Andrew Breitbart Loves a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy

ST. PAUL—His name may sound unfamiliar, but Andrew Breitbart has built a career helping to create the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post, while also overseeing his own news-aggregation site breitbart.com—and becoming prominent in a largely underground movement of conservatives in Hollywood. Next week he plans to launch a new site (www.breitbart.com/bighollywood) that will give voice to this rogue community in the entertainment industry. 

“I don’t have a set goal of saying like, ‘Jean-Claude Van Damme and Donny Osmond are going to be blogging on my site and you’ve got to come in,’” he told the Transom on Monday evening at the Republican National Convention. “I just want to create a healthy environment where those brave conservative thinkers, writers, ones that are comfortable being out, can exchange ideas.” 

We had just left the National Review party and were headed to the National Journal party. At both events, the Los Angeles-based Mr. Breitbart, who is 39 and the father of four children, was the only person not wearing a blazer. “No matter how hard I try, I don’t fit in at these things.”   

So he claims. Before we left, the pundit Jonah Goldberg accused him of being the most popular guy in the room.

At the National Journal party, publisher David Bradley was delighted to finally put a face to the name. “That’s Andrew Breitbart?” he exclaimed. Walking into the Weekly Standard party, a friend from L.A. greeted him. “Have you had a chance to take a shower yet?” joked Steve McEveety, who is Mel Gibson’s producing partner.

Mr. Breitbart said that that was the kind of person he hoped would be writing for the site. He claims that these underground Hollywood nonconformists believe in American exceptionalism; they think that this is a country worth defending and whose values are worth spreading, especially against Western European appeasement and ascendant radical Islam. 

He theorized that the average Hollywood power player is getting nervous. They look around, says Mr. Breitbart, and wonder: “Is my assistant one of them?”

smorgan@observer.com