Then the email came: Please call me. *phone number* –Andrew Breitbart.

I knew of Andrew and had only met him very briefly once before but that day we talked for over two hours and if I were smarter, anything close to charismatic, and capable of being a visionary, it would’ve been like talking to myself. By that time I had already been trying to sound the alarm about what was happening in Hollywood for nearly three years. Certainly there were people who appreciated it, but 5,000 hits a day does not a movement make. But here was this guy on the other end of the phone speaking about it with more passion and insight than I had ever heard before: This is about America. This is about a blacklist. This is about a diversity of opinion at the pop culture table. This is about my kids. This is about truth, justice, and the American way. Out of anyone else’s mouth this would’ve sounded corny as hell, but from Andrew it sounded like The Ramones had entered the building.

So there was that, and then there was the vision. A media empire of BIG sites. Over ten of them: Big Government, Big Journalism, Big Peace, Big Education, Big Israel, and my personal favorite, Big Soros. But it would have to start with Big Hollywood, he said, because nothing was more important than the culture. If you couldn’t win a seat at the table of pop culture, the others won’t matter. Everything is downstream from Hollywood — and not just politics. Hollywood shapes our children, our country, and most importantly, it shapes how the world sees our country. Unless we gain a foothold on that beach, the rest of the invasion will fail.

When I hung up the phone the only doubt I had about his judgment was that he was considering me for the job. Not to be falsely modest, but who was I? Well, as it turned out I was uniquely qualified. I love movies, I know about them, I ran a blog, I can write some, I enjoyed some experience in the industry, I’m right-of-center, politically, and I had never been convicted of a felony. In my life I have failed way more than I have ever succeeded, but somewhere along the way I did manage to build an unexceptional resume that, as luck would have it, also happened to check all the boxes necessary for a shot at running Big Hollywood. But still, think about it: if you’re going to build a media empire, if you want to make a splash and plant a flag in the big bad media world, wouldn’t it be better to open with a star player like Peter Schweizer, Dana Loesch, Mike Walsh or Mike Flynn as opposed to some guy plunking away at an obscure blog no one’s ever heard of? I wouldn’t have gone that way, but…

That’s how important the culture is to Andrew. Business-wise there was absolutely no upside in using as the foundation for a dream a completely unknown name on the masthead of a site that covers a niche topic. Thankfully, though, that decision wasn’t up to me. 

Furthermore, popular culture has been Andrew’s passion going all the way back to 2004 when he teamed up with Mark Ebner to write “Hollywood Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon — The Case Against Celebrity,” which means that this was the priority of his life even before it was mine — and I’m older than he is.

And so this is how JournOlism works: Starting with our left-wing friends at Mediaite, looping back up through the equally leftist Talking Points Memo and Politico before finally landing at MSNBC, the idea is to do anything and everything in an attempt to humiliate, demean, and diminish Sarah Palin — and that includes the spinning of a compliment made by one of her biggest fans and chief defenders into a criticism.

Not everyone can be President of these here United States, but more than one person can. How many people on our side, though, have what the legendary movie moguls once called oomph? The former Governor of Alaska has star power to burn, savvy to spare, is as tough as a hickory knot, and yet while were told again and again by The Sophisticated Class that she’s dumb as a post, somehow she also happens to be right about almost everything. But because his primary passion is the culture, Andrew sees Palin as a transcendent figure — someone, yes, bigger than the presidency — a “Red State” Oprah. He said so on the record back in November, and in my personal conversations with him, he has said so since I’ve started working for him. 

Anyone who knows me or who has followed me on Twitter knows that all Sarah Palin has to do is point to the broken glass she wants me to crawl over. I’ve never seen anyone put through such a cruel, mean-spirited, public meat grinder where their family, womb, faith, gender, dialect, looks and culture are all fair game for the worst kinds of smears. And because she has survived this unprecedented evil with such grace and dignity – Sarah Palin is my hero. And of course I want her to be president. But when Andrew says that he sees her as the Oprah of the right; once again, he’s seeing the bigger picture — the pop culture landscape that shapes and defines our politics in ways not enough people on our side understand (you better believe the Left gets it).

There ’s only one Sarah Palin and she would make for one outstanding president, and like Andrew I will vote for her in a heartbeat and fight for her every step of the way. But it’s just a fact that the price of a President Sarah Palin is a hole in the crucial pop culture war that only she can fill. And only a wicked, journOlisting MSM would attempt to spin into a negative a man publicly declaring that he would like to see this one person lead the charge in a battle that has defined his life more than any other.

