More McAdams, and How National Review (uknowingly) Got Me into the Conservative Movement
Rachel McAdams, Movie Star, Subject of one of my articles - and now constant hit-generator for this site. I wasn't the only one that thought it was a classy move to ditch Vanity Fair's nude shoot. K-Lo from N.R. agrees with me. Incidentally, K-Lo is responsible for my first job in conservatism. She posted notice of an internship at Sentinel Books last year on the Corner. I happened to look at the Corner that day and by the end of the week I was hired. I then proceeded to offer opinions my boss wasn't asking for - and in the hours that my co-workers could not spare to teach me to do the thing it would take them just 3 minutes to do, I started this blog. It's the Circle of Life.
Anyway- just a few quick stories from my internship. I was stationed at a desk a quarter of a mile away from my fellows at Penguin's imprint Sentinel. That was nice in a way. I spent some time talking to an editor from the Viking imprint, Ray Roberts who admired my icon of St. Michael. He had edited William F. Buckley in the past. He was a wise man. One day Stephen Moore, formerly of the Club for Growth, came in. He came equipped with an aide. He talked about the President being very concerned with personal loyalty. "Duh" I thought. We got all kinds of submissions - often that had nothing to do with the imprint's mission.
One of the truly amazing things about the position was being part of a "red-dot" in a sea of blue. Any regular reader of this blog would see that I'm a hard-hearted reactionary that barely has any time for work-a-day Republican politics. But sitting in on sales meetings with a staff that is entirely unaware of Rush Limbaugh's actual reach - or the glossiness of his newsletter - and who seemed so uncomfortable promoting books that he was also promoting - well- it opened my eyes to liberal media bias. There were people even working for the imprint itself that would crack wise about fundamentalists as we began to talk about John Gibson's future release "The War on Christmas."
Funny thing was - after a week or two of doing serious work - the staff found they had little time to spend educating me on things. One day I got to read the manuscript for Ed Klein's book on Hillary - I found two easily correctable factual errors - dates wrong. It was exciting to have a manuscript that was "secret" - and it was nice to be trusted not to leak its very leakable contents to Wonkette. The again - I wasn't willing to get sued for damaging the planned marketing rollout of the book. Just before I left- little leaks were springing anyway and the NY Post was pushing a story that other Editors at Penguin were very upset to be associated with this book. That was exciting. Addressing 300 copies of Gil Reavill's book, Smut, to people that produce Scarborough Country and Hannity and Colmes - was not as exciting.
Hat Tip on the Rachel McAdams thing to Daniel Larison of Eunomia.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Rachel McAdams
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