Hostility kills. Chronically angry men, studies have found, are three times more likely to develop heart disease, and six times more likely to suffer a heart attack before age 55. Feeling that you’re constantly at war with idiots and villains gets your body stuck in the fight-or-flight gear; a flood of hormones and toxins raises blood pressure, narrows arteries, and eats away at your innards. This all came to mind when I heard that Andrew Breitbart had suddenly fallen dead in the street at age at 43 (see Talking points). The über-partisan Internet warrior, said his friend Matt Labash in Weekly​Standard​.com, “was a man who both loved and hated with his whole heart.” The focus of his hate was “the Democrat media complex,” which he fought with ruthless abandon night and day, while delighting in infuriating those who hated him back. When he died, conspiracy theorists wondered if the White House had rubbed him out. A better question: Did he silence himself, by loving the fight too much? He leaves a wife and four children.
Breitbart was not alone on his battlefield. Twitter lit up with taunting celebrations of his demise, and on Rolling Stone’s website, crusading liberal Matt Taibbi wrote, “Good! F--- him. I couldn’t be happier that he’s dead.” In response, Breitbart allies published Taibbi’s home phone number, threatened his life, and vowed to defecate on his mother’s grave. And so it goes. For more of this kind of you-stupid-Nazi-moron vitriol, just scroll through the dozens—sometimes hundreds—of rage-filled reader “comments’’ on any political commentary on the Web. What grand fun it is to hate! Perhaps we should think a bit more about where rage is taking us.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Why Rikers Island will no longer be under New York City's controlThe Explainer A 'remediation manager' has been appointed to run the infamous jail
-
California may pull health care from eligible undocumented migrantsIN THE SPOTLIGHT After pushing for universal health care for all Californians regardless of immigration status, Gov. Gavin Newsom's latest budget proposal backs away from a key campaign promise
-
Is Apple breaking up with Google?Today's Big Question Google is the default search engine in the Safari browser. The emergence of artificial intelligence could change that.
-
Editor's letterfeature
-
Editor's letter: Are college athletes employees?
feature The National Labor Relations Board's decision deeming scholarship players “employees” of Northwestern University has many worrying that college sports itself will soon be history.
-
Editor's letter
feature
-
Editor's letter: When a bot takes your job
feature Now that computers can write news stories, drive cars, and play chess, we’re all in trouble.
-
Editor's letter: Electronic cocoons
feature Smartphones have their upside, but city streets are now full of people walking with their heads down.
-
Editor's letter: The real cause of income inequality
feature When management and stockholders pocket all the profits, the middle class falls further behind.
-
Editor's letter: The real reason you’re so forgetful
feature When you consider how much junk we’ve stored in our brains, it’s no surprise we can’t remember our PINs.
-
Editor's letter: Ostentatious politicians
feature The McDonnells’ indictment for corruption speaks volumes about the company elected officials now keep.