Andrew Breitbart

Andrew James Breitbart (February 1, 1969 – March 1, 2012) was an American conservative journalist and political commentator who was the founder of Breitbart News and a co-founder of HuffPost.

After helping in the early stages of HuffPost and the Drudge Report, Breitbart created Breitbart News, a far-rightMultiple sources:

Breitbart was born to Irish American parents in Los Angeles on February 1, 1969.

According to his birth certificate, his biological father was a folk singer.

When he was three weeks old, he was adopted by Gerald and Arlene Breitbart, a restaurant owner and banker respectively, and grew up in the affluent neighborhood of Brentwood.

His adoptive family was Jewish; his mother had converted to Judaism when marrying his father.

Breitbart studied at Hebrew school and had a Bar Mitzvah.

Theologically he was an agnostic.

Breitbart attended Brentwood School, one of the country's top private schools, but did not distinguish himself, saying: "My sense of humor saved me".

However, he discovered that he loved writing, publishing his first comedic piece in the school newspaper, the Brentwood Eagle, analyzing the inequality in his high school's senior and junior parking lots: "One had Mercedes and BMWs, the other Sciroccos and GTIs."" Breitbart remembers his upbringing as apolitical, except in one instance: when the family's rabbi tried to defend Jesse Jackson against charges of antisemitism after his "Hymietown" comment, his parents left the synagogue in protest.

Breitbart would remain "proudly and playfully Jewish" throughout his life, although not always religiously observant.

He would sing Hebrew songs at work while also teasing his Orthodox Jewish colleagues for keeping to a kosher diet.

Joel Pollak wrote: "He carried his faith as he carried all his convictions: with a lighthearted touch but a deep commitment."

Breitbart later said of his profession: "I'm glad I've become a journalist because I'd like to fight on behalf of the Israeli people... And the Israeli people, I adore and I love."

While in high school, Breitbart worked as a pizza delivery driver; he sometimes delivered to celebrities such as Judge Reinhold.

In this era, Breitbart also read Camille Paglia's book Sexual Personae (1990), a massive survey of Western art, literature and culture from ancient Egypt to the 20th century, which, he wrote, "made me realize how little I really had learned in college."

Breitbart has been lauded for his role in the "evolution of pioneering websites" including The Huffington Post and The Drudge Report, and later, for Breitbart News.

Journalists such as Nick Gillespie and Conor Friedersdorf have credited Breitbart with bringing new voices to debates about politics and culture.

He earned a BA in American studies from Tulane University in 1991, graduating with "no sense of [his] future whatsoever."

His early jobs included a stint at cable channel E! Entertainment Television, working for the company's online magazine, and some time in film production.

Previously left-leaning in his politics, Breitbart changed his political views after experiencing "an epiphany" while watching the late 1991 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, due to what he considered unfounded attacks on the part of liberals based on former employee Anita Hill's sexual harassment accusations.

Breitbart later described himself as "a Reagan conservative" with libertarian sympathies.

Listening to radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh helped Breitbart refine his political and philosophical positions, igniting an interest in learning that he had suppressed as a result of his distaste for the "nihilistic musings of dead critical theorists" that had dominated his studies at Tulane.

In 1995, Breitbart saw The Drudge Report and was so impressed that he e-mailed Matt Drudge.

Breitbart said, "I thought what he was doing was by far the coolest thing on the Internet. And I still do."

Breitbart described himself as "Matt Drudge's bitch" and selected and posted links to other news wire sources.

Later, Drudge introduced him to a then still-Republican Arianna Huffington and Breitbart subsequently assisted in the creation of The Huffington Post.

Breitbart wrote a weekly column for The Washington Times, which also appeared at Real Clear Politics.

Breitbart also co-wrote the book Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon with Mark Ebner, a book that is highly critical of U.S. celebrity culture.

Breitbart told Reason in 2004 that, after feeling ignored by existing outlets, "We decided to go out and create our media."

Described as "a series of do-it-yourself demonstration projects" and "conversation pits", the Breitbart websites have been both criticized and praised for their role in various political issues.

Breitbart has been recognized for adopting an inclusive stance with regard to the participation of gay people in the conservative movement.

He has also been credited with helping to derail conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's citizenship.

Breitbart played central journalistic roles in the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal, the firing of Shirley Sherrod, and the ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy.

Commenters such as Nick Gillespie and Conor Friedersdorf have credited Breitbart with changing how people wrote about politics by "show[ing] how the Internet could be used to route around information bottlenecks imposed by official spokesmen and legacy news outlets".

He was a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute in 2009.

On January 19, 2011, the conservative gay rights group GOProud announced Breitbart had joined its Advisory Council.

In April 2011, Grand Central Publishing released Breitbart's book Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World, in which he discussed his own political evolution and the part he took in the rise of new media, most notably at the Drudge Report and The Huffington Post.

Breitbart launched his first website as a news site; it is often linked to by the Drudge Report and other websites.

It has wire stories from the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Fox News, PR Newswire, and U.S. Newswire, as well as direct links to a number of major international newspapers.