The Breitbart building

But his vision extended beyond any single duke-out with any one Goliath. He was going after the whole Philistine gang. I remember standing with him on a corner in Westwood for a good portion of one afternoon, listening to him describe his long-term plans. He outlined the unfolding of the Bigs, which had then just begun, and went on to discuss the ways new media could break the Left’s stranglehold on culture and information to give the American public access to something closer to the truth. He even had a plan for a cultural think tank—a Great Good Place in Hollywood—where conservative artists could come for support and protection from the blacklists and beat-downs of the artistic establishment. I would be the think tank’s first president, he told me, an idea I found sweetly amusing then but which only makes my heart hurt now.

Standing there that day, I understood that I was listening to a blueprint for an empire, and I believed without a doubt that Andrew would see it through. I teased him that one day his disheveled, frenetic, and countercultural image would have to be sanitized for the three-piece-suit portrait in oil that would hang in the foyer of the skyscraper named after him. I was laughing when I said it, but I meant it. There’s no question in my mind it would’ve happened that way.