Maria,

I understand and I mean no disrespect, but for me my ambivalence is not about politics. He intended (and did) HARM towards people with whom he disagreed and he was very dishonest about it all. He was also racist. Virulently so.

I'm not glad he is dead and I share Shirley Sherrod's sentiments. But he was a very odious person.

That's all I will say further on the matter.

Maria, you are right: I am justly chastened. His family deserves our sympathy and support, regardless of his own behavior.

P-C, Breitbart is the guy who picked up & distributed the faked videos that took down ACORN, the misleading videos that embarrassed NPR into firing their CEO, and the misleading video clip that got Shirley Sherrod at USDA fired. Sherrod had actually filed a defamation suit against Breitbart, IIRC. He dealt in lies and entrapment, and used vicious, foul language about his perceived enemies.

He was a no-holds-barred right-wing populist who, so far as I can tell, never had a good thing to say about any elected Democrat. And he did a lot of damage: ACORN no longer exists.

TPM had a remarkably even-handed obit [link]

Man, he was only my sister-in-law's age.

If you've got to go young (none of you are allowed), suddenly with no knowledge of what's happening to you (which it sounds from the obit is what happened here, so either a massive heart attack or a stroke like the one that killed one of my best friends seems likely) is probably the way you'd want to go. Sympathy to his family, though.

As I said, I feel sorry for his family for losing someone so young.

I would feel differently about Breitbart if he had fought the good fight by revealing the truth, however unpleasant.

I have my lunch omelet! Precisely as described last night.

I'm not defending him in any way. I hated how he twisted the truth and manipulated lies to his own end. I think politics will be better without his influence, but do I think the world is a better place without him? I may have previously, but not anymore. The loss of a human life is the loss of a human life and it changes the fabric of the world.

I am just really raw about this right now

Everyone should go spend some of their lunchtime at the good things tumbler.

My energy is going to go with love to Maria.

I need a good lunch today. no ideas though.

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

I'm at the point where I think you can vary the 'weight' of your 'soul' or whatever with your actions. I have no reason to think I've done much investment, but some people have, and will be mourned more widely and deeply that I have, and some people have done the converse, and will have the opposite effect when they die.

Not that I believe in souls, really, but it's a convenient package unit for what I mean.

The traditional Jewish response to hearing of a death is "Baruch ha'dayan emet," which means "Blessed is the true judge." I've found that, for me, that's a good way for me to think about a death of someone I disagreed with -- I'm very sad for his family, and anything more about him personally isn't for me to say.