Emmett Tyrrell

Tyrrell was one of those behind the Arkansas Project, financed by Richard Mellon Scaife, to improve the Spectator's investigative journalism. He detailed the project's purposes and accomplishments in his 2007 book The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life after the White House.

In 2000, government investigations of The American Spectator caused Tyrrell to sell the magazine to venture capitalist George Gilder. In 2003, Gilder, having a series of financial and legal setbacks, resold the magazine back to Tyrrell and the American Alternative Foundation, the organization under which the magazine was originally started, for a dollar. The magazine was initially called The Alternative. The name of the owner was changed to the American Spectator Foundation. The magazine then moved operations back to the Washington, DC, area. Later that year, former book publisher Alfred S. Regnery became the magazine's publisher. By 2004, circulation hovered at around 50,000.

A noted political commentator, Tyrrell appeared on a 1984 episode of Firing Line (TV program) with William F. Buckley Jr., in which he debated with Christopher Hitchens the merits of the Feminist Movement. Tyrell declared the movement to be "a terrible failure," later mocking the notion of a woman's "career" and reaffirming his opinion that feminists are misanthropes.

In 1972, Tyrrell married first wife Judy Mathews, with whom he had three children; they divorced in 1988. In 1998, Tyrrell married Jeanne M. Hauch at Holy Rosary Church, Washington, DC.

Tyrrell was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised Roman Catholic. In 1961, he graduated from Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Illinois.

Robert Emmett Tyrrell Jr. (born December 14, 1943) is an American conservative magazine editor, book author and columnist. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator and writes with the byline "R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr."

Tyrrell is the great-great-grandson of Patrick D. Tyrrell, an immigrant from Ireland and a detective in the United States Secret Service in the 1870s, involved in foiling the plot to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln in 1876.