If excerpts from Lisa Baron's upcoming book are anything to go on, it's sure to be a scandalous read.
My Burning Bush, Baron's memoir of her days as the spokeswoman for Ralph Reed -- the former Christian Coalition leader and the man Time called "The Right Hand of God" -- is being shopped around the New York publishing houses. And it promises to embarrass more than one figure in America's conservative movement.
In one excerpt, Baron addresses the claims that Reed was behind a smear campaign against Sen. John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries that implied the Arizona senator had had a love-child with a black woman.
"How would I know?" Baron writes, according to the New York Daily News. ""I was too busy giving [George W. Bush's future press secretary] Ari Fleischer [oral sex] in a Greenville hotel room."
Whether or not she was joking in that statement, Baron's attitude towards Fleischer appears to be making the former Bush White House spokesman less than happy.
“He declined to be my Facebook friend about a year ago,” Baron told Politico.
But then, there are already plenty of things making Baron's associates in the American conservative movement less than happy. Several years ago, her columns about sex for Atlanta's Sunday Paper became the stuff of scandal.
“I was leading a double life — by day, a Christian crusader; by night, slinging the sexy details of my private life,” Politico quotes Baron. She describes herself as "a drinking, swearing, fornicating, socially moderate, fiscally conservative Jew" -- an unlikely candidate for employment at the Christian Coalition, to say the least.
Reed was named in the criminal case surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was convicted of corruption charges after it emerged he had fabricated threats to the continued existence of Native Indian casinos, in order to charge them for lobbying on their behalf. Reed was alleged to have taken money from Abramoff to lobby against native casinos, and was said to have celebrated when the casinos handed over millions of dollars to Abramoff.
Baron has revealed very little about what her book has to say about the Abramoff scandal, if anything. For his part, Reed seems to be taking news of his former employee's tell-all book in stride.
"I'm all for supporting aspiring authors," he told the Daily News. "Lisa did a great job for me. I wish her the best."
No comments:
Post a Comment