He’s always described as a “provocateur,” but this is true cultural warrior, fearless creative genius, and force of nature. Do NOT miss his fascinating new bestseller, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World! RUSH: Andrew, how are you, my boy? BREITBART: Hello, Rush. I hate to be Mr. Redundancy, but thank you for everything. RUSH: Oh, no, no, you’re more than welcome. How’s it going out there? BREITBART: It’s going great. I’m in my element. I like media warfare, and I get an amazing high from it. And I feel that I’m chang- ing people’s minds, which is what I care about. That’s why I like to go into the lion’s den. I like to go to Starbucks the next day and have a liberal barista say, “I saw you on tv and I couldn’t believe how rude those people were to you,” or, “You made sense,” or, “You made me laugh.” I hope that barista is who I was 15 to 20 years ago, when I started to change my point of view. RUSH: Well, let’s start there. Who were you 15, 20 years ago? And what happened? BREITBART: I was a cultural default liberal. The factory setting in West Los Angeles, in Brentwood — O.J.’s former Brentwood — is liberal. I strayed from my parents’ quiet conservatism of my youth; they voted for Reagan, they voted for George Bush’s father. I strayed to be with the in crowd at my prep school. I certainly strayed when I went to college and I said what I had to say, wrote what I had to write, to get the professors to pass me in my classes. I said what I had to say to get liberal girls to like me. I started thinking that I was an actual liberal. And then the real world woke me up — from the day that my father said, upon my graduation, “The gravy train is over, you have to get a real job.” The humiliation of having to get a wait job in fancy West Los Angeles, waiting on college and high school friends who were on the fast track to Hollywood success, was a wakeup call. It was a necessary transition toward recognizing that the place where self-esteem is built is from hard work and perseverance, not from knowing the right people and possessing the politically correct philosophy of liberalism. RUSH: Why do you think more people out there are not similarly affected as you were by life’s realities? BREITBART: I have to thank my parents for this, because I think I wouldn’t have gotten back on course if I hadn’t had the roots of conservatism. So my revelation isn’t a natural trajectory for the aver- age liberal who has life smack him in the face with reality. I really do think my parents were a major factor — their quiet perseverance, the silent generation conservatives. But I think that my sense of justice, to quote Barack Obama and the left, was absolutely at the height of my believing that I was a liberal. The only thing I learned in college was political correctness — in essence what Bush called the soft bigotry of lower expectations. So when Clarence Thomas was put on a show trial, I accepted the premise that he must have done something so egregious that all of the abc, cbs, and nbc staff were justified in treating it like it was the most important moment in the history of media. I accepted the premise that he had done something as a black man that would cause even the naacp and the Urban League to sit on their hands as they were pillorying this man. But when I watched the hearings over the period of a week, I would call that my “great awakening.” It was the moment that I became 6 WITH CONVERSATION ANDREW BREITBART MY open to the arguments of Rush Limbaugh. Because I saw what you ultimately helped lead me through: the pervasiveness of liberalism in the mainstream media, and that there was something really, really wrong here. Then I saw the same people who said that Clarence Thomas was a horrific serial sexual harasser, anoint Bill Clinton as the standard bearer of the feminist movement. That juxtaposition, and that hypocrisy, was violent to me. It took two years of driving around Los Angeles listening to you to start realizing that “it’s the drive-by media, stupid.” RUSH: You’re answering all my questions before I ask them! You’re in the process of answering the next one. I’ve never been through anything like this. I don’t know how it feels. I’ve never had a “great awak- ening” when it comes to core beliefs and principals. But you have. What was it like to have your world shocked? I know you were young, but what was it like to have your reality blown to smithereens, or however you would term it, when this all happened? BREITBART: I just watched the Chaz Bono special on Oprah — it was the equiva- lent of realizing that I was in the wrong body. I started to ask very basic questions of my liberal friends and peers: “Have you noticed these hypocrisies?” “Why did they treat Clarence Thomas this way?” “Why did they treat Judge Bork this way?” I started to ask things about the Great Society, and started asking, “Do you think that these policies have actually helped black people?” And when they didn’t have any good answers, I started to wonder, “Is this really happening to me?” I would say that it was uncomfortable. I realized that I was starting to lose friends. But it was made a lot easier because at the exact moment that was happen- ing — and I still had a strong desire to be liked and to maintain my relationships on the west side of L.A. — Orson Bean, my then- girlfriend’s father, became something of a mentor, something of a Yoda to me. RUSH: Orson Bean! BREITBART: Yes. I just remember waiting tables on him at my hipster restaurant, and during brunch he would be doing The New York Times crossword puzzle, and his jokes were urbane, his conversation