Got to admit it, crazed as they were they had a lot of fun:
Life of the Party: A Political Press Tart Bares All, the new memoir by former GOP PR aide Lisa Baron, begins on a note both intriguing and revolting. "When people find out that I worked for Ralph Reed during the 2000 Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, they always ask the same thing: Was it true Ralph told voters that Senator John McCain fathered a black child?" she writes. "And my answer is always the same, 'How would I know? I was in a Greenville hotel room giving Ari Fleischer a blow job.'"
There’s your non-denial denial. It wasn’t me who said that: my mouth was full. Ms Goldberg continues:
As a liberal, I've often wondered about the motivations of Republicans who work on behalf of a social agenda that they have no intention of abiding by in their own lives. Why would a hard-partying socially liberal woman devote herself to electing men like Reed, or like Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss? The answer, it turns out, is distressingly simple. Because she's kind of a terrible person.
Well, yes and no. The actual answer to her question is revealed later on.
Her real passion is for cocktails and designer clothes—she drops brand names like a cut-rate Bret Easton Ellis. When she does express political preferences, they're strictly self-serving. "Right or wrong, I knew that it would be near impossible for Roe v. Wade to be overturned," she writes. "But higher taxes would impale my paycheck, tomorrow, unless the right people are in office."
If you deploy blowjobs then you won’t need an abortion, and if you do you can get one anyway. But my money is my money. Ms Baron is a 21st century moderate: she weighs the issues, makes fine distinctions and resolves them in a way she believes will be unlikely to burden the taxpayers.
Bit of a laboured opening. It's not quite "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite", is it?
(Never read Earthly Powers, but someone I knew as a student tried the line out on me without warning to see if I shared her admiration for the line. Being staid and bourgeois, I was just confused.)
Posted by: hellblazer | July 01, 2011 at 12:47 AM
A lot of fun giving Ari Fleischer a blowjob? That would merit hazard pay in my book.
Posted by: Martin Wisse | July 01, 2011 at 07:26 AM
Being staid and bourgeois, I was just confused.
If it was a 'she' who was quoting out of context that she had been in bed with her catamite, your confusion is understandable. I read Earthly Powers so long ago I no longer remember it clearly, but the impression I carry with me is of a very clever and entertaining writer waving a rake and yelling "You pesky kids get off my lawn" for about 800 pages.
Posted by: chris y | July 01, 2011 at 08:27 AM
Also, if you're going to write about giving Ari Fleischer blowjobs, you should put it below the fold with a trigger warning.
Posted by: chris y | July 01, 2011 at 08:29 AM
The Earthly Powers link is recursive. I found it clever and entertaining without the qualification.
Posted by: skidmarx | July 01, 2011 at 10:08 AM
Arse, I meant to link to Wikipedia.
Posted by: hellblazer | July 01, 2011 at 11:15 AM