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.

Miscellanous News.

A 7.2 earthquake in Japan has left at least six dead.
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Thanks to some questionable recent high court decisions, the NRA is running out of ammunition.
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More than 30 dogs have been seized in a possible dogfighting operation.
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The WSWS has part two of its commentary about the recent media reform conference in Minneapolis, and naturally it is critical of anything it sees as support for the Democratic Party.
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It seems the only way hack blogger Michelle Marshall ("Taylor Marsh") can draw attention to herself is to draw attention to Larry Sinclair.

The hits have been way down on her site, judging from how relatively few comments she attracts as opposed to a month or two ago.
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Years after Di's death, her butler claims he had sex with her, a claim that isn't very believable.

Miscellaneous News [Updated].

Michelle Marshall, aka Taylor Marsh, is profiled in a Washington Post article.

She's pandering a bit too much to Obama supporters now in trying to broaden her audience, so I find her much less interesting to read or listen to. Not only that, but sometimes her opinions are downright dumb or silly.

It appears they have her age wrong:

She's 47, and said she still has the practicality of a childhood in Missouri and the thirst for fame from years in New York and Los Angeles. She moved to Las Vegas a little more than five years ago hoping she would succeed on the radio in a smaller market, but it didn't pan out.

I had read she was Miss Missouri in 1974 and had just turned 20 around the time of the Miss America pageant. No way was she 13 or 14 when she entered the beauty pageants. Miss America's rules state contestants must be between the ages of 17 and 24.

Wikipedia has an article about the Miss Missouri contest winners. Marshall is listed as winning the contest in 1974. You can find her name here as well. This site has her down as a "delegate" to the Miss America pageant for 1975. Marshall is either 53 (or possibly 52) or 54 now, not 47. She hasn't seen 47 for quite some time, regardless.

By the way, a Google search wasn't even necessary. Her "about" section in her blog reveals the truth for all the world to see.

Next to a picture of her as Miss Missouri of 1974 she writes:

Okay, this one is pretty obvious. Miss America Pageant, circa September 1974, one of the last years Bert Parks did the pageant. This is the parade down the Atlantic City boardwalk. One very vivid memory I have was walking outside the Chalfonte-Hadden Hotel, now long gone, and seeing N.O.W. outside, picketing us beauty pageant babes. One gal came up to me, in front of a throng of press (who called me "Mizzou"), and asked me how I could humiliate myself by parading on stage in a bathing suit. A 19-year old chickadee, with more attitude than pageant law allowed, I simply said, "You want to pay for my college tuition?" Then off I went in my limo.

And underneath some more pageant pictures from the "talent section" of the Miss Missouri and Miss America contests:

These pictures are from rehearsals at the Miss Missouri Pageant, as well as me performing on talent night at the Miss America Pageant, the day I turned 20. I did a song and dance to "If They Could See Me Now," from "Sweet Charity." By the way, I was one of a handful of girls that showed up with short hair at the pageant. Back then, big hair was king. I bucked that trend and many others.

She was born in either 1954 or 1955, not six or seven years later.

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