All the Presidents' Pets Read Free

for another direction on specs. I’d never actually met Ashleigh, but Seamus had once made out with her at a Radiohead concert, so he did the talking.
    Ashleigh was now reporting for ANN, the Arctic News Network. For the past two months she’d been busy reporting on preparations for Alaska’s Iditarod sled dog race. After that she was scheduled to spend another two months covering potential Iditarod fallout, before gearing up to report on next year’s Iditarod. Somehow she found time to take Seamus’s call.
    She referred us to Selima Optique, a pricey eyeglasses shop in SoHo. Within days I was sporting a pair of chunky electric green ultra-Teutonic frames, trendier than anything architect Daniel Libeskind could dream up.
    I was undeniably stylin’, and yet I just didn’t feel like me. But Seamus was absolutely confident. My first guest was Republican rocker Ted Nugent. He and I were to debate gun control as we played with G.I. Joes. “Right out of the gates we’re going way post-ironic,” said Seamus during our prep.
    It went surprisingly well. During the segment Nugent got so carried away making his own artillery sounds that viewers must have at the very least been mystified. I asked Seamus if I’d handled it okay. “Fo’ shizzle, my nizzle!” he exclaimed in his best wigger voice. He wrapped his arm around my neck and gave me a noogie. When NBC News president Neal Shapiro called to say he was “amused”—in retrospect, I think he said “bemused”—a cheer went up in the studio. (In fairness to Neal, we spent little time talking about gun control. Seamus felt that that would have been too obvious.)
    After the show Seamus brought the whole staff out for a round of Schlitz. (Pabst Blue Ribbon, or PBR, was “yesterday’s hip shitty beer,” he said.) He even convinced Eric to wear his trucker cap that night, though by that time trucker hats were over—again—so Seamus was really just setting Eric up.
    It was all pretty heady. For the first time in sixteen years I shotgunned a beer. I also smoked my very first American Spirit cigarette. Seamus dubbed me “Mo King”—not terribly clever, but we were all so happy we laughed anyway. MSNBC might have a new hit on its slate. That night Seamus sucked face with one of our newsreaders in the bar, even though he said he was dating actress Gina Gershon.
    Eric immediately capitalized on this success and got me booked as one of the sassy talking heads on VH1’s newest list show,
VH1’s 35 Funniest Brunettes.
Was Courteney Cox (#5) really funnier than Joan Cusack (#9)? I didn’t think so but I did my snarky best.
    This would be the first of many “Mo Rocca branding” ventures, Eric promised. MSNBC’s
Mo Rocca the Vote
would inevitably spin off in time for the next presidential election. “You’ll make Anderson Cooper wish he’d never left
The Mole,
” gloated Eric.
    It was undeniably exciting. I began Googling myself, first once a day, then once every hour or so. Oh my God, I was stalked twice on Gawker in one week! Then Seamus asked one of the MSNBC interns he’d slept with to set up a Yahoo! fan club for me. After two weeks there were still only twelve members, all teenage girls. I hung on every word they typed. Roccandroll43 was the most prolific: “Mo is so pale, skinny, and uncomfortable with himself. It’s adorable!”
    But any momentum I might enjoy as a “personality” still depended largely on the success of the show. And alas, the Nugent experience turned out to be a lone bright spot for
Rocca Your World.
Before the month was finished, the political establishment quickly cooled to what Seamus had coined our “anti-newscast.”
    â€œWhy am I asking James Baker to play Twister with me?” I asked Seamus before one taping.
    â€œBecause you’re tweaking the whole former-secretary-of-state