I Am Glad

somebody out there in the media called Michelle Marshall out on lying about her age, although any article about her should be taken with a huge grain of salt:

Michelle D. Marshall (still her legal name, according to Nevada voting records) was born in September 1954, in Columbia, Missouri. The Marshalls were conservative, churchgoing folks. Though she says she held onto a little bit of that outlook (she worked for her brother's unsuccessful congressional campaign in 1980, and even voted for Reagan that year because she preferred his stance on national security), she ultimately wanted something different for herself. "I wasn't willing to settle for the life most of the women I saw and knew were living," she wrote in a 2000 book called My Year in Smut: The Internet Escapades Inside Danni's Hard Drive (more on that title later). "I was willing to break every rule to create the life I wanted for myself."

I wouldn't call her the Hugh Hefner of politics but the Clifford Irving of the blogosphere. By the way, if you are doing a program from your home, there are no advertisers, nobody is paying you to do it, and it isn't heard over the airwaves, it is NOT a "radio show." Her show is a podcast, an updated version of "ham radio."

Marshall has delusions of grandeur, and as old as she is, it's probably too late for her to break into the business. Those who broke into the big time of talk radio spent years and years in preparation for it, often working as d.j.s, reporters, or even working behind the scenes before making it big on the air. Rush Limbaugh spent years in the business before becoming a faux right-winger. Bill O'Reilly was a legitimate journalist before going into tabloid journalism with Inside Edition and then hitting it big on Fox News and on radio. Marshall clearly doesn't want to do the work involved in actually making her dreams come true. She should have worked at a radio station years ago and worked her way up, even if it meant starting out as a receptionist. She wants to take what she thinks is the easy route to fame. Even if Marshall is not too old, she doesn't have the intellectual depth or the credibility to pull it off. Not only that, but her "popularity" has pretty much gone since she switched sides. What great timing, though, to get some publicity through mainstream publications like TNR and the Washington Post just as her "popularity" in the blogosphere was taking a nosedive. Besides, as the piece notes, she isn't making much of a profit from her "business"; she depends entirely on her husband, a gas company technician (I know it's appropriate for her to be married to one given the hot air she spews), to pay the bills. So she's got to do something to get herself noticed. To hell with earning money at a regular job not connected to sex work or entertainment; she's got to be NOTICED.