was George Plimptonesque, and I thought, “This guy is the most sophisticated guy on the planet.” As I got to know him, I recognized that he had a “Road to Damascus” conversion from left to right. He was blacklisted as a communist back in the 50s — he had Ed Sullivan tell him over the phone, “I can’t have you on the show because you’ve been blacklisted.” By the time I started to become friends with Orson and he became my mentor, he had already become a full-fledged conservative. He had your book on his bookshelf. At the time — this was before I had listened to your show — I remember asking him, “Why would you have this man’s book?” He said, “Why do you ask?” I said, “Do you have this for irony? As a conversation piece?” He said, “Have you ever listened to Rush Limbaugh?” I said, “Of course I’ve listened to Rush Limbaugh — he’s a racist, sexist, homophobe, Nazi bigot.” This is before my transformation. RUSH: I hope so! BREITBART: He said, “Are you sure you’ve listened to him?” I said, “Of course I have.” In hindsight, this is what’s instructive in listening to you when you’re being talked to by a seminar caller. I was programmed to hate you. I was programmed to believe to the core of my being that I had listened to you! If I had taken a lie detector test, I promise you I would have passed — because I knew, because the media told me, because “60 Minutes” told me, because everybody told me that you were that. And then, because of my pure hatred for grunge music, during the 1992 election cycle I grudgingly switched from the fm dial to the am dial, and I started to listen to you. You started to make sense to me in a way that Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn never really connected with me. In college the instructors were try- ing to tell me that Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn were the answer and that I just had to open my mind up to try and understand what they were writing. I always felt insecure, believing I must be stupid, because I could never really understand their language or their message. Listening to you, I thought, “Rush sounds like my parents; he articulates my parents’ silent values. And my parents are good and decent people.” I started to really connect with the fact that I was a nihilist, and didn’t believe in anything. My ethical underpinnings had been utterly challenged in college — I was existing in a realm of thought- less moral relativism. When I started to listen to your show and to read the books and the authors you would cite, the Thomas Sowells of the world, when I would listen to Walter Williams talk about basic economics — it was as if a light had been turned on in my life. I used to have insomnia. I think that insomnia was borne of existing in a world in which I believed in nothing. I haven’t had insomnia since I embraced conservatism — it was the equivalent of realizing, as you’re sitting in a desert and it’s 105 degrees and you’ve been sitting next to a never-ending supply of water, that maybe if you start drinking that water you won’t be so parched. I just started to drink the water — or the Kool-Aid, as my detractors would say. I’ve never once regretted it. For every friend or even family member I’ve lost, I’ve gained 10, 20, 30 people who are committed to this battle, to this movement, to this fight to keep this nation great. RUSH: Let’s talk about that. And, by the way, thank you for the kind words. I really appreciate it. When you went through the awakening, the realization, how long did it take you to become an evangel and want to actually do something about it in terms of persuading other people? And what was your first vehicle for that? Because a lot of people, Andrew, think that with your Big websites, the James O’Keefe videos, the new book you have out, that you’re an overnight success or an overnight arrival — but you’re obviously 7 “For every friend or even family member I’ve lost, I’ve gained 10, 20, 30 people who are committed to this battle, to this movement, to this fight to keep this nation great.” — ANDREW BREITBART
Transcript
He’s always described as a “provocateur,” but this is true cultural warrior, fearless creative genius, and force of nature. Do NOT miss his fascinating new bestseller, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World!RUSH: Andrew, how are you, my boy?BREITBART: Hello, Rush. I hate to be Mr. Redundancy, but thank you for everything.RUSH: Oh, no, no, you’re more than welcome. How’s it going out there?BREITBART: It’s going great. I’m in my element. I like media warfare, and I get an amazing high from it. And I feel that I’m chang-ing people’s minds, which is what I care about. That’s why I like to go into the lion’s den. I like to go to Starbucks the next day and have a liberal barista say, “I saw you on tv and I couldn’t believe how rude those people were to you,” or, “You made sense,” or, “You made me laugh.” I hope that barista is who I was 15 to 20 years ago, when I started to change my point of view.RUSH: Well, let’s start there. Who were you 15, 20 years ago? And what happened?BREITBART: I was a cultural default liberal. The factory setting in West Los Angeles, in Brentwood — O.J.’s former Brentwood — is liberal. I strayed from my parents’ quiet conservatism of my youth; they voted for Reagan, they voted for George Bush’s father. I strayed to be with the in crowd at my prep school. I certainly strayed when I went to college and I said what I had to say, wrote what I had to write, to get the professors to pass me in my classes. I said what I had to say to get liberal girls to like me. I started thinking that I was an actual liberal.
