Peter: Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge, I am
Peter Robinson. Andrew Breitbart grew up in Los Angeles then attended Tulane University.
He helped edit the Drudge Report and then was a developer of the Huffington Post. The
author of a book entitled Hollywood Interrupted, Insanity Chic in Babylon, the Case Against
Celebrity. Mr. Breitbart now manages two of his own sites on the internet, Breitbart.com
and a cultural and political site called big Hollywood. His abiding concern is the politics
of Hollywood, which he views as a problem and which he intends to correct. Segment 1:
Insanity Chic: Andrew Breitbart, I am quoting you in a newspaper interview he gave last
year discussing the people who run Hollywood. Quote. Andrew: Uh oh. Peter: Yes, quote I am telling you they are
uninteresting. They are vicious. They are vitriolic. They are really, really not good
people and I am willing to say that on the record. Close quote. Is there any of that
you regret? Andrew: No. Peter: What makes them really, really not
good people? Andrew: Well I am not saying the entirety,
but the ones who have controlled Hollywood for the last 40 years that quote could be
attributed to the campus left as well. It could be attributed to people who are in charge
in Venezuela right now. Anywhere where the left gets control, you start to see political
correctness run amuck. You start seeing dissenting views quashed. They use projection right before
they do so they start attacking the people they are about to go after about being guilty
of the very things that they do. That is why the dissent is patriotic, I mean was so hysterical
during the 2000, during Bush's presidency, because whenever I would ask any of these
people can you name one person who has attempted to quash your dissent and they would usually? Peter: The liberals? Andrew: The liberals would say that they couldn't
come up with any individuals, they would just say you have got to be crazy. It is everywhere.
Well exactly where is that? The first thing that this president did. Peter: Obama? Andrew: That President Obama did was isolate
Russ Limbaugh who was a symbol of a [inaudible] anti-Obama sentiment and he isolated him and
the mainstream media and Hollywood completely got behind this. That to me was chilling that
the Bill Mahers of the world, the Joy Behars of the world, the entirety of MSNBC all went
after Russ Limbaugh. He hadn't said anything at that moment in time that was anything that
was outrageous at all, especially compared to what had been said for the 8 previous years. Peter: He was guilty only of a political crime.
He disagreed with them and said so vividly. Andrew: Right. Peter: And that was it. Listen historical
question, golden age of Hollywood, which wasn't all that long ago. We measure in decades not
centuries after all. Producers, Jack Warner of Warner Brothers was a republican, Directors
Frank Capra, immigrant from Sicily, a republican and a conservative. He produces movies such
as It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith goes to Washington, the town in those days produced
movie after movie after movie that was fundamentally affirming about American life, fundamentally
affectionate even about American life. How did Hollywood go from Republican David Selznick,
who produced Gone with the Wind to Liberal David Gaffin. What happened? Andrew: Well two things, the studio system
ended and now the celebrities are in charge. Peter: The studio system ended, what bearing
did that have on the politics? Andrew: Well there were people, actors have
always been held in low regard by society and the businessmen who ran the studios cleaned
up after their messes around town. I mean that is sort of the LA Confidential movie
you know. That changed in the 1960s to a great extent, but I would attribute a majority of
this to the cultural revolution in the late 1960s and at the end part of John Wayne's
career, he no longer had the swagger. He was 60 something years old, the movie were no
longer original. They were doing the same hacking thing over and over and over and simultaneously
you know, there is a youth revolution going on in the country and while the left was never
able to take over the White House while George McGovern was not able to be victorious, Hollywood
was taken over by the left and they have never relinquished it and in fact I would argue
that the right has abrogated its place in Hollywood because they were told that you
are not wanted here anymore and they never fought for it. So I don't know who I have
more contempt for, the left for its totalitarian behavior of those that disagree with them
or the right the conservative movement just for allowing it to happen and not to fight
back. Peter: Segment 2 is what difference does it
make? Let me quote you again, Andrew Breitbart the popularity of American movies, I am quoting
you. Quote allows for a very parochial political sensibility in this town Hollywood to be propagated
around the world and people just assume well that is Hollywood that is the voice of the
American people, close quote. So Hollywood is messing up our foreign policy? Andrew: It is more subtle. Peter: What difference does it make that Hollywood
is so far to the left, it is a small community, a few 1000 lefties running the entertainment
business, so what? Andrew: Well would you hire, if Madison avenue
is willing to hire an actor and give him a million dollars to pour a beer in Japan that
actor must be worth that money, because they are going to get the audience to buy that
specific brand of beer. When the entirety, when the collective of Hollywood sends a message
to the rest of the world that affirms the worst narrative about the United States that
only tells half of the story or perhaps not even half of the story, it ends up having
a net effect, especially when a left leaning European press, their sensibilities are in
simpatico and what I think is at play is a lot of insecure actors who didn't go to college
and feel intimidated by people of a higher intellect, take their movies to Cannes or
San Sebastian and they find themselves not around the working class of France or Spain.
