Breitbart grew up in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Both he and his sister Tracey were adopted. His biological father was a folk singer. His adoptive father was a restaurateur, his mother a banker. He worked as a pizza deliveryman and car washer. He graduated from Tulane University in 1991.He says he "grew up in Brentwood a secular liberal Jew" who celebrated his bar mitzvah and "has the tape to prove it," but changed his political views after "an interesting epiphany" during the Clarence Thomas hearings. He now describes himself as "a Reagan conservative" who has "sympathies towards the libertarian side of issues." 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.

He is married to Susannah (Susie) Bean, the daughter of actor Orson Bean, and has four children.

Authorship, research and reporting

In 1995 Breitbart saw the Drudge Report and was so impressed that he emailed 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 Matt Drudge introduced him to Arianna Huffington( when she was still a Republican) and Breitbart subsequently assisted her (after she became a progressive) in creating her website.

Breitbart guest-hosted the Savage Nation talk radio program on several occasions. He also regularly fills in for Dennis Miller as host of Miller's nationally-syndicated radio show. Breitbart's work has been published in the Wall Street Journal, National Review Online and the Weekly Standard Online, among others. He writes a weekly column for The Washington Times, which also appears at Real Clear Politics. Breitbart also co-wrote the book Insanity Chic in Babylon with Mark Ebner, a book that is highly critical of U.S. celebrity culture.

Commentaries

Breitbart has appeared as a commentator on Real Time with Bill Maher and Dennis Miller. In 2004 he was a guest commentator on Fox News Channel's morning show and frequently appears as a guest panelist on Fox News's late night program, Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld. Breitbart also appeared as a commentator in the 2004 documentary Michael Moore Hates America.

On October 22, 2009, Breitbart appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal. He gave his opinions on the mainstream media, Hollywood, the Obama Administration and his personal political views, having heated debates with several callers.

In the hours immediately following Senator Ted Kennedy's death, Breitbart called Kennedy a “villain,” a “duplicitous bastard,” a “prick” and "a special pile of human excrement."

In February 2010 Breitbart received the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award during the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. During his acceptance speech, he responded directly to accusations by New York Times reporter Kate Zernike that Jason Mattera, a young conservative activist, had been using "racial tones" in his allusions to President Obama, and had spoken in a "Chris Rock voice." From the podium, Breitbart called Zernike "a despicable human being" for having made such allegations about Mattera's New York accent.

Activism

Main article: Tea party movement

Breitbart often appears as a speaker at Tea Party movement events across the U.S. For example, Breitbart was a keynote speaker at the first National Tea Party Convention at Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville on February 6, 2010. Breitbart later became involved in a controversy over alleged racial and homophobic slurs being used at a March 20, 2010 rally at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. by offering to donate $100,000 to the United Negro College Fund "for any audio/video footage of the N-word being hurled". To date, Breitbart has not credited anyone for presenting such footage.

Websites

Breitbart has launched a number of websites, including Breitbart.com, BigHollywood.com, BigGovernment.com, BigJournalism.com, and BigPeace.com.

Breitbart launched his first website as a news site; it is frequently linked to by the Drudge Report and other websites. It features wire stories from the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Fox News, PR Newswire, U.S. Newswire, as well as direct links to a number of major international newspapers. Its Blog & "Network" links tend to run to the right within the U.S. political spectrum (e.g., National Review, Instapundit, and Townhall.com). The site also features a search engine powered by Lingospot and a finance channel powered by FinancialContent. In 2007, Breitbart launched a video blog, Breitbart.tv.

In 2008 Breitbart launched the website "Big Hollywood," a "group blog" driven by Tinseltown, with contributions from a variety of writers, including entertainment-industry professionals who politically lean right. The site, an outgrowth of the column "Big Hollywood" that Breitbart wrote for the Washington Times, addresses issues facing conservatives who work in Hollywood. In 2009, the site used audio from a secretly recorded conference call to accuse the National Endowment of the Arts of encouraging artists to create work in support of Barack Obama's domestic policy agenda.

Breitbart launched BigGovernment.com on September 10, 2009. He hired Mike Flynn, a former government affairs specialist at Reason Foundation, as Editor-in-Chief of Big Government. The site premiered with hidden camera video footage taken by Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe at Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now offices in various cities, attracting nationwide attention resulting in the ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy.

In January, 2010, Breitbart launched Big Journalism. He told Mediaite: "Our goal at Big Journalism is to hold the mainstream media’s feet to the fire. There are a lot of stories that they simply don’t cover, either because it doesn’t fit their world view, or because they’re literally innocent of any knowledge that the story even exists, or because they are a dying organization, short-staffed, and thus can’t cover stuff like they did before." Big Journalism is edited by Michael A. Walsh, a former journalism professor and Time magazine music critic. The site has a fictional contributor named "Retracto, the Correction Alpaca" who posts items requesting corrections from the traditional media.

BigPeace.com debuted July 4, 2010. The site covers topics such as international issues and foreign policy, the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorism, Islamic extremism, espionage, border security, and energy issues.

Controversies

On July 19, 2010, shortly after the NAACP had expressed concern to the Tea Party movement for alleged racism, Breitbart posted two short videos showing brief excerpts of a speech by Shirley Sherrod at a NAACP fundraising dinner in March 2010 in which (according to Breitbart) Sherrod made racist statements. In the following controversy, Sherrod was forced to resign from her position at the United States Department of Agriculture. The NAACP and Breitbart posted the complete 40-minute video of the speech the next day, revealing that Sherrod made the comments in a broader story about how she rose above racial considerations. The NAACP stated that the video excerpts aired by Breitbart were deliberately deceptive and had "snookered" the group. Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, later apologized to Sherrod and offered her a new job.

Breitbart was also involved in the 2009 ACORN video scandal. Hannah Giles posed as a prostitute while James O'Keefe clandestinely videotaped interviews with ACORN staff. As in the Shirley Sherrod case, these videos were edited in such a way as to cause maximum embarrassment for ACORN, and were instrumental in the group's demise. Breitbart then provided a forum for O'Keefe on his BigGovernment.com website and defended their actions on Sean Hannity's Fox News Channel program.