Andrew Breitbart vs. Oh No They Didn’t: A Media Spat with Epic Potential

The Internet has been especially testy as of late! Of course, it always is, but just in the last month or so:

• A Reuters columnist and a media owner battled it out over editorial philosophies.
• Hollywood news reporter Sharon Waxman and Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff went at each other’s throats.
• New York Times columnists Andrew Ross Sorkin and Paul Krugman were sniping at each other in their own building.
• Rapper Ice-T offered up his finest bowl of dicks to singer-songwriter Aimee Mann.
• MSNBC blowhard Keith Olbermann got into verbal fisticuffs with the New York Times‘ Brian Stelter over a story.
• And then there are those who want Apple to sue the face off of Gawker Media owner Nick Denton for buying a “lost” iPhone prototype.

Of course, the Internet was practically made for feuding, like a big sandbox where you can either build beautiful sand castles, or just kick some sand in another kid’s face!

Chief among the most “esteemed” sandkickers these days is political shoutmonkey Andrew Breitbart, who has proven to quite enjoy this manner of going about things, though to be fair, kind of like we enjoyed calling him a pussy (which he is). Andrew Brietbart loves a good fight. And he may have just come across the best/most terrifying/silly one he — and spectators of this kind of thing — will ever get to experience, via Twitter, of course.

Gawker.TV editor Matt Cherette hasn’t even been in New York for a month, and he’s already stepping to the plate. It started when Cherette poked fun at Brietbart over who would test his nerves now that Gawker political writer Alex Pareene has left the company. And then it got a little heated.

This would not be so interesting had Cherette not previously been an at-large moderator of the psychopathic celebrity news/gossip wire-of-sorts known as OH NO THEY DIDN’T, which is run by a community of pathologically obsessive celebrity gossip sadomasochists. It’s impressive.

A sampling of comments from OH NO THEY DIDN’T on a post regarding some kind of dispute between Lindsay Lohan and her father. Which likely went up about twenty minutes after it happened.

• fucked up
• I too, run to twitter, whenever I have a problem with my crazy dad trespassing my property with cops.
• I bet if her apt was on fire she wouldn’t dial 911. She would just tweet “It’s so smokey in here! It was probably my dad”
• This is a sadness party.
• I just can’t help but laugh. LAWD HAMMERCY.
• the lohan’s make me grateful for my family, and for the most part I dislike my family..well done lohan’s.
• i was really hoping to see her pulled out of the house with handcuffs when i first read the cops were on their way, haha
• team lindsay on this matter. her dad is a fucking asshole.
• Her tweeting is insane, ESPECIALLY her responding to any random asshole who talked to her about this.
• GET ACTUAL FRIENDS.
• oh fuck.
• JESUS CHRISTO
• LMAO
• did she just refer to her dad as an ex?
• lindsay and her whole family are such hot messes, idk what to even say
• Ay dios mio
• dina is nuts for letting ali stay at lindsay’s place, but considering the alternative – staying at dina’s place – one is not necessarily better than the other
• What? Linday Lohan is involved in some sort of domestic dispute and the cops are involved? THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE.

OH NO THEY DIDN’T is like the genetic mutation that occurs when you cross-pollinate US Weekly with a political think-tank, Jack from Will and Grace, and The Atlantic. Imagine Chelsea Handler as Orly Taitz, and you begin to get the idea.

So, imagine, if you will, this thing escalating further. And creepy Andrew Breitbart — and Andrew Breitbart’s posse of screamy tea party extremists — going to war with the Free Republic of celebrity gossip.

This has potential, is all we’re saying. Especially because a showdown between the two would highlight the quite incidental similarities between the level of discourse gracing OH NO THEY DIDN’T when talking about Lindsay Lohan’s friend problem, and the level of Kool-Aid drunk discourse that follows Andrew Brietbart when he snarls about government and politics, as he inflames the kind of political and ideological extremism that only causes injury to a dwindling potential for intelligent political discourse, sans-shouting.

The two really aren’t so far apart.

[fkamer@villagevoice.com]