They find themselves around the elite of the elite of the elite and what? Peter: They are foolish enough to suppose
that just because they smoke their cigarettes like this that French critics are superior
to them. Andrew: There is such a limitation on the
point of view that comes out of Hollywood, especially on political movies these days,
even movies like Wolverine that is out right now. Peter: I haven't seen it yet, but my teenage
boys came home. Andrew: There is an anti, the bad guy in the
movie is a repressed military guy who has, who in one subliminal scene has a little cross
on his lapel and? Peter: James Bond, who is it James Craig,
the new James Bond? Andrew: Yes. Peter: The second Bond movie, which I rented
the other evening, the bad guy, it is unbelievable. Andrew: Well it is non-stop. Peter: The Americans are trying to take over
Bolivia. Andrew: Look you cannot get a film produced
now that has is lamest [assumed spelling] terrorists. You can get movies produced, in
fact, you see them all over the place in which people of traditional values or corporations,
American corporations are the bad guys and I know people within the system that tell
me how this plays out that one thing I have been able to find out over the last 10 years
is more money now comes from foreign box office. 65 percent to 35 percent, that wasn't always
the case. Peter: You make most of your money on foreign. Andrew: Right, so you're catering to the foreign
audience and so we might have an invested at you know we may have an investment against
radical Islam, but the rest of the world wants to kind of keep it bay and doesn't want to
take them on, doesn't want to ferment rage against that community. Peter: Domestic politics, in the 2008 election
cycle, the entertainment industry contributed 47 million to political campaigns, 36.5 to
democrats, 10.4 to republicans, so Hollywood contributes to Democrats over Republicans
of a margin of about 4 to 1, which suggests that those few thousand people that live down
there on the coast of California in Los Angeles and Environs exerts an enormous influence
over one of the nation's national parties. Andrew: Yes, the first job I took in Los Angeles
was working for a producer and he asked me to take Senator Frank Lautenberg around and
I took him to Don Henley's house and the Senator from New Jersey came out and said hey he is
going to do a fundraiser for me. He is going to perform and all the celebrities are going
to come and I started to figure out how the system worked, what does New Jersey have to
do with Don Henley and Los Angeles? That is fine and good if that is legal, but what I
find offensive in this system is that the conservatives that I know in Hollywood and
there are a lot cannot give money, because through a simple FEC search, their names will
come up as Republicans and then the word will spread around town that the Republican and
there is a strong likelihood that many people who would have ordinarily hired them will
not hire them and thankfully that behavior was put on display after Proposition 8, because
the American people. Peter: Remind folks. That was just on the
ballot here in California a few months ago. Andrew: It was the anti-gay marriage initiative. Peter: Right. Andrew: Those people that donated as little
as 100 dollars were isolated. Peter: Donated as little as 100 dollars to
the effort. Andrew: On behalf of the traditional marriage
stance. Peter: The pro man and woman means marriage
side. Andrew: Right, religious people, Mormons,
many from the black community, many from the Hispanic community, California voted this
in. The gay left isolated those people who gave money to that even down to a cashier
of a famous Hollywood haunt by the name of L. Coyote; they didn't just isolate her, but
they isolate the restaurant in order to put pressure on to fire her. That happens all
the times. Peter: They put individual names up on websites. Andrew: Yes, at a more subtle level that is
what has been going on in Hollywood for years. I get phone calls all the time from major
name actors fearful of retribution that their politics have somehow been outed, whether
it be from a donation they have given or the fact that they were seen at a semi-public
event that could be attributed to the Republican Party. Peter: Segment 3, who is Andrew Breitbart?