And then the real world woke me up — from the day that my father said, upon my graduation, “The gravy train is over, you have to get a real job.” The humiliation of having to get a wait job in fancy West Los Angeles, waiting on college and high school friends who were on the fast track to Hollywood success, was a wakeup call. It was a necessary transition toward recognizing that the place where self-esteem is built is from hard work and perseverance, not from knowing the right people and possessing the politically correct philosophy of liberalism.RUSH: Why do you think more people out there are not similarly affected as you were by life’s realities?BREITBART: I have to thank my parents for this, because I think I wouldn’t have gotten back on course if I hadn’t had the roots of conservatism. So my revelation isn’t a natural trajectory for the aver-age liberal who has life smack him in the face with reality. I really do think my parents were a major factor — their quiet perseverance, the silent generation conservatives.
But I think that my sense of justice, to quote Barack Obama and the left, was absolutely at the height of my believing that I was a liberal. The only thing I learned in college was political correctness — in essence what Bush called the soft bigotry of lower expectations. So when Clarence Thomas was put on a show trial, I accepted the premise that he must have done something so egregious that all of the abc, cbs, and nbc staff were justified in treating it like it was the most important moment in the history of media. I accepted the premise that he had done something as a black man that would cause even the naacp and the Urban League to sit on their hands as they were pillorying this man.
But when I watched the hearings over the period of a week, I would call that my “great awakening.” It was the moment that I became
6
WITHCONVERSATION
ANDREWBREITBART
MYopen to the arguments of Rush Limbaugh. Because I saw what you ultimately helped lead me through: the pervasiveness of liberalism in the mainstream media, and that there was something really, really wrong here.
Then I saw the same people who said that Clarence Thomas was a horrific serial sexual harasser, anoint Bill Clinton as the standard bearer of the feminist movement. That juxtaposition, and that hypocrisy, was violent to me. It took two years of driving around Los Angeles listening to you to start realizing that “it’s the drive-by media, stupid.”RUSH: You’re answering all my questions before I ask them! You’re in the process of answering the next one. I’ve never been through anything like this. I don’t know how it feels. I’ve never had a “great awak-ening” when it comes to core beliefs and principals. But you have. What was it like to have your world shocked? I know you were young, but what was it like to have your reality blown to smithereens, or however you would term it, when this all happened?BREITBART: I just watched the Chaz Bono special on Oprah — it was the equiva-lent of realizing that I was in the wrong body. I started to ask very basic questions of my liberal friends and peers: “Have you noticed these hypocrisies?” “Why did they treat Clarence Thomas this way?” “Why did they treat Judge Bork this way?” I started to ask things about the Great Society, and started asking, “Do you think that these policies have actually helped black people?” And when they didn’t have any good answers, I started to wonder, “Is this really happening to me?” I would say that it was uncomfortable. I realized that I was starting to lose friends. But it was made a lot easier because at the exact moment that was happen-ing — and I still had a strong desire to be liked and to maintain my relationships on the west side of L.A. — Orson Bean, my then-girlfriend’s father, became something of a mentor, something of a Yoda to me.RUSH: Orson Bean!BREITBART: Yes. I just remember waiting tables on him at my hipster restaurant, and during brunch he would be doing The New York Times crossword puzzle, and his jokes were urbane, his conversation was George Plimptonesque, and I thought, “This guy is the most sophisticated guy on the planet.” As I got to know him, I recognized that he had a “Road to Damascus” conversion from left to right. He was blacklisted as a communist back in the 50s — he had Ed Sullivan tell him over the phone, “I can’t have you on the show because you’ve been blacklisted.” By the time I started to become friends with Orson and he became my mentor, he had already become a full-fledged conservative. He had your book on his bookshelf. At the time — this was before I had listened to your show — I remember asking him, “Why would you have this man’s book?” He said, “Why do you ask?” I said, “Do you have this for irony? As a conversation piece?” He said, “Have you ever listened to Rush Limbaugh?” I said, “Of course I’ve listened to Rush Limbaugh
— he’s a racist, sexist, homophobe, Nazi bigot.” This is before my transformation.RUSH: I hope so!BREITBART: He said, “Are you sure you’ve listened to him?” I said, “Of course I have.” In hindsight, this is what’s instructive in listening to you when you’re being talked to by a seminar caller. I was programmed to hate you. I was programmed to believe to the core of my being that I had listened to you! If I had taken a lie detector test, I promise you I would have passed — because I knew, because the media told me, because “60 Minutes” told me, because
everybody told me that you were that.And then, because of my pure hatred for grunge
music, during the 1992 election cycle I grudgingly switched from the fm dial to the am dial, and I started to listen to you. You started to make sense to me in a way that Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn never really connected with me. In college the instructors were try-ing to tell me that Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn were the answer and that I just had to open my mind up to try and understand what they were writing. I always felt insecure, believing I must be stupid, because I could never really understand their language or their message.
