Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 40 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Horowitz, Seipp, Breitbart
David Horowitz died last week. He was 86 and had been ill for a while. He recruited me from the very establishment American Film Institute to lead the American Cinema Foundation, which he co-founded with Academy Award-winning screenwriter Lionel Chetwynd. Its purpose was to be a fairer and more balanced version of the AFI. David was a wise man and a good friend. My first month on the job, I was invited to speak at one of his events at Disney Studios. (That’s how different things were 28 years ago.) On a panel I got into an argument with an open borders extremist. It wasn’t a screaming argument, but I punched back. While this was going on, I realized belatedly that this libertarian was one of David’s big financial supporters.
Although my ACF was now legally separated from David’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture, it wasn’t a good look for me to be tussling with my benefactor’s benefactor. So I wrapped it up and got offstage. When I saw David, I started to apologize. He cut me off with a smile. “Why did you back off? You almost had him in your sights.” I squirmed a little. “Well, yeah, but then I realized…” He shook his head. “You don’t work for the Left anymore, Gary. You’re a free man.” I never forgot that.
When I met Catherine Seipp in the mid-Nineties, she rather quaintly still called herself a newspaperwoman. She thought “journalist” sounded too pretentious. The local L.A. press was her employer, but also her prime satiric target, especially the then-lordly Los Angeles Times. Back when wokeness was political correctness, she made her mark as an early critic of everything connected with it.
One article that got noticed, big time, was titled “It’s Wednesday Morning in America.” It was one of the first widely read pieces about conservatives in Hollywood. Seipp named names of respected industry insiders who were part of the new movement, like Airplane co-director David Zucker, Cheers show-runner Rob Long, and studio chief Frank Price. She was a friend of David Horowitz, and that’s how we met.
Over the following eight years, the ACF often worked with Cathy, presenting panels, screenings, and tributes. She was one of Los Angeles’s first bloggers, along with her pal, Mickey Kaus. Cathy seemed to know everyone in TV, and anyone she didn’t know, Rob did. They got us top-flight, press-worthy people. One of them was the author of Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon – The Case Against Celebrity, Andrew Breitbart, a frequent guest on her American Cinema Foundation panels and talks. In retrospect, Andrew’s (well-deserved) prominence happened quickly.
Cathy, a lifelong non-smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2002. For a couple of years, chemo kept it in check. She wore wigs and largely kept it a secret as long as she could. To her wry, sad amusement, her career took off during this time, with many more appearances in print and then, on camera, on CNBC’s Dennis Miller from January 2004 through May 2005. Cathy’s daughter, her only child, graduated from high school in the spring of 2006. She’s probably the only kid in the class who had Ann Coulter show up at her graduation party.
This isn’t very scientific, but Rob and I and a number of her other friends were convinced that Cathy was holding herself together with her usual steely self-discipline toward the goal of getting her daughter to the gates of college, which she did. After that, her health deteriorated sharply.
A bunch of her friends, many in and around the ACF, threw a lavish tribute/roast for her. She set a brutally honest, dark comic tone, tartly joking that she was pleased that dying of cancer was not making her a better person. Rob Long, the emcee, quipped, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you cancer, make cancerade.” Cathy wouldn’t have had it any other way. She was dead six months later.
For a couple of years, Gary Sinise organized a “secret” get-together for Hollywood conservatives at a lavish, 2000-acre estate north of Los Angeles. At the first one, in 2008, I think everybody was a little overwhelmed by the surroundings. Hollywood’s right-wingers don’t usually get settings and hospitality worthy of James Bond villains.
A couple of us fell into a group at one point, mostly related to Rob Long: ACF board member Tom Selleck, novelist and screenwriter Andrew Klavan, and Andrew Breitbart. Klavan asked about Sinise, who until then hadn’t been involved in anything like this. “So why is he doing all this?” Breitbart said, “Chuck Heston just died. Someone has to be the king of conservative Hollywood,” and we laughed in agreement. Within a couple of years, Breitbart was arguably the king of conservative Hollywood.
