l****z 发帖数: 29846 | 1 Andrew Breitbart was a conservative Internet entrepreneur known for
inflammatory reports that damaged Democratic officials.
Mr. Breitbart, 43 years old, died early Thursday after collapsing on the
sidewalk near his home, according to a spokesman for the Los Angeles County
coroner's office, which is still studying the death.
A family member said Mr. Breitbart saw a doctor about a year ago for a
cardiac issue, the spokesman said. Mr. Breitbart is survived by his wife,
Susannah, and four children.
"Andrew passed away unexpectedly from natural causes shortly after midnight
this morning in Los Angeles," a post on Breitbart.com said.
Mr. Breitbart oversaw a stable of websites including bighollywood.com,
biggovernment.com and bigjournalism.com. In 2010, he posted a video of an
address that Shirley Sherrod, then an official with the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, had given to the NAACP. In the clip, Ms. Sherrod, who is black,
appeared to express bias against whites, and she was dismissed from her job
as a result. After the full version of the speech showed that the edit Mr.
Breitbart posted had distorted her remarks, the White House apologized and
offered Ms. Sherrod a new position, which she declined. Mr. Breitbart has
said the video came to him edited.
Last year, Mr. Breitbart published revealing photos that former U.S. Rep.
Anthony Weiner had sent to women he met online. The New York Democrat later
resigned.
Mr. Breitbart was a critic of what he saw as a liberal bias in major news
media. In 2009, he offered guidance on conservative activist James O'Keefe's
video sting operation against Acorn, a community-organizing association
often aligned with Democratic causes.
The videos, posted on biggovernment.com, showed Acorn workers offering
advice to Mr. O'Keefe and a cohort, who were posing as a pimp and a
prostitute, on matters such as how to claim underage prostitutes as a tax
deduction.
[REM.BREITBART] Zuma Press
Andrew Breitbart
"Andrew was very passionate about the so-called liberal bias but always had
a twinkle in his eye that signaled he was exercising his American right of
freedom of speech," said Rick Wolff, an executive editor at Lagardère SCA's
Grand Central Publishing and Mr. Breitbart's book editor. "He was very much
a successful author. His followers loved him."
Mr. Breitbart's "Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World,"
published in 2011, sold 25,000 hardcover copies, according to Nielsen
BookScan., which tracks about 75% of physical-book sales in the U.S. The
book was part memoir, part manifesto.
Even when Mr. Breitbart didn't write about politics, he brought an edgy
style to his work. A review published in The Wall Street Journal of 2004's "
Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon—the Case Against Celebrity
," co-written with Mark Ebner, described the book as "written in waspish,
hipster lingo reminiscent of 1950s scandal sheets—worldly and shocked at
the same time."
Grand Central may move up the publication date of the paperback, currently
scheduled for next month. That edition includes a new chapter that Mr.
Breitbart wrote about the Anthony Weiner episode.
Mr. Breitbart grew up in Hollywood. His father was a restaurateur and his
mother a banker, according to a 2009 interview with The Wall Street Journal.
After graduating from Tulane University, he returned to Southern California
and worked for a time in film production and music journalism.
He launched his Internet career in the mid-1990s, working for a while on the
conservative Drudge Report site. Founder Matt Drudge introduced him to
Arianna Huffington, with whom he later helped launch the Huffington Post. |
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