Listening to you, I thought, “Rush sounds like my parents; he articulates my parents’ silent values. And my parents are good and decent people.” I started to really connect with the fact that I was a nihilist, and didn’t believe in anything. My ethical underpinnings had been
utterly challenged in college — I was existing in a realm of thought-less moral relativism. When I started to listen to your show and to read the books and the authors you would cite, the Thomas Sowells of the world, when I would listen to Walter Williams talk about basic economics — it was as if a light had been turned on in my life.
I used to have insomnia. I think that insomnia was borne of existing in a world in which I believed in nothing. I haven’t had insomnia since I embraced conservatism — it was the equivalent of realizing, as you’re sitting in a desert and it’s 105 degrees and you’ve been sitting next to a never-ending supply of water, that maybe if you start drinking that water you won’t be so parched. I just started to drink the water — or the Kool-Aid, as my detractors would say. I’ve never once regretted it. For every friend or even family member I’ve lost, I’ve gained 10, 20, 30 people who are committed to this battle, to this movement, to this fight to keep this nation great.RUSH: Let’s talk about that. And, by the way, thank you for the kind words. I really appreciate it. When you went through the awakening, the realization, how long did it take you to become an evangel and want to actually do something about it in terms of persuading other people? And what was your first vehicle for that? Because a lot of people, Andrew, think that with your Big websites, the James O’Keefe videos, the new book you have out, that you’re an overnight success or an overnight arrival — but you’re obviously
7
“ For every friend or even family member I’ve lost, I’ve gained 10, 20, 30 people who are committed to this battle, to this movement, to this fight to keep this nation great.” — ANDREW BREITBART
not. What was the length of time it took you to decide to become part of this movement, whatever you want to call it, to actually enter it and try to facilitate other people seeing what you saw on your own?BREITBART: At the exact moment I started to have this recognition of my conservatism, the internet was a revelation to me. Upon hooking up to the internet, in the shortest amount of time you can imagine, I happened upon a series of news groups, in which Matt Drudge was posting something called the Drudge Report in a newsletter form. It spoke to me immediately. It was quirky, it was optimistic, where my generation’s writing style tended to be cynical and ironic. It spoke to politics from a point of view that I agreed with. But it also covered the pop culture from the behind-the-scenes: who’s getting paid how much, the ratings, the stuff that really mattered. I sent him an email, and he responded immediately. I asked, “Is this a business? Are there a thousand of you? Are there a hundred of you?” He responded, “This is just me.” I found out he lived in Hollywood and I lived in Santa Monica. We ended up meet-ing at the Venice Canals at Orson’s place, and for four hours I listened to him talk about the media and politics and what he was doing.
As he drove away in his Hyundai — I believe it was a Hyundai, it putt-putted away — I looked at my wife and said, “That’s a media visionary. That guy is going to change the world.” At the time he was working at cbs. I 100 percent had prescience that Matt Drudge was special, and I watched him very closely change the media landscape. I watched how he went through trials at the hands of the media that presumed his guilt when he was tell-ing the truth about Monica Lewinsky. I think it pained me to a greater degree than he was pained, when he was attacked by the media and they called him a liar.
I remember Matt Lauer challenging him on the blue dress on tv. Lauer said, “That’s not true — The Dallas Morning News retracted that.” Drudge stood by the story. After being pilloried for years and being exonerated when the blue dress turned out to be true, at no point did the media apologize to him for casting aspersions on him.
