For some reason not yet explained conservative political blogger Andrew Breitbart passed away at 43 years old. Perhaps some key as to his passing lay in the observation that he looked a lot older than his 43 years to me, but that’s another blog post.

While Breitbart may have hated the institutional left, and those on the left supposedly hated him, I never disliked him at all. Indeed, I always looked at what Andrew was doing, not what he was saying.

See, blogging is still new to us and blogs are a child of the Internet. That’s why I say I’m a blogger not a journalist. Bloggers like Andrew would do things that would not even occur to journalists to do, like post semi-nude photos of New York Congressman Anthony Weiner, something I talked about in this video when I accused Andrew of being obsessed with Congressman Weiner’s body:

But, kidding aside, what Andrew got was how to build a blog via sensationalism. That’s something lost on many bloggers today, especially as journalists have come to invade the blog space with their boring, self-absorbed “I’m better than you but won’t admit when I fuck up” approach to reporting. Andrew knows that in a word full of Internet chatter, you have to swing for the fences on a regular basis to stay relevant.

Brietbart gets this. Perez Hilton gets this. Michael Arrington gets this. There’s a formula here: have a focus and then be bombastic in its execution.

I will miss Andrew Brietbart. I learned a lot from him, and I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to meet him. But, in his honor, I have to take a Brietbartian swing at the right.

Stay tuned.