Re: Freidman

On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 4:16 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

I already took them out; going to tweak that anecdote a bit anyway, make it funnier. Adding a bunch of stuff now about how it should have been obvious that Putin was a criminal well before Friedman indicated otherwise in 1999.

Rachel (editor) forwarded me an e-mail from some distributor/buyer for the book chains; there's a lot of interest in the book, and they want to see sample chapters, so trying to finish up this one on Friedman and tweak Bennett and Peretz chapters and then figure out what the best thing to send them would be. Let me know if you have any ideas.

On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 9:14 AM, Karen Lancaster <lancaster.karen@gmail.com> wrote:

Looks fabulous! Just one suggestion -- this little anecdote could very well offend the people who are still signing your dad's bi-monthly paycheck, and are indeed starting new internet-based ministries as we speak. Here is one: http://www.barachel.com/ (Biting the hand that feeds you, etc. etc.)

So I rewrote a little for you -- what do you think?

    I once lost my gig as a copywriter and found myself compelled to work six-day weeks as a furniture mover for a Pentecostal church. When companies relocated, they would donate their discarded desks and chairs and whatnot to this church, the employees of which would pick it all up and store it in a warehouse until such time as individual pieces could be refurbished and sold off. The church leaders considered the whole thing to be a charitable enterprise insomuch as that they "gave jobs to people who need them." Other, less spirit-filled employers presumably provide jobs only to millionaires and débutantes. Probably delete these last two sentences that would insult Dennis and his wife?

    Each morning I would find myself sitting in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler with my co-workers. On one occasion, we were joined by this doughy, bearded, bespectacled, middle-aged white fellow who was technically employed by the church in an administrative capacity (maybe this doughy guy still works there, wouldn't want to insult him, too by IDing?) but who was on this day recruited to assist us in our grunt work, someone else having failed to show up that morning. The fellow's longterm plan was to start his own internet-based ministry. This, incidentally, is the longterm plan of about a sixth of all middle-aged Pentecostals. (Again, maybe delete this last sentence as it insults your dad's bosses current endeavors.)

    A song came on the radio and this doughy fellow asked me who it was. I informed him that this was Led Zeppelin, and a secret smile flitted across the fellow's bearded, doughy face.

"Rock stars," he said, shaking his head but still smiling. "I call them Prophets of Baal, because they preach another way."

    The doughy fellow was developing his own terminology in preparation for the ministry that he would someday found.