I learned an enormous amount watching him take the shots and deliver the goods, and during that period of time I always asked myself, “Do I have the courage Matt Drudge has exhibited? Do I have the courage Rush Limbaugh has exhibited?” I started to find myself entering my 30s and parenthood, and I started to challenge whether I had the courage to stand up for this cause that I now firmly believed in. I really wondered, “Do I have the guts to put myself through the wringer like these guys do, to go up against the Democrat-media complex?” I definitely have people who have given me that perspective: if you believe what you believe, you should start standing up for it.RUSH: You said you love the fight. I watch you and I can tell that you thrive in it. Talk about prescience — one of the things you have been most prescient on is understanding how the right
has simply failed to even care — until you’ve come along — about actually getting a serious foothold in the culture. The left has owned it. You have said that you think Hollywood is more important than Washington, that politics is downstream from the culture. What do you mean by that?BREITBART: I mean that by the time that Eric Cantor and John Boehner are asked in October of an election year to save the coun-try, you’ve already lost. This is a center-right country; its culture should reflect that in fact — but things are so tilted to the left, on purpose in an organized and conspiratorial fashion. The left recog-nized that the way to defeat America was from within, and within its cultural institutions.
In Righteous Indignation, I wrote my history chapter on the Frankfurt School, the German and Italian intellects who were social and cultural Marxists. They translated economic Marxism into
cultural terms. Antonio Gramsci, sort of the granddaddy of the Frankfurt School, believed in gradualism, that one must begin a long march through the institu-tions. By the institutions he meant the mainstream media, Hollywood, the main-line churches, and academia.
Hollywood, I believe, is at the forefront of that. In the late 1960s, when the likes of John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart and the old breed of Hollywood studio bosses were dying out, very patriotic, a bunch of countercultural types took over and have never rested.
Wherever the left exists, whether it be in Venezuela or Cuba or the former Soviet Union or the uc Berkeley campus, wher-ever the left gains control there seems to be a totalitarian grip: if you disagree, you’re on the outs. If you disagree, you’re put in prison. If you disagree, you’re blacklisted. It pains me that dynamic exists, and I wit-
ness it every day in Hollywood. I have countless friends who are conservative and they just keep quiet.
But at the end of the day, my greatest criticism is of the conserva-tive movement, conservative millionaires and billionaires who don’t recognize that our culture is there for the taking. That they could take over a studio with their money and make movies that reflect their worldview — but they choose not to, because it’s not some-thing they’re oriented to. They pooh-pooh the culture. I think that it’s a huge mistake. It’s not something that can be fixed in two years, four years, or six years in terms of electoral cycles, it’s something that needs to be fixed over a generation or two. It’s going to start with a long march back through the institutions, for conservatives and patriots to reclaim our culture.RUSH: When you started your websites, Big Government, Big Journalism, and so forth, was that your focus? Not just Hollywood but the culture? You were trying to get to that young demographic that informs itself via pop culture, trying to establish a credible conservative presence there and in the process encourage others you knew in Hollywood who think and act as you do but didn’t want the hassles of going public with it? Is that still your focus, or have you branched out to include other things as well?
8 9
BREITBART: I’m more interested in the cultural matters than the political matters, though I do think they’re connected. When television shows or radio shows call me up to ask me my opinions on political issues, I think they’re missing the point. I have a trick, I always change it to media. I always change it to cultural answers. I answer the question differently than they expect because I’m not a policy expert.
Arianna Huffington likes to position herself as the queen of the left-wing blogosphere. I’m trying to be more the Pied Piper of the right-wing blogosphere. I don’t care if people blog at my site. I don’t care if people videotape their professor indoctrinating them in communism, which is what we’ve been able to do at the University of Missouri right now. I’m trying to just tap as many people into the realm of the new media and I don’t care who gets credit. I want there to be a nation of new media journalists out there who are revolutionizing the media to the extent that the Bill Kellers and the Maureen Dowds and the Pinch Sulzbergers are having fits over the rebirth of a dying industry.RUSH: It is happening. I don’t know what Maureen Dowd and Bill Keller talk or think about, but the objective evidence is there: The Times is losing subscribers, it’s losing advertisers, they’ve got a paywall. They’re a cultural force by virtue of habit. There’s really not a whole lot of energy there. They’re losing readers.
