SALON

Thursday, Mar 24, 2011 9:50 PM UTC

The stupid saga of Andrew Breitbart and the Huffington Post

The "liberal" news site promotes a notorious right-wing propagandist -- until he insults one of Arianna's friends

By

Topics: Huffington Post, Andrew Breitbart, AOL, Media Criticism, War Room,

The stupid saga of Andrew Breitbart and the Huffington PostArianna Huffington and Andrew Breitbart

So! Arianna Huffington — recently put in charge of all the “content” at AOL following the dial-up ISP’s acquisition of her former “liberal Drudge” Internet newspaper — gave a blog to her old friend Andrew Breitbart. Breitbart helped build the HuffPo, back when he was just another loudmouth Hollywood conservative and not the even louder-mouthed full-tilt culture warrior he is today (thanks in part to training at places like the Claremont Institute). Hundreds of people — many of them idiots, frauds, and liars — have blogs at the HuffPo. But the HuffPo actually promoted Breitbart’s writing on the front page of the site.

Now, Mr. Breitbart is not just a conservative pundit. He is a crusading propagandist who publishes a wide variety of untruths and smears across his “Big” websites. He is not guilty of having the wrong opinions, he is guilty of being a shameless, race-baiting bully.

So various whiny liberals complained, like always, and the Huffington Post bravely promised to continue promoting the stupid nonsense from Arianna’s old friend, in the name of democracy and the free exchange of ideas. (“Ideas” like “NPR and the White House are collaborating to spread the false idea that the Tea Parties are racist” and “the White House is lying about its visitor logs and specifically including the names of famous people in order to embarrass Andrew Breitbart.”) ColorOfChange.org organized a petition, the HuffPo dismissed its complaints.

Complaining about the Huffington Post publishing awful, offensive garbage seldom works, because some of that garbage is profitable and some of it is just stuff that Arianna herself seems to like. And Huffington herself is too busy spending big bucks bringing big names to AOL/HuffPo while shuttering dozens of existing titles and letting various less impressive content-providers go to care if a bunch of liberals are mad at her site.

But! Breitbart then apparently went too far when he said a bunch of stupid and offensive things about Van Jones in an interview with the Daily Caller. And Arianna is actually quite close to the former White House “green jobs czar.”

So: That got Breitbart kicked off the front page, finally.

Andrew Breitbart’s ad hominem attack on Van Jones in The Daily Caller — right down to calling him a “commie punk” and “a cop killer-supporting, racist, demagogic freak” — violates the tenets of debate and civil discourse we have strived for since the day we launched. As a result, we will no longer feature his posts on the front page.

He is welcome to continue publishing his work on HuffPost provided it adheres to our editorial guidelines, as the two posts he published on HuffPost did — guidelines that include a strict prohibition on ad hominem attacks. Our decision today recognizes that placing posts on the front page is an editorial call that elevates some posts over others, and is an indication of how seriously we take these judgment calls.

A strict prohibition on ad hominem attacks! (“Against Arianna’s friends,” is the bit of that sentence that spokesman Marco Ruiz left out.) (Also there is apparently no prohibition on constant, practically obsessive race-baiting, but whatever.) (And obviously there is no prohibition whatsoever on spreading toxic bullshit about autism and other assorted crimes against science.)

Andrew has now gotten exactly what he wanted. He doesn’t need to publish his idiocies at the Huffington Post. But getting banned from the Huffington Post proves his thesis about the repressive, anti-free speech liberal media. And he’ll never shut up about it.

Alex Pareene

Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 62 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
276 points277 points | 248 comments
vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
254 points255 points | 20 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
219 points220 points | 31 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
81 points82 points | 16 comments
vote
Austerity Kills: Brian McArdle, a 57-year-old man who had had two strokes and could barely walk, was found "fit for work" by a government subcontractor, and had his benefits stopped. He died the next day.
92 points93 points | 8 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations