King Of Pain

Andrew Breitbart is dead.

The scion of and propulsive force behind conservative media hypocrisy in the name of Liberal-bashing, has taken his last vituperative breath. Girded to do battle against the Democrats in the 2012 Presidential election, his sword has fallen from his hand, and, momentarily, a still and eerie hush falls over the battlefield.

Before progressives everywhere rise en masse, waving their social AK-47s over their heads, filling the airwaves with defamatory rounds, we should take a moment to mourn for the man's family, especially his wife and children. At 43, the man was far too young, by modern standards, to have come to his demise so readily. It must be a shock of monumental proportions to a wife who has lost her husband and to four children who will now grow up only knowing of their father vicariously.

His defamatory style and bombastic degradation of his "enemies" made him a man to be reviled by the Left and lauded by the Right. His avowed goal was the complete and utter destruction of any progressive organization, person, or cause, by whatever means could be cobbled together. Truth worked best, but fabrication and obfuscation were not off the table as tools of his media-driven attack. Where someone or some group would not gladly provide a perfect foil, he would manipulate circumstances to fit his needs. His undeserving attacks on ACORN, his unrepentant denigration of Shirley Sherrod, his unwarranted attacks on the late Edward Kennedy, his tabloid-style take-down of Representative Anthony Weiner... nothing was beyond the pale, where it advanced the conservative cause.

If any good can be said to have come from his brief life, it is that the level of duplicity and malfeasance he employed can be said to have lit a bonfire under decent Americans of every stripe, galvanizing many, such as myself, to rise up in defense of the people and programs he saw as an "attack" on the heart of America. Far from crippling or even denting progressive and Liberal causes, he may have inadvertently given them new life and new strength through the outrage of Americans who were not so easily cowed or conned.

While it would certainly be understandable if we took this opportunity to drag him through the muck he so fondly stirred up, it serves no purpose other than to enlarge him to a stature he does not deserve. Instead, let us remember him as the polarizing figure he was, let us be glad he vexes us no more, and let us move on to ensure that the movements he so detested live on far longer than his demoniacal rhetoric. The greatest revenge will be in reducing him to a little-mentioned footnote in the history of the American political wars of the 21st Century.

Pay No Attention To The Money Behind The Curtain

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin has a small problem – the curtain has fallen away, and the citizens  of Emerald City are getting a good look at the “wizard” ruling over them: The Monied Powers. His strings are being deftly pulled by those who seek to gain the most from the economic nightmare, the financial vultures that pick over the carcasses of Middle America. Three weeks in, and his shadowy masters commanded that he end the stalemate in the State Legislature by whatever means necessary. And so, on March 9th, 2011, Governor Walker set aside consensus building, government by and for the people, and prudent governance, by relying on a parliamentary trick to pass the bill he has been trying to get through for so long, stripping it of all financial materials, leaving the naked ambition to break the unions behind, and passing it quite easily in the State Senate. The bill, already passed in the House, will now wend its way to his desk for signature.

In one fell swoop, Governor Walker has undone the compact – first lain down by our Founding Fathers and the reason for the blood spilled during The Revolutionary War – that stated that he was enjoined by the people of the State of Wisconsin to uphold, protect, and defend the State's Constitution and the citizens of Wisconsin. He has, instead, thrown his weight around, directed by those who hold his purse strings, the ones who can lend him the nearly unlimited funds to continue his Governorship. There is no longer any pretense; the people of Wisconsin have been sold to the highest bidder.