Conservative media dot-com magnate Andrew Breitbart died from natural causes on Thursday at the age of 43. Already, his death has spawned theories that he was assassinated by allies of Barack Obama, on the notion that he was about to release bombshell information that would discredit the president. According to one of my friends who surfs the right-wing message boards often, “On Free Republic yesterday, the debate was about (i) *how exactly* Obama’s minions murdered him (spiking his food with something that would cause a heart attack), (ii) whether it was related to yesterday’s press conference by Sheriff Joe Arpaio about Obama’s long-form birth certificate being a forgery (because Breitbart would have reported on it), and (iii) whether the “suspicious package” that arrived at Rush Limbaugh’s house yesterday (and which the police investigated) was also part of the same plot to silence conservative voices.”
The irony is that — as I argued here — Breitbart himself had little time for conspiracy theories: When I met him at the 2010 National Tea Party convention in Nashville, TN, in fact, he was furious that so much podium time was being given over to Barack Obama Birther types, who he thought discredited the Tea Party cause.
Readers can find my reflections on Breitbart’s contributions to the world of U.S. politics here.
