Andrew Breitbart, critic of Hollywood, dies of natural causes

Andrew Breitbart, an outspoken conservative activist and vociferous critic of Hollywood and the media who

spawned a new generation of right-wing bloggers and several notorious political scandals, died Thursday of natural causes in Los Angeles. He was 43. His trio of websites, BigHollywood.com, BigJournalism.com and BigGovernment.com, announced that Breitbart died shortly after midnight Thursday. He was walking near his house in the Brentwood neighborhood when he collapsed, actor Orson Bean, his father-in-law, told AP, says Chicago Tribune.

Beyond his family, Andrew Breitbart affected so many people. Death is sad, but this one really hurts. Andrew Breitbart helped me personally, perhaps more than he ever knew. When he formed his site "Big Hollywood," my blog already had a loyal following. "Loyal" is code for "small." Andrew added me to his list of writers.
The only rule was that since I was not in the entertainment industry, I could only write about entertainment. That may seem counter-intuitive, but he wanted people to branch out.
he entertainment people could discuss politics, but political people like me were relegated to entertainment. This kept his site from being like every other site where political people talked about politics in the same way, informs Washington Times.

Mr. Breitbart was one of the most aggressive -- and controversial -- users of blogs to disseminate political information and rumors, and his video methods were new in conservative media. What Mr. Limbaugh was to radio and what Mr. Drudge was to the Internet, Mr. Breitbart was to online video and images.
Mr. Breitbart worked with Mr. Drudge early in his career, helping him staff The Drudge Report. But another media star, Arianna Huffington, gave Mr. Breitbart what turned out to be his biggest break. She hired him in 1997 when she was a conservative commentator in need of research help. She gave Mr. Breitbart a title, director of research, and what he described in his book "Righteous Indignation" as a "bizarre and cloistered office" in her Los Angeles home.
It did not take long for Ms. Huffington to see his value as a tireless employee. He struck up a friendship with her and her mother, who came to regard him as almost a son of her own, according to Pittsburgh Post Gazette.