Andrew Breitbart... Has Morals?

[Smurfette Principle]

Wow.

Conservative website mogul Andrew Breitbart has quit the advisory board for GOProud, saying he has a "zero tolerance" policy for outing people.

Trouble started when GOProud's Jimmy LaSalvia and Chris Barron reacted to an antigay Rick Perry television ad by angrily taking to Twitter, attacking pollster Tony Fabrizio.

"I've just about had it with faggots who line their pockets with checks from antigay homophobes while throwing the rest of us under the bus," LaSalvia wrote.

GOProud issued a statement defending itself from the ensuing backlash, but that apparently only contributed to Breitbart's disappointment.

"I have a zero tolerance attitude toward the intentional infliction of vocational and family harm by divulging the details of an individual’s sexual orientation as a weapon of political destruction," Breitbart wrote on one of his websites, BigGovernment.com. Breitbart said he'd long ago told LaSalvia and Barron about his opinion on outing, which Breitbart said contributed to his "evolution from the political left to the right."

Well, you know what they say about stopped clocks...

[gyeonghwa]

I find it ironic that they complain about a fellow conservative being anti-gay, when they are part of a political party that is vehemently anti-gay.

[priestling]

Even Evil Has Standards?

[Shane for Wax]

Dec 15, 2011 14:07:30 GMT -5 gyeonghwa said:

I find it ironic that they complain about a fellow conservative being anti-gay, when they are part of a political party that is vehemently anti-gay.

The problem is with replacing Republican with Conservative, methinks.

[ltfred]

You can't out people- that might be effective.

[Kit Walker]

Dec 15, 2011 17:18:44 GMT -5 ltfred said:

You can't out people- that might be effective.

No - You can't out people, that might do tremendous and irreparable harm to their personal and professional lives. People have killed themselves (with alarming frequency) when dragged out of the closet against their will. Two wrongs don't make a right.

[Vene]

I'm actually okay with exposing bigoted hypocrites as bigoted hypocrites.

[Shane for Wax]

Dec 15, 2011 17:35:36 GMT -5 Vene said:

I'm actually okay with exposing bigoted hypocrites as bigoted hypocrites.

That's a little different.

[storymoron]

This neglects the fact that the Perry commercial was incredibly controversial within his camp. Half of his staff were entirely opposed to it. So this outed guy may have very well been against it.

Bottom line for me: outing him was wrong.

[Kit Walker]

Dec 15, 2011 17:35:36 GMT -5 Vene said:

I'm actually okay with exposing bigoted hypocrites as bigoted hypocrites.

And attacking a pollster who happens to work for a bigot? Would it be OK to publicly out a closeted Chick-Fil-A emplyee?

More on Tony Fabrizio:

Fabrizio, who said by email that he couldn't chat this morning, opposed the ad, which he described as "nuts" in an email to Perry ad man Nelson Warfield, a longtime friend of Fabrizio's.

Michael Kenny, an activist with the gay-rights group Florida Together, worked on the Florida Red and Blue campaign with Fabrizio and said he didn't think Fabrizio had "anti-equality views" like those expressed in the Iowa ad. He said it was "despicable" of the Perry campaign to try to mine for votes by going after gays. Some activists say Fabrizio should resign from the campaign unless he's just, in Kenny's words, "a hired gun."

So yeah. He may have conservative politics in his private life, but he's done polling work for gay rights groups as well Republican candidates and gigantic corporations. To call him a bigot is ridiculous, to call him a hypocrite is up for debate (considering he was trying to steer the campaign away from the anti-gay ad).

[SimSim]

I think Vene was talking generally, and not about this specific case.

[big_electron]

Who's a bigger asshole, Andrew Breitbart or Glenn Beck?

[erictheblue]

What's kind of ironic is that I don't read the initial statement as outing anyone at all. "Faggot" is a slang term for a gay guy, yes. It is also used as a generic insult.

[SCarpelan]

Dec 16, 2011 6:07:57 GMT -5 erictheblue said:

What's kind of ironic is that I don't read the initial statement as outing anyone at all. "Faggot" is a slang term for a gay guy, yes. It is also used as a generic insult.

In my opinion the context makes it clear that "faggot" is in this case used both as an insult and a reference to the person's sexual preferences. Choosing a word with that kind of dual meaning seems completely deliberate.

[Distind]

Dec 16, 2011 7:31:15 GMT -5 SCarpelan said:

Dec 16, 2011 6:07:57 GMT -5 erictheblue said:

What's kind of ironic is that I don't read the initial statement as outing anyone at all. "Faggot" is a slang term for a gay guy, yes. It is also used as a generic insult.

In my opinion the context makes it clear that "faggot" is in this case used both as an insult and a reference to the person's sexual preferences. Choosing a word with that kind of dual meaning seems completely deliberate.

Given the tendency for said individuals to get caught in a pile of meth and other men, I'd say this has to be the point.