Mark Halperin Cashes In On The Business Of Outrage Editor’s Blog – Talking Points Memo / by Josh Kovensky

Mark Halperin Cashes In On The Business Of Outrage

Editor’s Blog – Talking Points Memo / by Josh Kovensky / 4h

Mark Halperin is staging his rehabilitation through the inimitable Judith Regan.

The two are made for each other, feeding on the outrage generated by the release.

I wrote yesterday about how Regan has thrived on outrage throughout her career, publishing Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern before reaching her pinnacle with OJ Simpson’s “If I Did It” — a hypothetical account of how he would have murdered his wife and her friend.

As I was trawling through the various profiles of Regan that have been written over the years, it struck me how well-matched she is for Halperin’s attempt at a comeback.

Take a column that the infamous Michael Wolff wrote about Regan, a college classmate of his, in 1999.

Regan was hawking a book called “Monica’s Untold Story,” which purported to offer an inside account of Monica Lewinsky’s affair with Bill Clinton.

The problem with the book was that its author was literally “anonymous.” Wolff shared a bit of New York City media gossip in the column, which is that Regan had failed at landing Lewinsky as a client for a tell-all.

Instead, she came out with the anonymously written volume, which Wolff snidely suggested Regan wrote herself.

The episode illustrates the unique mixture of outrage and politics that drove Regan’s publishing career.

In that regard, Halperin is a perfect fit. He’s a politics writer (albeit famously bland) who is grasping at a recovery from a scandal where he was credibly accused of sexual assault, and of using his position as a journalist to threaten retaliation against women who rebuffed him.

Lo and behold, his book has already led to a backlash.

Press Forward, an organization that pushes for accountability around sexual assault in newsrooms and was founded by victims of Mark Halperin, told TPM in a statement that it hoped “those involved [would] reconsider their support in enabling people who have shown no accountability or atonement for their actions.”

“Should Mark Halperin, along with others whose detrimental behavior was credibly exposed through the hard work of journalists, be allowed back in the arena without demonstrating the standards we expect of our kids?” the statement reads. “There can be no talk of redemption without even a semblance of atonement.”

This was predictable, and for Regan, it strikes me as yet another opportunity for notoriety — the story of Halperin’s comeback is prurient, as we can see by the fact that it dominated political media for the 24 hours after the book’s release was announced in Politico Playbook (not a bad place to leak incoming news).

Or, as the published, Regan Arts put it, everyone is talking about it.

This is the book everyone is talking about! https://t.co/Iusm8uyeX8pic.twitter.com/cBFK0UFCo3

— Regan Arts (@ReganArts) August 19, 2019

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