*LSM = Lamestream Media.

On the eve of Michael Jackson’s death, I penned a column for FOX News in Michael Jackson’s defense arguing that he should be remembered for all his charitable accomplishments as opposed to the unproved accusations against him.

“Sure, Jackson was prosecuted twice, and although this reporter can’t acquit him of any charges, he was never convicted of a single crime,” I wrote. “He certainly didn’t deserve the tabloid innuendos that only fueled a toxic fire that was burning his reputation to a cinder in the court of public opinion.”

I stand by that statement, but there’s a difference between tabloid innuendos and facts, and to my surprise it turns out that although the most damning evidence against Jackson is indisputable, Hollywood and the media have paid little attention to it.

Even last week when the FBI released their own files on Jackson, including one report about a pair of Mexican boys that he may have molested in the 1980’s and a British boy who Jackson allegedly had phone sex with in 1979, it made little impact.

I was never a Michael Jackson fan, but I cheered in 2005 when he was acquitted on child molestation charges because his defense lawyer made a convincing argument that he was framed. I assumed that because the alleged victim’s mother seemed extortive, that her story and her son’s story were both lies.

I also convinced myself of what many others had, which is that Michael Jackson was just a strange guy who loved kids and didn’t want to hurt them.

There’s a darker side however, that cannot and should not be ignored even if Hollywood refuses to believe it. I learned about that dark side when I finally investigated the sexual abuse allegations in the wake of Michael Jackson’s death for a national news network earlier this year.

The first thing I discovered was a story reported by journalists Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner in their New York Times bestseller, Hollywood Interrupted, an investigative exposé of the entertainment community in Los Angeles.

Apparently, Jackson had a mysterious relationship with Frederick Mark Schaffel, a controversial gay pornographer who had a history of making films with young adult males over in Europe. When Schaffel wasn’t producing gay porn movies however, he had another job here in America – he was Michael Jackson’s personal videographer at Neverland.

When Jackson allegedly first ‘learned’ about Schaffel’s background, he immediately fired the pornographer and issued a public apology that pledged Schaffel would no longer be associating with him. However, a couple of years later Schaffel was allowed to return, and in 2005 he was named by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in Jackson’s sexual molestation case.

Despite this stunning, contradictory display of hypocrisy, the media never probed into why Michael Jackson hired a gay pornographer – fired him – and then rehired him to film children who were visiting his ranch or why the celebrity superstar was paying such absurd amounts of money to him.

During the 2005 trial it was revealed that Schaffel had apparently signed two checks in the amounts of $500,000 and $1 million to an account that he and Jackson were the only signatories. Schaffel also alleged that Jackson owed him another $3 million for “producing fees.”

No one knows what that money was actually for, but Breitbart and Ebner obtained a source in the Los Angeles pornography world who said that Schaffel, as the authors put it “had a predilection for young-looking performers, preferably straight, who he would recruit in Eastern European countries like Hungary and the Czech Republic for both his personal and professional pleasure.”

Later, I located a source of my own in Hollywood’s gay community who knew Schaffel, and he confirmed that Schaffel had a very suspicious reputation in connection with the films he produced.

The next revelation came while researching the original 1993 sexual abuse accusations made by Jordan Chandler. To my surprise, Chandler wasn’t the only boy whose silence Jackson bought. After Jackson settled with the Chandler’s in 1995 for an estimated $15 million he paid $2 million to another boy named Jason Francia in 1996. Francia’s mother worked at Neverland as a maid from 1987-1991.

All of this time, I had thought Jackson had only settled with one alleged victim, but apparently he had actually settled with two. That also meant that there weren’t only two boys who had accused Jackson of sexual abuse, there were three – Jordan Chandler, Jason Francis and Gavin Arvizo. The recently released FBI files indicate there could be more.

The next day, I found hundreds of blogs reporting that Jordan Chandler admitted he lied and wanted to issue a public apology to Michael Jackson. The story was even reported by an online European news site and for a short time on Wikipedia as well. Apparently, Jackson’s fans weren’t above fabricating lies to clear their hero’s name.

After persistent attempts to contact Chandler’s family to confirm or deny that rumor, I finally reached Jordan’s uncle at his Santa Barbara law office.

“Jordan never recanted any of the allegations he made against Michael Jackson because they are all true,” Ray Chandler told me during a telephone interview. “You know,” he added, “from the very beginning this has been a nightmare for Jordan and the entire Chandler family. Hopefully, now that Jackson has passed away, this will be closure for Jordan – may Michael rest in peace.”

