Jamie asks: I suppose this is as good a time as any to ask exactly how the man himself, Joseph Farah, “discovered” you for your very popular column on Mondays
Well, I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, when he met me. But even then I knew I’d find a much better place, either with or without him. These five years, they have been such good times. I still love him…..
Anyhow, it was more the other way around. I contacted Joseph five years ago and expressed an interest in writing a column, having written a video game review column for four years – hence Madden, obviously – and asked him if he’d be down with that. He was open to the notion, as there weren’t a lot of young, conservative writers with a publishing history, but at that time he felt two columns a week would be necessary in order for me to establish myself, and I just wasn’t prepared to do that on top of running a game company and writing game reviews.
Two years later, having dropped the game reviews and honed my writing a bit more, I called and suggested doing a technology column for WND. Joseph was up for it as an experiment, but it really wasn’t very popular and I was getting close to ending the experiment when September 11 happened. Like everyone else, I could hardly ignore it, so I wrote a column that addressed the attacks as well as my fears about the inevitable response to it, which have largely been proven correct. That column was very well-received, and Joseph and Tom agreed that I should switch to writing conventional op/ed commentary, which I’ve done ever since. I started out with the column running on Saturdays, but as the readership increased, they eventually moved it to Monday.
As far as the popularity contest goes, I tend to run third among the weekly and bi-weekly columnists. I was up to second for a while – Ann is far and away tops – but with the swing into election season, Pat Buchanan passed me up again. Which makes sense, because as a political pro and former candidate, he knows at least 10Kx what I do about the nuts and bolts of electioneering. You’ll notice, I expect, that I never indulge in electoral predictions – I simply don’t know enough. It’s all good, though, as the majority of us are on basically the same team, and I’m most grateful for the opportunity that WND has given me.