In June, Anna Wintour was (briefly) rumored to be under consideration by the Obama administration as its next ambassador to Britain. You may recall that in 2009 there was similar speculation—led by Page Six magazine, whose White House sourcing is, of course, legendary—that Wintour would be appointed ambassador to France. So where there’s smoke . . . there’s really not much going on. Still, it got us thinking about other potential pairings of media-world luminaries and public-service gigs.
After running through an increasingly silly list of possibilities—Rupert Murdoch as ambassador to Britain; Paula Deen as Surgeon General; Nick Denton as Postmaster General; Jonah Lehrer as chief speechwriter for Senator James Inhofe; Meredith Vieira as Chief Technology Officer—we struck diplomatic gold: Keith Olbermann as ambassador to Easter Island!
Clearly, the locals have been expecting him.
The Editors are the staffers of the Columbia Journalism Review.