Sullivan Award Nominee II

Galley Friend D.B. sends along a link to author/blogger Thomas P.M. Barnett. High marks for self-regard intertwined subtly with self-promotion:

"The prophet is never welcome in his birthplace, and you can never go home again.

"Then again, Washington, which we abandoned almost 7 years ago (itch, itch), seems to like me more and more the longer I stay away.

"This morning I got a call from David Ignatius. After what he saw in Central Command during his trip last week, he's convinced PNM is the little book that roared. He was amazed to find out that neither the Post or Times had reviewed it!

"So he's devoting his entire op-ed column tomorrow in the Post to correcting that oversight.

"Then later in the day I hear from C-SPAN: the decision has been made to broadcast the brief taped at the Highlands Forum on Monday night, 20 December, at 8pm EST, with my live, call-in segment to follow from 9:30 to 10:30pm. Then the whole thing gets run again once or twice, with probably one of them coming immediately after the first showing in order to catch the West Coast crowd (the 11pm to 2am EST slot).

"Am I holding my breath? No. But I will be working out plenty between now and then to tighten my gut as much as possible.

"Got the first serious edit of the Wired piece I wrote for the February issue on the question of how to fight this Global War on Terrorism using the out-of-date rule set called the Geneva Convention of 1949. They rewrote the first paragraph quite a bit, as editors often do, but it was just a juicier restatement of my original opening (I suck at openings, I will admit, and as Mark Warren constantly reminds me {he rewrote the opening of the upcoming Feb article in Esquire too}). The rest of the piece reads fundamentally the same. All in all, I would have to say that my first writing assignment with Wired was really quite easy, meaning I'd love to do it again.

"Of course, having pieces in the Feb issues of both Esquire and Wired should lower my standing at the college to new depths.

"Really, what was I thinking writing for such magazines with wide circulation?"--Thomas P.M. Barnett