internet battles are often quietly regarded as crazy twits by the community at large. But when you do that in the mainstream media, it makes you a hero to some, as long as you did it to the other side of a political debate.

It's weird how people will forgive most anything, as long as you are on their side. I recall how Hunter S. Thompson used to write that Clinton was a bastard, but at least he was "our bastard", which supposedly made it OK. Meanwhile, I'm not so sure it is OK. Oh, and speaking of those willing to speak ill of the dead, Thompson was no less restrained than Breitbart on this point, at one time mentioning how Nixon's casket should have been placed in a gutter. When Thompson died, the media had a similar problem to deal with as on this occasion of Breitbart's death, with people dividing along partisan lines again. Some Internet conservatives were just as nasty towards Thompson when he died as he had been in dealing with some of his opponents.

When one of Breitbart's operatives famously embarrassed the ACORN organization by recording counseling sessions during which ACORN reps appeared to go along with under aged prostitution schemes, I actually thought it was pretty awesome as it revealed real potential problems with the perspective and approach of the organization. But later, his people got arrested for trespassing in a congress critter's offices, and some of Breitbart's recordings appeared to be edited to disguise the truth.

My enthusiasm for Breitbart was dimming fast as he began to appear to be just another Internet twit taking himself a little too seriously while mostly merely "aggregating" news on his sites from more reputable sources and engaging in the occasional stunt or in "performance artist" trolling while protesting a little too loudly about how much fun making enemies of former friends supposedly is and how fun being a maniacal provocateur is. In other words, just yet another pompous Internet troll claiming to enjoy his spiral down into degradation and all the site hits it gets him, as if we don't have enough already.

I notice that, even on sites like Ars Technica, some of the editors are starting to act in a similar way, and when people call them on it, they openly point to how it gets them more site hits, as if that makes it all OK and justifies acting like 14 year old chan boarders on a supposedly professional news site. (Cause, as we all know, money is all that matters in life and justifies anything and everything.) Isn't this getting a tad old and stale? Really, we need to stop rewarding troll editors with endless debate and site hits and just start to ignore such stuff and demand higher standards for headlines and stories, or this whole "new media" of the Internet will just devolve into endless profitable, yet pointless, snipe attack sessions by adults acting like children. (For my part, I stopped visiting sites that have editors carrying on like that.)

Likewise, some obits actually gave Breitbart some sort of perverse credit for supposedly being ahead of the curve on understanding that news is now entertainment rather than something serious. A performance art rather than an important profession with standards and principles serving a public good. I read such obits and wonder "How is this progress??"

As for how we should remember such people, I know folks often want to respectfully reference their families or something. But I'm reminded of a troll on one of the mucks I used to frequent. Like Breitbart he used to go on and on about how much he enjoyed being controversial, and how great being an attention whore was. Naturally, he had his share of misguided fans and, as is typical in these cases, they pointed to what a great family man he supposedly was when people mentioned what a jerk he was on-line. The troll himself played up this angle, with constant references to his "lady love" wife and his great relationship with his kids. Somehow, I didn't quite buy it all though. How could someone who acted like a nasty crazy person on-line be so supposedly wonderful back in Real Life Land? How well adjusted could such a person really be behind the scenes?

Well, not much later "lady love" divorced his ass, leaving him living in an apartment with another guy and estranged from his kids. And nobody was surprised, except perhaps for his handful of idiot fans. Revealingly, he quickly turned from a sneering troll with his supposedly wonderful family life to fall back on to a just openly bitter and nasty person who lost control and was eventually banned.

Behind all the claims about performance art, and enjoying controversy and trolling, people who act like crazy and unhealthy twits in the public sphere might just have some private issues as well, so don't be fooled. Besides, even if their personal lives really were as perfect as they claim and they acted like great people behind the scenes, what of it? We can only judge people by our own experience of them and, on-line, we only get to see and judge their public face. Christopher Hitchens just so happened to have had a drinking problem between his provocative behaviors, and Breitbart just happened to look like a heart attack waiting to happen. Now both these provocateurs are dead at a relatively young age. Should any of us be so surprised?

I think conservative columnist David Frum put it best in his column on the subject of Breitbart's passing:

"We live in a time of political and media demagoguery unparalleled since the 19th century. Many of our most important public figures have gained their influence and power by inciting and exploiting the ugliest of passions—by manipulating fears and prejudices—by serving up falsehoods as reported truth. In time these figures will one by one die. What are we to say of this cohort, this group, this generation? That their mothers loved them? That their families are bereaved? That their fans admired them and their employees treated generously by them? Public figures are inescapably judged by their public actions. When those public actions are poisonous, the obituary cannot be pleasant reading."

See how much better Frum's writing is than mine? No, wait...what I meant to say was - All this said though, we are all just people here on this globe, going through many of the same struggles and having to live with each other, sometimes recognizing, if not always embracing, a connectedness that we share. Part of the problem with the sociopathic behavior of some of the more hard core Internet people is that they don't seem to grasp this. As such, some of the outright celebratory responses to Breitbart's death do seem a bit unseemly. I can't really blame his enemies for responding this way though. After all, he pledged to destroy them, so why should they pretend to be anything but happy that he failed and then died? I don't recall hesitating a whole lot before laughing at Bin Laden jokes on the occasion of his death. Where does one draw the line?

I think that the fair compromise is to recognize each others humanity, while still being able to call a spade a spade and not play pretend about it too much in false piety. Andrew Breitbart was a person. I'm not happy that he died young. But I'm not going to pretend that he was good for the community, when he wasn't.

Rave