A year later, Mickey Kaus said, “We’ll be all working for Breitbart someday.” It’s true; he was not only a media daredevil, but a potential empire builder, the hoped-for future Walt Disney of creative conservatives.
In those days, Mickey hadn’t yet been practically blackballed from publications and organizations that once hosted him. He was nominally still a liberal, but he liked Andrew’s effect on the culture, and Andrew personally. Breitbart in person wasn’t a sneering caricature of the left’s imagination; he was secure enough to laugh off a timid “attacker” at a question-and-answer session and ask them to have a drink. If it took a fight, he won. But if it took charm, he could also win.
He was effortlessly cool. In 2011, during the Anthony Weiner scandal, Breitbart was one of his media tormentors. He conscientiously attended his press conferences, and when the congressman was late for one of them, the rest of the press began peppering Breitbart with questions. So he just stepped up to the mike and casually hijacked the “enemy” press conference. He courteously left when Weiner finally showed up, having “warmed up the crowd for him.”
Cathy and David died after long illnesses. Andrew died of a sudden heart attack. He was only 43.
I’ve never forgotten being angry at David Frum, a writer I knew and had respected, dismissing Breitbart’s death with “He won’t be missed.” He was a husband with small children who was liked by everyone*. It was a terrible thing to say, and wrong.
(*nearly everyone he hadn’t fought online, and even a few whom he had.)
Seipp. Breitbart. Horowitz. Not a shrinking violet in the bunch. However combative they could be in print, each one of them IRL was a thoughtful person with lots of friends. I’ll try to keep it in mind when someone in public life that I don’t like shows up in the obituaries.
And remember: we know not the day, nor the hour. Now, doesn’t that just send you out of the post with a spring in your step, whistling the theme song?
Published in General
I once got criticized along with David Horowitz in a social media forum. It was long ago–long before Twitter. It may have been a forum for historians, or it may have been something else where mostly academics took part. I’m pretty sure the topic had something to do with academic freedom and free speech. Horowitz was active in the discussion and I chimed in, too. Somebody wrote, “The trouble with Gorentz and Horowitz…” I felt highly honored to be associated with him that way, but nothing more came of it.
I first started this as a comment in @glennamurgis‘s post, three days ago. Thanks to Glenn for his post.
Thank you for that. David Frum was wrong about Breitbart – he is missed. All of them are.
Here’s the DVD from the tribute. The “cannibals” on the left of Cathy are Mickey Kaus and libertarian conservative Jill Stewart. The cartoonist is R. Genn.
Here’s a photo from the tribute. Rob is at the mike, Cathy is radiant as the roastee/guest of honor. Andrew Breitbart is in the background. He wasn’t “famous-famous” yet. But in the years remaining, he emerged as a national satirist and cultural warrior.
It’s funny how you can develop a relationship with people merely by reading their words. I admire you Gary for your glittering social circle.
I read Radical Son years and years ago, and became a Horowitz fan while doing so.
I found the work of Cathy Seipp through a mil/foreign affairs blog that collated and presented excerpts of various news reports and essays from all over the web. She felt their excerpts were costing her clicks, even though they scrupulously provided links to the originals. I didn’t know, and I don’t think the mil blog knew, how sick she was. They acquiesced and stopped linking her. I kept reading her.
And Breitbart? That was one wild ride. I got a head start on not missing David Frum by ignoring him after the “he won’t be missed” crack.
David Frum is a compass that reliably points south.
The lawn party for Cathy Seipp’s daughter’s high school graduation, 2006: I’m genially toting the wine. This photo lines up a green chair so it appears to an Orthodox halo that slipped. Mickey was Ann Coulter’s date.
If only more saw this.
What a wonderful tribute, Gary. I especially love when you speak about relationships and people helping people. Thanks.
