“I think today, it’s safe to stand back and simply recognize that while many people go through their lives without leaving distinguishing marks, Andrew Breitbart definitely had his moments. But he also had enough of a sense of humor to appreciate why someone like me shouldn’t bother to pretend I’m sad he’s dead. He wouldn’t, in my place. So to use one of his favorite words: Good riddance, cocksucker. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

– Matt Taibbi, from a blog post at Rolling Stone’s website entitled “Andrew Breitbart: Death of a Douche”

I’m not going to be ghoulish and applaud the death of Andrew Breitbart, who collapsed suddenly this morning in Los Angeles and apparently couldn’t be revived. It should go completely without saying that I wanted to see him dead as little as I’d want to see almost anyone dead, particularly at the disconcerting age of 43.

But likewise, I can’t in good conscience pay tribute to what had, over the past several years, become his life’s work: the infusion of scandal, bile and simple dishonesty and fraudulence into the political discourse, without even a hint of regard for journalistic ethics or a dedication to the truth.

I feel this way not because there was a vast chasm between Breitbart’s politics and my own but because there’s a difference between a divergence of opinions and flat-out lying. Lying is cheating. It’s stacking the deck, particularly when you’re dealing that deck to a group of people willing to take any hand you give them and revel in it without question.

I admired Breitbart’s passion but the discourse in this country simply would’ve been far better served had that passion come with an equally robust sense of personal and professional integrity. I don’t doubt that Andrew Breitbart did many great things in his short lifetime — and obviously I offer nothing but the sincerest condolences to the family he leaves behind — but he also did an enormous amount of damage. To journalism, to civilized debate, and to real flesh-and-blood people.

I mourn him as a human being, one who I have to believe could be a pretty good guy. But I also mourn the dedication to the truth in media that he helped to destroy.

It’s profoundly saddening that that may be his overarching legacy.