James Fallows... schlub?

One of my favorite Waspy journos, James Fallows, sympathizes on his blog about McCain's big new gaffe (This one in an article that he "wrote" about health care in which he favored deregulation "as we have done over the last decade in banking" ... ouch. ):

But my immediate reaction to the flap was to sympathize with whatever poor schlub had actually cranked out the article in question, which appeared in Contingencies, the closely-followed journal of the American Academy of Actuaries.

...I sympathized because on my very first day as a cub speechwriter in the Jimmy Carter campaign office, 26 years old and ready to inspire the nation, I was told that I had two hours to turn out an article "by" Carter for an important interest group. The ACLU, about Carter's views on civil liberties? His fellow Naval Academy alums, about the future of the military? The Urban League or NAACP? No, no, and no. This was for some pro-gun journal, which had asked presidential candidates to describe their hunting memories, to be published under the headline "My First Kill."