I had a lot of preconceived notions about Breitbart (that he was an illiterate troll, boring, etc.); I'm not sure if it's that the state of political discourse in America has gotten dramatically worse over the past few years, or if I was just wrong, but he actually seems like a fairly interesting and sympathetic figure, at least based on his autobiography. I can only wonder what politics would be like today if he were still with us. ( )

The good:

* some real enthusiasm is good
* he's right: The MSM is fucked
* the Tea Party (while not my thing) (1) has been dishonestly slandered (2) is a political phenomena
* good on Andrew for what he did, before suddenly dying at 43 of natural causes a heart attack
* some of this book is a BLAST. Really.

The bad:

* he really claims that the Democrat Party are "hard left"
* makes a big thing about truth . . . except of course attacks 911 Truth and any truth about american wars
* George W Bush was "the great unifier"
* sees "the left" as one pure, uniform whole, with no possibility of variation between any two "left" people.
* absolutely and completely blind to the nearly limitless corruption of the USA corporatist right.
* dismisses as a joke any mention of the Koch brothers' clear, fundamental and necessary support of the Tea Party movement
* lives to attack "the left" but is apoplectic when the corrupt left attack him.

My feeling is that Andrew was not, really, that bright or clever. He had his platform and lots of real criminals and parasites to attack. But he couldn't see outside his rabbit hole: no sensitivity to the larger issues at all.. . .

. . . and the book did kinda tire, between his successive media and social stunts. ( )

CX02

This book needs no review. If you know Breitbart of his progeny of Big websites, you know what to expect. If you never heard of him you probably won't be interested in the first place. There were a few things I appreciated, such as good, thorough history of how the New Media came to be; a full run down of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals; and Breitbart's corresponding point-by-point call to action for aspiring culture warriors. It will likely leave you running for the computer to look up the websites, which I suppose is part of the intention. ( )