Terrific post, Gary!
Fee Fie Fo Frum. Was he right about anything?
On Frum, I find him a humorless scold (who also wants to rehabilitate the presidency of Woodrow Wilson).
It’s between him and David French as who is the most sanctimonious commentator in media
What’s with guys who have “David” as their first name?
Thank you Gary for sharing these wonderful memories.
We all need to remember that whatever their public personas, people are just people. And I mean that in a good way.
Thank you, as always, for your interesting and enjoyable posts. They never fail to inform and entertain.
Is there anybody who has been wrong about everything? James Taranto used to marvel about how Paul Krugman was wrong in all his predictions, but certainly Krugman has been right about something, even if it wasn’t a prediction. No?
Even those people on Ricochet who have been most spectacularly and consistently wrong about vaccines or Russia are sometimes right about some things. They occasionally have interesting insights that one can learn from.
This could be part of a chapter in his new book.
Gary, this is a lovely remembrance — of a lot of people, including some old (and very missed) friends. Thanks for this, sincerely.
But I’d kick myself if I didn’t add: this should be a book! A history of the very nascent conservative movement in LA in the 90s and 00s — think of the consequential figures that got their starts there! I’m serious.
Zoinks!
That’s what several of us have been telling Gary. We’re serious too.
ABout here someone who knows how to use this medium should post Mary Hopkin singing “THose were the days”
Cathy was also a contributor to Reason. Here’s a 2002 article about feminism that got a lot of attention.
Some people are awful human beings.
We’ve lost a lot of ground since then, but Seipp’s article could have been written yesterday. 2002 was long before the inflection point (2006, I think) and most of the threats from the left hadn’t condensed into what we have now. Still, it was all there in potential in 2002. Organized feminism was the wedge that led all the rest of it.
People change, and their opinions change. When I first moved to Los Angeles, California was a Republican state, and Texas was Democrat. When I first started going to David’s luncheons, I got to meet famous conservatives, like Bill Kristol, David Frum, and Arianna Huffington. Arianna and Andrew Breitbart created her site, and Breitbart was also instrumental in helping Matt Drudge got online. Yes, Drudge was once a mainstay of the Right.
One preppy-looking guy who always seemed friendly and polite, almost apolitical: Tucker Carlson.
David and April Horowitz’s wedding reception was held in Arianna’s extremely plush back yard. This would have been about 1998. Black conservative radio host Larry Elder didn’t exactly preside over it–for one thing, Larry’s not Jewish, let alone a rabbi–but he was the ebullient spark plug who got the crowd on its feet. A nice day.
This week, Mickey Kaus’ website quotes Neil Munro: “The analysis also provided a chart showing the top web publishers, and Breitbart News is firmly in the top 10. BBC News, the New York Times, Daily Wire, Daily Mail, Reuters, and NPR all follow Breitbart.”
Not bad!
Hollywood conservatives? Lots of stories.
In 2006, we had a meeting in the upstairs private room of a small restaurant on Mulholland Drive, an unusual venue for us. Rob was giving me some gentle common sense about an old college friend who kept calling me up looking for money. Truthfully, this probably happens a lot more to Yale graduates than to NYU film school graduates, so I was grateful for the advice. Matthew Duda, senior VP of Showtime, joked with us about killing off (HBO’s) The Sopranos.
Joel Surnow and Howard Gordon were there. Surnow’s 24 had just nuked northern L.A., so there was a certain amount of dark political humor. It is always amazing to see powerful people, some of them celebrities, as irrepressible fan boys and fan girls. Everyone was on Surnow’s case that night.
“Whatever you do, and we know you won’t tell us one way of another, I want to leave you with this one thought, Joel. Don’t kill Chloe. OK? Got that? I’m not asking much.”
I try to eschew celebrity worship, but damn, you’ve had a really interesting run of friendships and acquaintances.
As others have said, I sure hope you’re writing a book.