March 1, 2012

Andrew Breitbart, Force of Nature, Dead at 43

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/6877242555/">Gage Skidmore</a>/Flickr

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Conservative gadfly Andrew Breitbart died suddenly today of natural causes, age 43. Oddly enough, I actually have a memory of him. I happened to sit next to him once a few years ago on a panel set up by a friend who was teaching a journalism class, and as near as I could tell he was keeping up about four or five streams of independent thought at once. He had his laptop open, and was (a) watching a baseball game—really watching, it seemed, (b) reading the news, (c) updating his website, and (d) responding very cogently and intelligently to questions from the students. There may have been some emailing and messaging going on, too, but I’m not sure. Just following the panel discussion sucked up most of my attention.

Pretty remarkable. Obviously I didn’t care much for his politics or his tactics, but I think he was one of those rare people who really could multitask productively without losing effectiveness at any of his individual tasks. Whatever else you can say about him, he was a force of nature.

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