RIP to a magazine—and the notion that people could be persuaded by ideas

Not long after the 1994 mid-term election, the one that brought Republicans control of the House for the first time in 40 years and capped the meteoric rise of Newt Gingrich to the House speakership, the conservative media world was home to two big secrets. As editor of the editorial page of the Washington Times at the time, I was in the sweet spot of the Venn diagram, the only person in town, I believe, who knew both of them.

The first secret was that the firebrand conservative journalist David Brock had secured an amazing $1 million advance for a biography of Hillary Clinton. With David fresh off his New York Times bestseller The Real Anita Hill, the expectation at Free Press was that he would deliver revelations about the already controversial first lady on a scale even bigger than those about the woman who nearly derailed the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Continue reading →