Most plate appearances without a home run

By the time she was in college, at Trinity-Washington University in D.C., Conway was interning for the late New York congressman and free-enterprise evangelist Jack Kemp, also a mentor to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Michael Caputo, who advised Trump’s campaign for a time, told me he met the young woman then known as Kellyanne Fitzpatrick in Kemp’s congressional office. She was, he said, “moving the molecules” of the Republican Party, even in that minor job. “Some people minded making the copies and getting the coffee,” she told me. “I always felt like, when I delivered the coffee, I had a question to ask to the person who was receiving it. Or a statement to make about something I’d read in the Washington Post that day. And when I would fax something — I mean, that’s what we’d do back then — when we’d fax something or copy something in 1987, I would read it and I would learn.” She momentarily … [Read more...] about Kellyanne Conway Is the Real First Lady of Trump’s America

In this regard, Melissa Leo belongs in her own category: a darling of the bloggers ever since 2008’s Frozen River. When she first started hearing from them, “those guys were just figuring out how to use the internet” and she was just learning how to use the media. “I thought they knew what they were doing and I was just a fish out of water.” She traveled to Brandeis for a Q&A with Feinberg and sent out thank-you postcards. Her friend Thelma Adams, now a Yahoo blogger, urged Sony to buy Frozen River at Sundance. Leo understands, as the consultants do, that even negative coverage is no big deal. “I’ve always suspected Tom [O’Neil] wrote something not very nice”—about her “diva fits”—“just so people would say, ‘No, she’s really nice!’ ” … [Read more...] about In the Most Competitive Oscar Season Ever, Bloggers Are Keeping Score