About breitbart

Given its frequent appearance in news stories because of bannon's association with it, one would think it is some kind of well-known standard bearer of contemporary news and opinion, kind of like the Times, that "everyone reads" or something like that. Personally, I don't know anyone who has ever heard of it and I've always considered it just another crank's personal opinion blog website that anyone can put up in an hour for $5 a month (or free, if you use a sub-domain.)

Anyway, I thought I'd look at its content from the past via the wayback machine and here's what I found:

Between 2001 and 2005, it was just a 302 redirect to drudge.

In 2005 it became just a collection of links to legitimate news sites like Reuters and AP but also including drudge. One new thing was the sidebar promoting andrew breitbart's self-published books like "michael moore hates america."

It started changing after Obama's first inauguration in 2008 and, by 2010, had taken on a tabloid look with incendiary opinion pieces masquerading as news and it has just continued in that direction ever since.

So, how is this "platform" supposed to be any kind of a "kingmaker" or, as breathlessly stated in numerous places, the launching pad for "trump's destruction?" It probably has its core devotees but they're just the choir of deplorables. Maybe it's one of those things that, if it appears in a search result somewhere, they're counting on a naive person to click on it and, they hope, begin their radicalization process which inevitably ends with yet another mass killing at a grade school or something like that.