Washington Television Producer, Tammy Haddad, Andrew Breitbart is quote one of the 10 most
important people in the media, who nobody has ever met, closed quote. So let's take
a moment to introduce you. I said in the introduction, you grew up in LA. You went to Tulane. Get
us from Tulane to editing the Trudge report. Andrew: Well I was a C student in high school
and in college and I think that saved me from indoctrination in the left. I went to. Peter: You went to a pretty fancy prep school
down there, didn't you? Andrew: I did, but all I got away with there
was my sense of humor. I sneaked my way around classes, you know. Peter: Were you conservative in high school? Andrew: I wasn't ideological during the Reagan
years. My parents in hindsight were conservative, but didn't speak of their conservatism and
so they allowed for me to sway in to the realm of the left. In my latter years of high school,
I would say I was a mamby pamby liberal and in college, I certainly considered myself
a liberal democrat. It wasn't until I graduated. Peter: So what changed your politics, you
came back from Tulane straight back to LA, right? Andrew: That my mindset was not amenable to
working within the system that I thought the system was inherently corrupt and then I realized
that I had to make a living that was that. Then I lived in a rent control apartment and
I started to see what it did to people's soul quite frankly. People who thought they were
making out like bandits saving 400, 500, 600 dollars a month 10 years later were still
there and weren't entering the American dream. My family members who still lived in that
apartment when I have bought two houses since then and I have been able to move up the scale. Peter: Because they couldn't surrender the
little gimme from the welfare, the subsidized apartment. Andrew: That's right. And that old ladies
would knock on my door at midnight, because they knew that my family owned the building,
but I certainly wasn't benefiting from it other than I was getting the low rent would
say you need to change the light bulb in my apartment. There was a sense of entitlement
that was palpable in that place and I just started to have. You know what I will tell
you the thing that really changed me, because for me and we haven't really touched on it,
everything to me is media biased and that media bias for me was born of watching during
this period of transition between college life and theoretical life to the real world
and I watched the Clarence Thomas hearings from beginning, middle and end, because I
had gone to the Iran Contra Hearings rooting the Reagan administration on and that it be
taken down. So I liked political theater, so I watched that initially rooting for Clarence
Thomas to be taken down. By the very end, I believed the seeds of my future were planted
right there when I realized that Ted Kennedy knew something. What did he know that he could
ask Clarence Thomas these questions of a man who came from humble beginnings as an African
American. What did he know about the media? What did he know about the political process?
What did he know about Hollywood that they would side with a known lothario with chap[inaudible],
you know, in his background that they would allow for him and his allies in the Democratic
Party to ask this man in the realm of privacy have you ever rented any pornography. Do you
know who Long Dong Silver is? It was so obvious that this was a takedown that eventually I
started to see things through what I called the Democrat Media Complex. Peter: Okay now hold on, you helped Arianna
Huffington develop the Huffington Post. So you are now here as leading conservative in
Hollywood and you helped produce possibly the leading liberal website, explain yourself
Andrew? Andrew: Am I squirming? Peter: Not enough for me. Andrew: Okay, my first job within the realm
of politics, I tripped upon it and I became Arianna Huffington's director of research.
I was a researcher, I helped her with her columns and you know helped her with the books
and stuff like that. Peter: But she is already liberal. Andrew: She was a conservative then. Peter: She was in motion by then. Andrew: I don't know what was going on in
her head. I certainly was a conservative then and the first thing that we did together,
the first project and I really gained an enormous amount of respect for her writing skills and
her? Peter: Oh she is a highly intelligent writer. Andrew: And her investigative skills, when
she got Clinton's top donor, Larry Lawrence dug up from Arlington National Cemetery, I
remember Maureen Dowd saying this is the most loathsome thing that I have ever seen a conservative
republican do is to impugn this war heroes service, this dead man's service and Arianna
just had this smile on her face like she knew that she had it and when I watched that Friday
an aerial view of CNN disinterring this fraud. Peter: Oh because he had not actually served. Andrew: No well he didn't even served. Peter: He was not entitled to be buried in
Arlington. Andrew: Right and he had gotten a waiver,
because he was the first person allegedly in the Merchant Marines. He wasn't even in
the Merchant Marines, so she got him disinterred. I respected the hell out of her for that.
She switched. I left and went my own way, next thing I know she calls me up after the
2004 election and says you know, do you have any ideas for a website for me? The idea,
its premise, I think benefitted her and I think benefitted my side, because I wanted
the world to see how the far left thinks. The cocktail parties that I was privy too
where conspiracy theories were running amuck, the only place one could see in the blogosphere
after 911 and after the Carey campaign, after Carey lost was that the daily costs were mostly
anonymous people would put their ideas down. I thought it would be great to see how the
hard left thought with people would be willing to put their names down, huge miscalculation
here. Peter: Segment 4, who is winning on the internet?
