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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Are there any authors-for-McCain out there?



Book-blogger of the Los Angeles Times, Carolyn Kellogg,
went hunting for literati who support John McCain, following lots of publicity on her own site http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2008/, as well as by the illustrious GalleyCat on http://www.mediabistro.com/, for various fundraisers organized by writers for the Barack Obama campaign.

I have already mentioned Young Adult Writers for Obama. There is also Ayelet Waldman, who petitioned authors to send in copies of their own books, which she bundled up in sets of ten and sent out in return for $250 donations to the Obama campaign. The response was overwhelming, including signed first editions from such luminaries as Stephen King. And then there is Steve Almond, who is hosting an Obama-thon in Boston on October 14, which includes appearances by Anita Diamant, Claire Messud, and Robert Pinsky, among others. Four days after that, Almond joins Michael Lowenthal and William Giraldi for a similar effort in New Hampshire.

Well, Kellogg reports that she found exactly three novelists who support McCain: Brenda Joyce, Linda Bruckheimer, and Nelson DeMille (pictured above). DeMille a Republican faithful--at the same time as penning thrillers about right-wing nutters, such as Wildfire? Incredible, I thought. So I checked.

To my astonishment, I found that there is a site which posts political donation histories onto the internet, and DeMille is on it. http://www.politicalbase.com/people/nelson-demille/28807/ And did he send money to the McCain campaign? Back in 1999, he did. Since then, he seems to have been a pretty regular supporter of Rudy Giuliani, though he gave money to the John Kerry fund, too. A reasonably evenhanded kind of bloke, all-in-all -- or so I would have commented on GalleyCat, if I could have remembered my password. But I didn't.




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