“Hating Breitbart” documents the battles Andrew and his empire waged on the media stage as they fought for a voice, and the right to have their voices heard in a body politic dominated by one party rule of thought.
This week my new film, “Hating Breitbart,” about the life and contributions of the late self-described conservative “middle class” media mogul Andrew Breitbart, opens in theaters across the country.
Like many, in his youth Andrew didn’t self-identify as a conservative. He grew up in a very liberal section of a very liberal city inside a very liberal state: Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, respectively — an ideological trifecta that does a pretty thorough job of eliminating any competition of ideas.
One of the key scenes in “Hating Breitbart” comes when Andrew’s father-in-law Orson Bean, describes the genesis of Andrew’s political transformation from typical Brentwood liberal to a warrior for the conservative cause and a tireless critic of the left-wing media.
Bean recounts how Andrew scoffed at him for having a book by Rush Limbaugh on his desk. “You have a book by Rush Limbaugh?” Andrew incredulously asked.
In what would prove to be one of the transformational moments of Breitbart’s political coming of age, Bean gave his future son-in-law his copy of that Rush Limbaugh book and said, “Why don’t you take it home and read it.”
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