| Politics The Citizen Journalist The fast, fun career of Andrew Breitbart. By George Packer
Posted Tuesday, Jun 04, 2013, at 09:41 AM ET  This is an excerpt from George Packer's The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, out now from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In February 1969—when the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, was watched by 20 million viewers, or 1 in 6 households—a 3-week-old baby boy of Irish descent was adopted in Los Angeles by a Jewish steakhouse owner and his banker wife, Gerald and Arlene Breitbart, and given the name Andrew. When Andrew was 2, the New York Times and the Washington Post published The Pentagon Papers, defying threats by the Nixon White House. The next year, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were assigned by the Post to cover a break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. Andrew's toddler years coincided with the golden age of Old Media. The Breitbarts were upper-middle-class Republicans (four bedrooms, a pool, a canyon view) living in rich, liberal Brentwood. Andrew grew up on American pop culture, British new wave, and Hollywood celebrity. "Which famous people come into the restaurant?" he would ask his father (the Reagans, Broderick Crawford, Shirley Jones, and the Cassidy family, among lots of other celebs). Andrew took tennis lessons from the top pro in Malibu and once spent 15 unforgettable minutes looking for the instructor with Farrah Fawcett. Andrew was 11 when the Cable News Network went on the air in 1980. He was 13 when The McLaughlin Group and Crossfire introduced yelling heads to ... To continue reading, click here.
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