Later, I learned that when both Jordan Chandler and Gavin Arvizo were asked to describe Jackson’s genitalia to law enforcement officials the two boys both gave accurate descriptions. I also read that when the LAPD served their original warrant on Neverland in 1993, police found children’s games and books in Jackson’s bedroom along with pictorial books featuring photographs of naked boys. Police said that it was common to find children’s books and toys in pedophiles bedrooms because they help lure innocent children.

What really interested police however, was a special indoor alarm – the only one of its kind in the entire Neverland ranch – connected to Jackson’s bedroom hallway to alert him if someone was approaching his door.  One veteran LAPD detective who investigated nearly 4,000 sexual abuse cases said he believed the alarm was installed because Jackson was doing something in his bedroom he didn’t want anyone to know anything about.

Finally, I learned from Ray Chandler that when Jordan Chandler’s father, Evan, confronted Jackson face to face about sexually molesting his son, the singer reportedly didn’t take offense to the stinging accusation or even deny it. He simply smiled and in a soft, childlike tone and said, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

In other words, Jackson never denied he had sex with the 10-year old – he just didn’t believe he did anything wrong. There’s a big difference between the two.

These stories are not tabloid tales based on flimsy sources, but rather true facts, most of which Jackson brought upon himself by paying off his accusers and permitting sexual deviants to have access to the children he invited to his home. Still, the media hasn’t breathed a word of any of this since the pop-star passed away.

Instead, Democratic Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee reminded the nation during Jackson’s funeral service that everyone is always innocent until proven guilty. But anyone who is honest knows that just because someone isn’t proven guilty in court does not mean they’re innocent in the real world. If that were true, then O.J. Simpson would be innocent too.

Back in July when I listened to Lee tell her audience that she was proposing a Congressional resolution that would name Jackson as a “great humanitarian,” I wondered how his alleged victims – and any other victim of child molestation felt at that moment. Perhaps in the midst of showing our reverence for Michael Jackson, I thought we should all take a moment of silence to show our consideration for them too.

Michael Jackson copped a plea in Hollywood’s court of public opinion that he was just an unusual guy who never grew up and loved kids and as the judge and jury many of us accepted that plea because we didn’t want to believe the alternative. I ended my original l column by saying that, “Michael Jackson deserves an accurate place in history.”

I stand by that statement.

Michael Jackson (left) and Marc Schaffel (right) seen in photo with Warren Beatty (center)

When this scandal was exposed (but underplayed by the dysfunctional and enabling mainstream media), Schaffel was shown the door and Jackson’s people issued a press release acknowledging the impropriety of the situation but claimed not to have known of Schaffel’s mystifyingly inappropriate background — especially given the accusations against Jackson and his continued desire to present himself as a kid-at-heart.

Here is the statement by Jackson spokesman Dan Klores in July, 2002:

“The minute Michael and his advisers found out about Schaffel’s background, they cut the cord immediately. This was months ago. (Schaffel) has nothing to do with Michael Jackson, doesn’t represent him in any way, shape or form, and has been told this repeatedly by Michael’s attorneys.”

Well, a year later, Schaffel was back at Neverland and again acting as Jackson’s personal videographer who chronicled the taping of the famous Martin Bashir BBC documentary that later appeared on ABC in the U.S., which centered around two young brothers hanging with Jackson and Schaffel as their ‘chaperones’ at the creepy amusement park cum bachelor pad.

Why did Michael Jackson bring back the gay porno producer to use a video camera to oversee kid trips to Neverland AFTER it was admitted by Jackson’s own people the Jackson/Schaffel alliance was blatantly improper?

And why did the media drop the ball in playing up this massive scandal? Parents had an obligation to know they were sending their kids to a ferris wheel controlled by an accused molester who hung out only with young boys (as Howard Stern has said, “Where are the young girls?”) and his gay pornographer pal.

Mark Ebner and I covered this grotesque scenario extensively in our book, Hollywood, Interrupted.

I’m sorry. When Jackson didn’t fight charges of molestation and then paid a person off to the tune of millions, and later put children in the proximity of a guy whose day job was trying to find young-looking male porn stars in eastern Europe (you don’t want to see Schaffel’s casting call videos — I have!) — Michael Jackson exposed himself as a dangerous man and sick predator whose only mitigating excuse is that he was enabled by sick family and business associates and an even sicker mainstream press.

I feel mildly sorry that Michael Jackson is dead because to a great extent our overly popular culture influenced society contributed to making him the monster he was when he died. May he rest in heat.