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Though he's not exactly a household name, Saul Alinsky has come to have a defining influence on the politics of our time. The founder of modern community organizing and the author of the hugely influential Rules for Radicals, Alinsky has long been associated with the left -- Hillary Clinton wrote her senior thesis at Wellesley on Alinsky, and Barack Obama's first job out of college was as a community organizer for an Alinsky-influenced group in Chicago. Alinsky's name used to be a dirty word among conservatives, but he's lately experienced a renaissance among right-wing activists and bloggers, some of whom see his media-savvy, attention-grabbing tactics as their best shots at reclaiming power.

Mediaite recently interviewed Sanford D. Horwitt, the national chairman of the Saul Alinsky Centennial Committee and the author of the definitive biography of Alinsky, Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky: His Life and Legacy. Mr. Horwitt's last book was Feingold: A New Democratic Party, published in 2007. We spoke about Alinsky's influence on tea parties, town halls, and 9/12, Obama as our first community organizer-in-chief, and James O'Keefe's war on leprechauns: (more...)