TIME's internatonal editor was a fellow at the Hoover Institution?

[DeepModem Mom]

LAT: Joel Stein
I was a Reaganite think-tanker
The cushy life and Gipper worship at Stanford's conservative Hoover Institution.
February 13, 2007

....when my college friend, Romesh Ratnesar, the international editor of Time magazine, told me he scored a media fellowship at the Hoover Institution, the conservative think tank at Stanford, I asked him for the name of the person in charge. I sent her an e-mail asking if I could think the same week that Romesh was thinking. She responded a few hours later, saying I was in. I was not only think tank material, I was same-day think tank material.

Hoover put us up in huge, fireplace-laden rooms at Stanford's spacious faculty club, gave us offices in Hoover Tower, paid us $7,000 and didn't ask for anything in return other than one speech. Finally, the soft bigotry of the Republicans' low expectations for the media was paying off for me.

Hoover fellows, I learned at the party, are kind of like professors who don't teach; they do research and write books and give speeches. And they are almost all extremely old, extremely white men....When they asked Romesh what he was working on, he talked about the trips he's taken to Iraq and Iran for Time cover stories. When they asked me, I said, "Lots of stuff." When pressed, I said, "Really, lots of different stuff." Eventually, a China specialist and a former Reagan political advisor both asked me what the last article I wrote was. When I told them, the China specialist very kindly responded, "Eating horse meat? Well, I guess there are two constituencies for everything."

I was pretty surprised to find that even these people hate George W. Bush. The main reason for this is that he is not Ronald Reagan. Hoover fellows love Reagan in ways even Nancy couldn't have....

***

When it came time to give my speech after a week of tennis, dinners in San Francisco and hanging out in the coffee house, I knew the topic they had advertised to alumni, "Columnists and the Web," wouldn't work, partly because it didn't make any sense at all. Instead, I figured I'd make Reagan jokes. This was not a good idea.

When that went poorly, I stammered, and briefly considered stealing from Romesh's well-received speech, "Iraq, Foreign Policy and the 2008 Elections."...

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-stein13feb13,0,2012375.column?track=mostviewed-splashpage

[Buzz Clik]

1. My initial reaction to the thread title was, "So?" Glad I read the article.

Yikes.

This is the defining comment that made the lightbulb click on:

Finally, the soft bigotry of the Republicans' low expectations for the media was paying off for me.

Whoa.

Excellent post.