Do you have a timeline for this? Are you optimistic, now that you’re in the middle of it? I’ve been at this 23 years and I’m struck by the fact I still say the same things in a philosophical sense in trying to persuade people today that I did 23 years ago, because there are always new people listening. It really takes a renewed effort every day. It’s never going to end. There’s never going to be a day when you can proclaim victory. The battle’s going to have to be taken and waged each and every day. Have you found the same thing?BREITBART: Yes, it gets very exhausting. The day that you expect to do a touchdown dance never comes. Because they are always up to no good at the other end of the battle. These people are committed cultural warriors, they’re committed political warriors. We call it like it is. When the mainstream media pretends that they’re objective and neutral, while every day they’re out there putting on their war paint and going to battle against us as they claim they’re not, it’s a very frustrating dynamic. I don’t think I could do it if I didn’t wake up every day and realize my four children could potentially exist in an America that is devalued from the one I grew up in. I look at the sacrifices my parents have made in their lives to give me so much; they didn’t ask for anything in return. When I believe to the core of my being that the left really does think it has in its grasp a victory of epic proportions, transforming America into something that our Founders would have deplored, I don’t have the luxury of stopping. I just try to look at this as a marathon and every day wake up and continue running at a pace I can keep up.RUSH: Now your foray is in the culture, but as you’ve said,
culture and politics are linked — by morality, for one thing. But you can only do so much. Any one person, even Drudge, can only do so much to successfully implement the things you’re out there fighting for. There has to be a political apparatus that welcomes you, supports you, and is willing to employ some of the things you turn up and give them. And I know — it happened to me, too — that there are people you assume to be on your side who really don’t like what you’re doing, due to jealousy, childish little things, or a challenge to the kingdom or what have you, or you embarrass them, or whatever. Add to that, we have a Republican Party that is our vehicle which doesn’t seem — let me put it this way: Do you think the Republican Party has anywhere near the same level of commit-ment or energy that you have?BREITBART: No.RUSH: So how do you deal with that?BREITBART: It’s frustrating, because I thought that if I charged against the enemy and had some real victories borne of expos-ing corruption at a metaphysical level, such as acorn, that the institutional right would have my back, and that the Republican Party would have my back. What I found out is they’re very good at fundraising off of the enthusiasms in the population that are borne from the successes that we do in the new media. But when you get into trouble, they run for the hills. It’s sobering and instructive, and
you realize who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. You realize that it’s not necessarily the team you thought it was, that there are a lot of individuals out there who are acting for their own
self-betterment. You take the wisdom that comes from experience and you just tread on.
But in the process of being beaten down, you meet the great ones, and you meet your friends and you meet your allies, and you meet the people who are true blue. I don’t think I would have been able to meet those people had I not gone through adversity. I think the real good ones are seeking out others who are willing to stick their necks out for the same greater level of commitment, based in a deep love for this country and what it stands for.RUSH: You’ve said that men have been turned into eunuchs by political correctness, and that’s one of the reasons you think women are leading the Tea Party. You consider yourself a Tea Party guy, right?BREITBART: Absolutely.RUSH: This is fascinating to me, that the left has even had an objective to totally reorder the social structure where men and women are concerned — it’s what feminism was all about. They have neutered men. If you go around Washington, D.C. and look at who they consider real men, you realize that if those guys were ever called on, we’re doomed. You are not at all reflective of that. When you do your media appearances, you’re fearless, you’re not afraid to get in anybody’s face, whether male or female. As such, you get the troglodyte label, you get the racist-sexist-bigot-homophobe-bigot, whatever, label attached to you. I’m thrilled to see it doesn’t slow you down. But I’m sure that you’ve seen, the more that you’ve gotten into this, that there are even more challenges to success than you realized when you started. Now you’re growing, but some days does it feel overwhelming? How do you deal with that in terms of
“ The left recognized that the way to defeat America was from within its cultural institutions.”
— ANDREW BREITBART
10
planning your own business’s growth? How do you see the actual manifestation of this Democratic-media complex being broken into parts and ultimately dismantled — how do you see that happening?BREITBART: I see it in the Tea Party; I see it in the underground Hollywood conservative movement that I’m a central figure in. It’s a great awakening of the conservative and the independent-minded American. They’re happening at the exact same time. It’s why I use the Pied Piper analogy. I grew up in Los Angeles, in a place where I thought everybody was liberal. I found out in the last ten years that’s not the case. There are cells of people — conservative actors, writers, directors, punk rockers, artists with pink hair — who are deeply conservative, socially conservative, fiscally conservative, were for the war in Iraq. They just have to keep silent. It’s not 100 to 1 after all — it’s maybe 60 to 40, or 70 to 30; what has changed within the last ten years is going out there and connecting people.
The same dynamic is happening in the Tea Party, in that people are starting to find each other. They’re start-ing to connect with each other. They’re starting to figure out ways to collectively take on the left’s community organizing. Our community organizing is ethical com-munity organizing, and we’re going after the nefarious community organizers. So there’s a great rebirth of con-servatism that is manifesting itself because the new media allows for people to find each other, to figure out ways to work together.