You just teed this up, daily costs, move on.org, democratic underground, Huffington Post, they
dominate the internet. Wouldn't you agree or not? Or do you think it is relatively evenly
balanced, the left is ahead isn't it? Andrew: I would say the left is ahead, because
what all those sites do is protect the mainstream media, before those sites became dominate
and the mainstream media granted them the authority that they didn't grant the equivalent
blog sites on the right, these sites are there to protect them from future swift boat stories
to protect them from future Dan Rather stories, because these stories would start rising through
the rightwing blogosphere and people on the left were thinking, we don't want this story
to make it to the mainstream media and so they expected that John Carey would come out
and defend himself against the swift boat feds and when he didn't, he was destroyed,
so that is what these people do. In a very coordinated fashion with George Sorel's money,
with heavy coordination with the Democratic Party, they feed these people information,
they feed them ideas. Peter: So the bad stories get smothered on
the internet before they make it to television. Andrew: Yes. Peter: Let me ask you a question about the
nature of well of two media. On talk radio, conservatives are dominant. Al Franken, they
try to get Air America going. I believe America is still limping along in some form or another,
but they can't get the listenership. They can't get the advertising. On conservative
talk radio, you have Russ Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, Mark Levin, a number of people
prospering, right? Andrew: Um hmm. Peter: And you just argued that on the internet
it is the other way around that the left is dominate on the internet, why? What is it
about talk radio and the internet [inaudible]? Andrew: I think that the writing in the right
wing blogosphere is much better. I would put my side against Arianna's any day. I would
put National Review against Democrat Underground any day. I think that is scientifically provable,
but in terms of its affect, the right wing blogosphere no longer has the ability to do
what it did in 2004 before the coordinated online environment of the left became so successful.
I need to talk about why talk radio works for the right and why it doesn't work for
the left. It is a pretty simple. If you took away media bias from the equation, Russ Limbaugh
and Sean Hannity's ratings would fall. The existence of, the subtext of every single
story is media biased. They are consuming the media and then they are analyzing and
they are showing this is what they are saying, but this is what is really happening out there
and when you are on the left, when the media is so on your side to try to pretend that
the media bias goes the other way, you are going to fall on your face after two hours
of doing talk radio. You can't do three hours of talk radio every single day saying that
channel 360 out of 1000 on your direct TV dial is the bane of humanity. Peter: Okay, so Russ Limbaugh, Sean Hannity
and Hugh Hewitt are premised on reality and Air America was not. There is a media reality
that they are responding too. Andrew: Right. Peter: Okay big Hollywood, why did you find
it and what do you hope to accomplish? Andrew: Well it is by far, the Hollywood.com,
right? Well it is this very complicated URL but I am? Peter: Just Google Big Hollywood. Andrew: We are creating a series of group
blogs, this happens to be the first one, big Hollywood begets big education next. We are
going to do Big Race, Big Climate. We are going to do the group blog model and be? Peter: When you are saying we here, you mean? Andrew: I have a business partner by the name
of Larry Salve who graduated from this lovely campus and every C student needs an A student
in his life. Peter: To be his lawyer? Andrew: That's right. Peter: So Big Hollywood, start with Big Hollywood.
By the way you said you were contemptuous of conservatives in Hollywood? Andrew: I am not contemptuous of conservatives
in Hollywood. Peter: [Inaudible] Andrew: No, no, no I said I am contemptuous
of the movement. Peter: Explain that and then explain how Big
Hollywood has to do with that contemptuous, with formulating that. Andrew: That we have accepted our gilded ghetto
of Nat Review, Weekly Standard, all of the think tanks that we think that alone is enough
to win elections, when it is so obvious. Peter: The last election proved otherwise. Andrew: Right that pop culture matters, so
I am not blaming that the holdouts, I am not blaming the holdouts in Hollywood and there
are a lot of them. As a matter of fact, they need more help and that is precisely why Big
Hollywood was created. Peter: Explain Big Hollywood. Andrew: Well when I wrote with Mark Ebner
Hollywood Interrupted in 2003, it came out in 2004, it was a reaction to and this was
before the Iraq war, so I am not going to accept the narrative that the Hollywood left
stood behind George Bush and the United States during Afghanistan or after 911 in solidarity.
This was born from watching how the lot of Bush chimp, chimp Hitler, you know, commander
in thief. Peter: That had already started before Iraq. Andrew: That started certainly before Iraq.
