Many of us woke up the morning after the election in a daze and I imagine quite a few of us thought, okay…we lost, it is a new day…WWBD-What Would Breitbart Do? None of us can speak conclusively for him, but many of us were so deeply influenced and impacted by his leadership that in different ways his ideas live on inside of us.
Just before he died, Andrew called for a true vetting of President Obama, something that simply did not happen in 2008. Though he did not live to see it, many people led the charge and dozens of important works, from Dinesh D'Souza's hit film 2016: Obama's America to David Maraniss's book "Barack Obama" did just that. But unfortunately, something else also became more clear than ever before, the corrupt media that Breitbart often assailed had its thumbs on the scales and tipped the election in the President's favor.
Everything that Andrew predicted in my film, Hating Breitbart, played out in real-time during the election right before our eyes. From Candy Crowley interrupting and taking Obama's side in the debate to George Stephonopoulous's introducing the 'war on women' narrative in the primary debates, members of the so-called mainstream media did everything they could to re-elect Obama and they were successful. And many of us are, as Andrew so often was, righteously indignant. Some might even be feeling hopeless, tired or defeated. And while I can understand a temporary crisis of faith, I believe Andrew would refuse to surrender to a defeatist attitude over one election loss. He understood that the true fight is with the Mainstream Media and Institutional Left and that they don't get ‘elected.’ We must bring the fight directly to them relentlessly. That was always his fight and that does not change with an election cycle.
Despite how the media wanted to depict Andrew, he was not an angry person….passionate, opinioned and confrontational yes, but not angry. I believe that by now, Andrew would have already dusted himself off and turned to the people he loved, fought for and defended the most passionately and vigorously-citizen journalists. And he would remind each of us that we all have to power to expose the malfeasance and corruption in the MSM and Institutional left. He would not Monday morning quarterback the Romney campaign or dissect numbers and graphs. He would exhaust every hour of every day exposing the corrupt mainstream media for who and what they are. Though they might be silently (and disturbingly some not so silently) grateful that Andrew is no longer here to stand up to their destructive behavior, in the months and years to come they will be forced to face the reality that his spirit and his example continues on every single day with thousands of citizen journalists in every inch of this nation. And they will never be able to put the Genie that Andrew released back in the bottle. That's what Andrew Breitbart would have done, and what millions of citizen journalists will continue to do as long as we have breath.