We don't need an Andrew Breitbart eulogy here, and I wouldn't be qualified to write one.  I've been reading them all day though.  Elizabeth Spiers, the young editor trying her best to save The New York Observer from extinction, writes one here that, I think, captures the tone.  Josh Marshall has a short and interesting piece as well.  The two dovetail nicely.

At the core of these short remembrances is the tale of a public figure who relished in a good fight and didn't much care about making enemies or hurting feelings.  Other writers are especially attracted to such types.  In journalism, my chosen profession until it degraded itself both economically and morally, we have always lionized the unapologetic commentator like Mark Twain or H.L. Mencken.  We have tried, so much as it's possible, to prefer the provocateurs who punch upwards by picking on people with more power, status or notoriety than the journalist or their publication has.  If it wanted to, The New York Times could probably dig up some dirt to write, say, an unflattering portrait of me.  They don't because it serves no purpose.  Why take me down from a height below their kneecaps?

Twain and Mencken were not perfect at punching upwards.  Really, nobody is.  But there can't be any doubt that Breitbart, and his disciple James O'Keefe, picked some serious fights with people who were completely ill-equipped to defend themselves.  Shirley Sherrod?  Local employees at Acorn?  Really?

Enjoying the fight is, says Marshall, "a big, punchy, vivid and outrageously honorable tradition in the American public square."  Granted.  This is a country born out of a revolution.  Without public square pugilists we'd all be British.  We'd still be an apartheid culture for both ethnic minorities and women.  Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey liked a good fight too, but they had none of Breitbart's advantages and they picked on the powerful far more often than they went after the weak.

The guy in the pub who can knock anyone on his ass, or get up after getting his own ass kicked, might win for himself a certain affection from his fellow drinkers.  Unless his only targets people he outweighs by 50 pounds or more.

I know, I know, people are writing with his friends and family in mind.  Many of them considered him a friend of sorts, or a friendly and fun rival.  He was probably a charismatic guy.  Given that he successfully launched two media companies during an industry-wide depression, he'd pretty much have had to be.

But it must be easier to praise him if you were never on the receiving end of his malice.  You can't say somebody is a great fighter without looking at the person's opponents, specifically if they were the ones who tended to pick the fights and choose the targets.  When a boxer spends his career fighting in Panama and Mexico and then comes to the U.S. with a 46-0 record, they don't just give the guy a title shot without asking about the quality and abilities of the 46 vanquished foes.

Breitbart, enabled by a media that gave him far more attention than anyone similarly situated would have received, picked small, defenseless targets.  That's not a fighter, that's a bully. 

UPDATE

I just read this piece of excrement from Time's Michael Scherer:

"He was not just speaking truth to power. He was trying to obliterate entire power structures."