The Hopefuls(32)

Regional Communications Director Bobby London is leaving his post at the White House and heading to PepsiCo, where he’ll be Director of External Relations. Sources say he beat out co-worker and nemesis Maggie McDonnel, White House Director of Press Advance, for the job, mostly because of his family connections, and not because of any real qualifications. Co-workers say they won’t miss his standing desk, which he constructed out of cases of Diet Coke (take note, Pepsi!), or his half-pack-a-day habit, which supposedly left a Pigpen-like cloud of smoke around him. “He judged the rest of us for sitting all day,” one officemate said, “but all he did was smoke cigarettes and eat bacon, so really, good luck to him.”



When I told people I worked at DCLOVE, especially people at the White House, they often gave me a condescending smile, and would say something like “Oh, I’ve heard of it,” while implying that they would never actually read it. Sometimes I wondered if Matt was embarrassed that his wife worked at a website that put out a monthly list of the “most datable” White House staffers. High-class journalism we were not.

But the thing is, they all read it. And I mean all of them. (Okay, not the President and probably not the other top people at the White House, but everyone else.) When Alan asked what I was up to at the Snowmageddon party, I knew he was just playing dumb, pretending he didn’t know exactly where I worked so that I would think he was above reading such trash. But Jimmy told me that after Alan’s golf incident with the President, he scoured the site every day, worried we were going to write something about it.

I was happy that Jimmy never pretended that he wasn’t interested in DCLOVE—I’m not sure I would’ve liked him as much if he did. He always talked to me about the things we posted, let me know when everyone in the office was talking about a certain article, and even asked me if we were going to announce his new job in “Movin’ On Up and Movin’ On Out.” He said it in a joking way, but I knew he really wanted it in there. I told him I’d make sure they knew about his new position, and he covered his eyes and said, “Just be kind.”

Maybe I should’ve minded that I worked at a place that wasn’t respected, but to be honest, I didn’t really care. The website was interesting enough and it paid me more than I’d been making at Vanity Fair. Also, I was still a little shaken after getting laid off—I’d worked so hard at the magazine for so many years and then it was just gone. None of that mattered at the end. If jobs could be taken away so easily, maybe it wasn’t worth investing so much of yourself into them; maybe working at a semi-trashy website was just fine.

—

The following week, we posted Jimmy’s job announcement on the site:


Jimmy Dillon, former Director of the White House Travel Office, takes his colorful socks and moves just two doors down the hall today, to start his new post as Deputy Director of the White House Office of Political Strategy, where he’ll be the one arranging for important political folks to see the President wherever he visits. He’ll also be traveling with POTUS on domestic trips, where he will most likely continue to drink mass amounts of whiskey on Air Force One and occasionally play cards with the Boss. Officemates say they won’t miss him because they’ll still be able to hear his Texas twang from 400 feet away. Our source says this is the perfect job for Dillon, who loves hobnobbing with illustrious politicians or, as we call it, being a DC fame whore.



I was happy that someone else was assigned to write the post, not because I felt like it was a conflict of interest (I didn’t think the site actually had enough journalistic integrity for that) but because I didn’t think I could bring myself to write nasty things about Jimmy, even if they were supposed to be funny.

The day the announcement ran, Ellie stopped by my desk. “Beth, you’re friends with Jimmy Dillon, right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Why? Do you know him?”

“Everyone knows him, don’t they?” she asked and then laughed like she’d made a joke. I just gave her a little smile and didn’t say anything. “I mean, he gets around,” she continued. “A friend of mine worked on the Kerry campaign with him and she said it was hard to find someone on that campaign that he didn’t sleep with.”

“I doubt that,” I said. “He’s married, you know,” I said. “And they’ve been together for a long time, definitely during the Kerry campaign.”

Ellie tilted her head at me and said, “You’ve never worked on a campaign, have you?”

I shook my head. “That’s what I thought,” she said. She sounded triumphant, like she’d just won a debate.

“Anyway,” she said, “I was thinking we could interview him for ‘Working for the Weekend.’?” “Working for the Weekend” was our section that interviewed one person in the administration each week and highlighted their job, explained what they did each day. It was pretty interesting, actually, and if it hadn’t been for the ridiculous name, I would’ve wanted to write more for it.

“We already did,” I said. “We interviewed him when he was in the travel office. I mean, I’m happy to do it again as long as you don’t mind having it be sort of a repeat.”

“Hmmm,” she said. She tilted her head, this time in the other direction. I could tell she was annoyed that she hadn’t remembered we’d already profiled him. “I think it’s okay. Same person, different job, right?”