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Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan

the breakfast table
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from: Katha Pollitt

My Lack of Fame

Posted Thursday, April 30, 1998, at 6:31 PM ET

Dear Andrew,
I was not invited to the White House Correspondents' dinner. I wasn't even invited to the recent poetry evening. So I am even more obscure than you are. As I suspect you already knew.

I had a tryout to be an MSNBC minipundit--one of the "friends" as they call that group of mostly very irritating people. It was the day the Tupac Amaru guerillas took over the Peruvian embassy, so everyone was even more clueless than usual, since we hadn't had the benefit of having the issues sliced and diced for us by the morning papers. Jennifer Grossman, one of the more right-wing "friends," suggested "we" invade and called me a socialist when I declined the invitation. For this she was scolded during the commercials by the producer, who believed that "socialist" was an insult that should not be applied to a nice person like me. That's okay, I said, I am a socialist! They never called me back--maybe it was my hair.

I was so grateful! I don't know if I could have passed up the money or the notoriety. But what a nightmare! Sitting out there in Fort Lee New Jersey all day delivering soundbites into the vast vacuum of America. I don't like going on TV. Radio is the fun medium. It's like talking on the phone.

Cheers, Katha

the breakfast table
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from: Katha Pollitt

My Lack of Fame

Posted Thursday, April 30, 1998, at 6:31 PM ET
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Katha Pollitt is a columnist at The Nation. Andrew Sullivan is a senior editor at the New Republic.
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