A few days before Christmas, conservative blogger and news aggregator Andrew Breitbart mocked “controversial designer” Simon Doonan on his BigGovernment website for hanging ornaments with pictures of a drag queen, an Andy Warhol Chairman Mao silkscreen, and Barack Obama’s face superimposed on Mount Rushmore on one of the Christmas trees in the White House. “All around, a very Barry Christmas!” the blogger on the site cracked. Doonan, who is usually quick with the barbs himself, was deeply offended. He’d volunteered to decorate the White House for free, and had even used recycled ornaments that were sent around the country for children and charities to design (which is where the 3 out of 800 decorative balls that ended up on Breitbart came from). Most of the globes, according to Doonan, included innocuous depictions of local landmarks and patriotic themes.
Doonan defended himself in a lengthy story in this week’s Observer, in which he claimed that he came under vicious attacks after the Brietbart story. To Breitbart, he wrote:
Thanks to you, I see now that there are two kinds of people in the world: In the first group, we have those who “do,” and in the second group, we have those who sit at their computers on their ever-widening asses blogging, platforming and commenting on the not-always-perfect efforts of the first group. Tinselgate has renewed my commitment to keep my tight ass fairly and squarely plonked in that first group.
We take offense to that, Simon. Our asses here at Daily Intel are very tight! Perky, even!