I believe over a twenty-year period you’re going to see the benefits of the awakening of the Hollywood conserva-tive. They’re finally going to figure it out. They’re going to find the billionaires who are frustrated with the culture and will figure out how to make Pixar-like movies that reflect the good in our culture, not the nihilism that is spread abroad and pumped up to the satellites from these left-wing hacks.RUSH: That better happen, because the one big dif-ference between the Tea Party people and the Hollywood people you’re talking about — and I don’t mean this personally because I don’t even know them, I don’t mean it to be said in a disparaging way — the Tea Party people are willing to show up and be counted: “Here I am, I’m Frank Slobodnik, I’m a Tea Party conservative.” The Hollywood guys will not do it yet. At some point are all of these people who have clandestine meetings to connect, “Hi, good to know you’re here,” going to have to go public? Will they have to be unafraid before you’re going to make any significant progress out there in reorienting the culture in Hollywood itself? I mean, it’s great that they’re there, it’s great that they think the way that they do, but it’s not good that they have to meet secretly so that people don’t find out about it so they won’t be blackballed.BREITBART: I used to be unsympathetic to their cause; now I’m sympathetic to their cause because they are mostly middle class people who are a mortgage payment away from losing their house in a very unsecure business. I’ll give you an example of somebody who stuck his neck out. He’s a very attractive British actor who gained some fame in the movie “Black Hawk Down.” His name is Matthew Marsden. He was in every single “Transformer” movie. When he went to the Council for National Policy, the big con-servative get-together in Austin, a left-wing publication put on the internet that he was there. He was the one person not invited back to “Transformers IV.” He perseveres, he doesn’t complain,
but his career was definitely hurt as a result of it.As long as there’s no infrastructure to pick up a Matthew
Marsden, to hire him, there are very few incentives for them to come forward. And I don’t recommend that they come forward unless they have a Jerry Bruckheimer in their life who’s willing to hire them who happens to be conservative himself. Because I know who these people are. They are punitive. The leftists in this town want nothing better than to ruin the lives of conservatives in their industry who buck the leftist plan.RUSH: That’s the difference. Our guys don’t want to ruin their lives at all. We don’t care what they do. We want to work, they want to work, we don’t care if we work with them on the same set. They can’t abide our presence — this is getting into a psychological analysis of why they are that way. It’s not just in Hollywood, it’s that way everywhere, academia, journalism — speaking of which,
by the way, that’s your next website, right? Big Education? When are you going to launch that?BREITBART: Yes, by the school year. I hope there are more whistleblowers in classes. Such as: a kid from Wash U. took a course at University of Missouri at St. Louis called “Introduction to Labor Studies.” They filmed the course, and he distributed the video to activists in the St. Louis area that I’m associated with. We ended up seeing some of the footage — it showed them in full-throttle indoctrination of the children into communism. They described militant activities in the pursuit of negotiations with management. One professor talked about how it’s very difficult to strike against a power plant. But she gave an example of a friend in Peru who unleashed a bag of cats into a power plant. The cats ended up getting electrocuted and causing mass power outages. This was framed as an effective strategy to intimidate or cause disruptions of a company. And this is being presented as an academic course at the University of Missouri, St. Louis and at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. The institution is standing by the two professors, though this is blatant indoctrination, blatant Republican-bashing, and teaching the kids the joys of intimidating executives, the joys of killing kitty cats, in order to cause mass havoc. I think the American people have every right to expose, candid-camera-style, what’s going on in America’s institutions.RUSH: I find it interesting and hilarious the objections you get,
that you’re somehow committing an ethical affront to journalism. I know you haven’t blown up a truck that wouldn’t otherwise have blown up, have you? You’ve not edited your footage to have some-body saying something they didn’t say, which is a common practice on the other side. It’s hilarious to watch you be lectured on this stuff. It’s great that you don’t cower, either. You see the numbers of people that do.BREITBART: I know the left. When James O’Keefe came to me with the acorn videos, I said, “You are going to be held to a different standard than the mainstream media.” Notice that “60 Minutes” doesn’t offer transcripts of the full interviews, they trun-cate time and edit things to make them appear how they want them to appear. When O’Keefe came to me, I said, “If we are going to move forward on the acorn thing, you’re going to have to abide by the double standard. We are going to unleash your acorn edited tapes with full transcripts and audio so that they can’t claim that this has been taken out of context.” That’s why acorn went down: because it had no defense. But a year-and-a-half later, I’m absolutely bombarded by the organized left’s attempt to claim that they were “selectively edited,” and somehow the misbehavior is mitigated if you were to actually see the full footage. It’s a blatant lie. It’s the Big Lie. It’s a lie repeated over and over to the point it becomes true. It’s what the mainstream media does so well.RUSH: Yeah, but it’s a badge of honor. You’re always going to have the evidence on your side, because you’re not playing games with it. And you’ve got plenty of outlets to demonstrate what you’re
saying on your own site is 100 percent accurate.Just a couple of minutes here, but I haven’t asked you about
President Obama and how his presidency is impacting you and your business, your task, your objectives here. What does four more years of Obama running this country mean to you? BREITBART: Well, it would be a boon for my business — because everything that I’ve accomplished has been in reporting the stories and the corruption that the mainstream media won’t report in this Democratic environment that we’re living in right now. But I care more about my country than the short-term interests of my business. I’m willing to have a President Palin, a President Cain, a President West, a President Christie, a President Daniels, in order to help bring this country back, over having good booming journalistic times.