It started before he took the office, but in Hollywood the animosity toward a wartime
president before Iraq was out of control and so that was why the book was written and I
had my incorrect assessment is that Hollywood is 99.9 percent left. What I now know as a
result of having written the book and now people knowing that I am the guy out there
in the center blogosphere, people have come to me, big name people have come to me. Small
people have come to me. All of them have the exact same story and what I talked about in
the first segment, they accuse you about what they are doing to you. Hollywood makes movies
about McCarthyism about it was the worst thing that ever happened in Hollywood or in the
Cold War that is their take away of the Cold War that if a few screenwriters had to write
under pseudonyms for a few years. That is not to take away, not to say that the black
list was a good or a bad thing, but for the very people who for the last 40 years had
been vicious to people who disagree with them, who exude behavior like that you see Perez
Hilton doing against Ms. California when he calls her the B and the C word and the media
affirms that and makes her out to be the bad guy in that story line. That is what the average
actor, director in Hollywood has to deal with every single day. Peter: Segment 5, Andrew Breitbart's politics,
President Obama has just finished his first 100 days, what do you make of it? Andrew: You know. Peter: I am asking you, here is Hollywood,
here is the nation, talk a moment about the nation. What are your politics? Andrew: You know what, I am definitely very
conservative. The transition was a typical one where I thought I was a libertarian, but
the more that I read books that were deprived of me during my college experience, ones that
should be required reading, just so people have a counter point. Once I started reading
what true conservatism was and that it wasn't Jerry Falwell's autobiography, which is how
the media portrays conservatism that it is high, it is Kirk, it is Berke. It is writers
that loud David Mamet into becoming a conservative, because he is at that high end of the media
food chain, of the Hollywood food chain had the same epiphany. Peter: Has David Mamet had to pay any price
or is he so big that he hasn't had to pay a price for being a conservative. Andrew: That is a great question. I think
I think when you are a David Mamet or a Michael Creighton who just died that your legacy is
everything. Michael Creighton was an incredible figure, not just in Hollywood. He was a huge
pop cultural figure. His death could not have gone more unnoticed, because of his apostasy
on Hollywood's current big issue and that is climate change. So I believe his legacy
is tainted, because the New York Times will put him below the fold. Peter: I am trying to get you going on national
politics, but the truth is this talk about Hollywood is irresistible. Andrew: Well what I will say is this, being
the Hollywood conservative, I defer to the DC crowd when it comes to policy. I am not
a policy guy, but what I am obsessed on and I am granted a great perspective of media
bias, because of what I have done in the media, my relationship with the New York Times, the
Associated Press, what is the traditional media, ABC, NBC, every single day paying attention
to the text and realizing oh my goodness, these people really are ideological and they
really are in control and they really do mean business. Everything to me is media biased
and what talk radio has done has focused on the New York Times, the AP, HBO, and any place
where the View, ABC, CBS, NBC, Los Angeles Time, you know it, the mainstream media. Our
media has set its sights on the mainstream media as a checks and balance and we have
done a pretty good job. What we haven't done is that on Hollywood and Hollywood has a far
greater sway than that collective does. I tell people? Peter: You for sure want to call Hollywood
on its bias that is clear. It is clear that you have done a fantastically energetic job
doing that, but you also have said in interviews that you won't be satisfied until the culture
of Hollywood actually changes. So it is not enough for you to hold up a sign with a big
finger pointing to them and say hypocrites, so here is a question. Listen to this list
of movies that came out in 1939 and even seven decades ago: Gone with the Wind, The Wizard
of Oz, Mr. Smith goes to Washington. Artistic classics, fundamentally affectionate and celebratory
of American life, even Dorothy in the opening sequence in the Wizard of Oz where Kansas
is black and white and the environment is rather grey and withered, she can't wait to
go home. There is no place like home, which means in effect, Hollywood is saying there
is no place like America. Can those days ever come back? Andrew: I don't know and I think the same
question people are asking right now with politics and referring to Ronald Reagan, but
I think that there are Bedrock principles of conservative standby and I think that creativity
and new people carrying these ideas, there is no reason that we can't go back to an America
that is self assured and confident. In our differences from those counties around the
world, what I stand for politically is American exceptionalism. Peter: Let me ask you, two sentences, three
sentences at the very most, because I am out of time. I am going to quote you once again.
I desperately want to change the environment in Hollywood. In two or three sentences, how
will you know when you have succeeded Andrew? Andrew: When those people who are conservative
in my life, who are very creative and powerful in that town can behave in the same fashion
that the Hollywood left behaves in. That they can make movies that reflect their value system.
That they can make movies that affirm their traditional values. I am not even a social
conservative. I just want those people to be able to make movies that affirm their point
of view and they can't right now. And when I see those people being able to do it without
the retribution that you are seeing right now by the left or at large, I will not stop
this crusade. Peter: Andrew Breitbart of Breitbart.com and
Big Hollywood, thank you. I am Peter Robinson for Uncommon Knowledge at the Hoover Institution.
Thanks for joining us.
