Keller @ Large: Politics Need Less Fighting, Not More

BOSTON (CBS) - The late Andrew Brietbart, the right-wing media maven and political activist who passed away yesterday, was one of the leading practitioners of a style of politics that has become very popular on both the right and the left.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

As his friend the conservative writer Jonah Goldberg put it, Breitbart "truly loved the fight" and enjoyed sharing his hate mail with his online followers.

"It was his Wheaties," said Goldberg. "That's what he had for breakfast."

My sympathies go out to any friends or family members of Brietbart. He was only 43 and left behind a wife and four young kids.

But I'm afraid I don't have much sympathy for what Breitbart, Markos Moulitsas of "Daily Kos" fame, and their counterparts on the right and left have been doing to journalism and the political culture in our country.

Strident, bare-knuckle political speech is absolutely nothing new, of course.

What politicians and the press routinely did and said during the period at the start of the 20th century when the term "yellow journalism" was coined makes much of what we hear today sound tame.

And you could have a good debate over which comes first – a political culture that plays dirty and prefers scoring partisan points to producing results, or a press corps that puts them up to it, in pursuit of juicy headlines.

But when Breitbart took the video of that Obama administration official's speech and edited it to make it seem like she was being racist, that wasn't acceptable journalism or political discourse.

When lefty journalists speculate about whether or not Sarah Palin is the mother of her son, that's just as bad if not worse.

The shallow grievance culture this kind of thing feeds is a major reason why our government so often seems gridlocked.

As we watch that gridlock weigh down our economy, I hope we realize how harmful the love of the fight, and relishing hate mail for breakfast, really is.

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. and 12:25 p.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.