I have tried not to make this about Barack Obama, I’ve tried to tell other people on the right not to make it about President Obama. This is about the left. When President Obama is no longer the fig-urehead, another figurehead will pop up. So I’ve tried to make it not about the President, I’ve tried to make it about his policies. And, more importantly, his tactics. People thought community organizing meant helping little old ladies get corned beef hash onto their plates for dinner. We’ve come to realize it’s the coordinated intimidation and extortion techniques crafted by public-sector unions, acorn and organizations like seiu. We realize he has two skill-sets: one is
reading a teleprompter; the second is thuggery, organized thuggery, using these unofficial armies to do his dirty work.
For me it’s now become personal, because I’ve seen how he’s used his thugs, deploying them to Tea Parties to intimidate the protest-ers, to intimidate the politicians such as Scott Walker. I think we can use the term “un-American” when describing the President’s tactics of trying to split Americans on class lines, using class warfare, and using union thugs to do his bidding.RUSH: I don’t think there’s any question about it. You’re dead on. Well, this has been great. I’m really happy to hear all the details of your maturation in this. That’s fascinating. And it was extremely articulate. I really appreciate it, Andrew. And anything I can do to help —BREITBART: You’ve done more than your fair share to help me. I can’t thank you enough.RUSH: Well, but look, there are not very many people involved in this who will not cower and back away at some point. There really aren’t. It’s a dispiriting thing to me sometimes. Especially on the elected side. Really, it’s us, Andrew — we’re going to have to push them; they’re not going to lead anybody. It’s a frustrating thing, but it’s what it is.BREITBART: You want to hear an anomaly? During everything, the one guy who stood behind me: Michael Steele.RUSH: Really? That’s interesting to hear.BREITBART: Yeah, he didn’t have to. It really threw me for a loop.
RUSH: Well, that’s cool.BREITBART: It’s just a cool thing. I don’t necessarily endorse him and he accepted the false premise of our guilt on certain politically correct notions and it angered me to no end. But when I was under
fire, he stood by me. And I just marked it.RUSH: Good. I’m happy to hear it, actually, I really am. Well, you keep on. What you’re doing with the Big sites is unique. There’s nobody else doing it. As clustered and crowded as media is today, there are very few who can say they’re doing something that’s not being done. You can.BREITBART: What we do at the end of the day, is the gang tackle. If we see somebody being bullied, like Trig, Palin’s kid, I go: “Sic ’em.” And I say, “Make sure there isn’t an ounce of meat left on their bones when you’re done.” That is my business model: I hate bullies. I’ve always hated them, and I’ve told my sons, “Okay, I’m not looking for you to get into a fight, but if you see a bully picking on a little kid, you get in their face and you tell them to stop. And if it comes to blows, I will defend you.”RUSH: Excellent. Bullies are cowards at the end of the day anyway.BREITBART: That is my business model. I consider acorn to be bullies, I consider these professors to be bullies, I consider David Geffen, Ari Emanuel, all these Hollywood people, they’re bullies, they’re elitist, they take my lovely 7 o’clock reservations and make me sit near the wait station at 9 o’clock. It’s personal.RUSH: That’s a great way to wrap it. Andrew, thanks a whole bunch.BREITBART: Thanks, Rush. ■
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“ I see a great awakening of the conservative and the independent-minded American.”
