Excellent, long profile of BREITBART as the spawn of NIXONite Orson BEAN and DRUDGE

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http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/03/ff_andrew_brietbart/all/1

How Andrew Breitbart Hacks the Media

By Noah Shachtman

Andrew Breitbart has been waiting 45 minutes for a filet mignon. He drums his fingers on the table in this plush Italian restaurant off Times Square, a place where the media types he regularly trashes used to flaunt their expense accounts — back when they still had them. Breitbart looks around for a waiter and launches into a stem-winder about collusion between Hollywood and the press — the “subtle and not-so-subtle use of propaganda to make a center-right nation move to the left. ....

... Until last September, the beefy 41-year-old with graying blond hair was a largely covert power in the right-wing media, the hidden hand behind the popular Drudge Report who also, weirdly, cofounded the liberal Huffington Post. But then he struck out on his own. Today his collection of Web sites draws more than 10 million readers a month. He has a book deal worth more than half a million dollars, and he’s a regular presence on Fox News — where he’s headed later tonight, in fact. ... ....

When he isn’t on TV or drinking with rich guys, Andrew Breitbart spends most days combing through the thousands of tips he receives via email, instant message, and Twitter. He passes on the choicest of those to the editors of his three group blogs: Big Hollywood, which focuses on liberals’ hold on pop culture; Big Journalism, which calls out the press for lefty bias; and Big Government, which — take a guess. He also runs Breitbart.com, which essentially broadcasts headlines from wire services. His fifth site, Breitbart.tv, hosts political videos. ....

... Today, for example, he’s working in that apartment, reading about the finances of Media Matters, the press watchdog that has devoted hundreds of posts in the past four months to bashing Breitbart. He stares at his laptop screen. “Oh, this is good. This is good,” he mutters. “They raised $10 million this year. I’m working out of a basement, and I’m kicking their fucking asses.” ....

While waiting tables at a Venice bar and grill, he got to know one of the regulars, veteran TV actor Orson Bean. Bean had a wild reputation in Hollywood. He had written a book extolling the spiritual power of orgasm and, even more shocking, was a die-hard Nixon man. Breitbart admired him as an unpredictable rebel, a raconteur, an independent thinker — the kind of guy Breitbart wanted to be. He started dating Bean’s daughter Susie and eventually married her. Bean served as Breitbart’s first mentor, encouraging him to cut against what both men saw as LA’s leftie grain. ....

He takes a breath. “They call us tea-baggers. They call us racist, sexist, homophobic, and we are finally punching back. It’s over, dude. It’s over. You think you’re gonna be able to put the genie back in the bottle? It’s over. And if you don’t like my aggression, there are going to be millions more of me,” Breitbart says, the cell phone connection skipping in and out. “Because the new media provides the tools and there are millions out there who are outraged. Now they realize, ‘Wow, anybody can do that. We can hold these people accountable. We have the means. We have the technology.’” Then Breitbart hangs up. He has more interviews to conduct, a speech at the National Tea Party Convention to prep, and bloggers to talk to. The O’Keefe story might still turn out very bad for Breitbart. But there is no way he’s going to let someone else tell it.



Contributing editor Noah Shachtman (www.wired.com/dangerroom) wrote about the Afghan air war in issue 18.01.


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