TM Note: As the New Year opens, as I said weeks ago, my long and very busy days are directed towards a project, which I’ll talk about down the line some time. I’m juggling a lot that’s for sure, but it’s a great adventure, which is the whole point to life, really. Following your bliss isn’t easy and is filled with struggles and challenges along the way to manifesting your intentions, but it sure as hell beats the alternative. Stay tuned…
On the day I watch her tape her radio show, as is normally the case, Marsh’s on-air persona is very calm and reasonable. She speaks without notes, able to move skillfully from a detailed analysis of campaign polling to the war in Iraq to the day’s Maureen Dowd column on Obama — and her delivery is smooth: She pauses dramatically for effect, and she doesn’t scream. In these quieter moments, she is often at her most effective, offering clear-eyed analysis that is as smart as anything on CNN. [...] – The New Republic
Taylor Marsh is a writer, author and political analyst focusing on national politics and foreign policy, including women’s international issues, even reporting from the White House and news events impacting the national scene, and has been writing on the web since 1996. She’s been profiled in the Washington Post (pdf version), The New Republic (pdf version), with her writing featured on Alternet, Yahoo! and across the web, including reporting for Pajamas Media during the Democratic primary season; and she is a regular contributor on Huffington Post. She’s been interviewed on CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal (video of Oct., 09 appearance), Al Jazeera Arabic (talking about Sen. Ted Kennedy’s little known foreign policy reach), Al Jazeera English (talking about national politics), and many other outlets, including radio. Taylor is based out of Washington D.C. You can also follow her on Twitter (and Facebook), with her “TM-DC” podcasts available through ITunes.
“One of the great foreign policy blogs.” – Steve Clemons of The Washington Note.
Marsh’s conversation with Richard Holbrooke on Afghanistan proves it.
Photo by Robert Evans
With the move to D.C., Marsh shifted focus beyond national politics, using the opportunity to dig deeper into foreign policy; covering Secretary Hillary Clinton, Middle East forums and conversations, as well as Middle East equilibrium, Israel and Iran, and taking every chance offered to advocate for women in other parts of the world, including Afghanistan, making her a lonely feminist hawk on the subject. Marsh broke the Iranian badge hoax story back in 2006.
In September 2002 Marsh launched her radio show in Las Vegas, intending to immediately take it to a larger market, but couldn’t find a permanent home. However, less than a day after she relocated to do radio, a Southwest Gas man arrived to turn on her gas and ended up changing her life. Marriage can do that.
In 2005, Marsh, a former Broadway performer, wrote, produced and directed “Weeping for J.F.K.,” a one woman political tour de force staged in Los Angeles that traced the intersection of politics, John F. Kennedy and her life, from the 1960s to the present. A dream built on over two decades of performance experience, starting from when she was a kid and coming true when Jerry Herman cast her after her very first audition for the Great White Way.
Taylor was also “relationship consultant” and columnist for alt newsweekly LA Weekly, making her an expert on relationships, dating and marriage, who, at the time of this work, likely interviewed as many people as anyone with “Dr.” behind their name. Taylor’s curiosities evolved into investigative work of the sex trade business, prostitution and phone sex that included interviews with real desperate housewives, single, married and divorced women, religious of all stripes, and lots of men. She was one of the few writers on the web writing about Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones and the hunting of Pres. Bill Clinton back in the late 1990s, where Taylor’s experience as managing editor had her handling the business side of the first site on the web to make real money, which was a soft-core site run by women that made news from the front page of the Wall Street Journal, featured in USA Today, US News & World Report and beyond. Marsh’s editorial page, politics from the point of view of a woman, was the first of its kind at the time, offering political content like Hugh Hefner did in Playboy (covered in The New Republic profile), as she took on Ken Starr. She chronicled her wild ride and expertise in a book that was excerpted in Net.SeXXX: Investigating Sex, Pornography, and the Internet, by Dennis Waskul, a Utah professor who called Taylor’s book on the subject, “a great gutsy story about something that is normally written about from a distance.” It’s a favorite point of attack of Taylor’s detractors, who turned into haters during the 2008 primary season when Taylor’s site became a major hub for Hillary supporters.
Taylor did the pageant scene to pay for college, starting in her teens with Miss Teenage America, then eventually the Miss America Pageant. NOW picketed the year she was in the pageant, confronting Marsh one day in front of reporters as she came out of her hotel. One angry NOW supporter got in her face and asked: “How can you demean yourself like this?” Marsh simply replied: “You want to pay for my college tuition?” She has a B.F.A. from Stephens College. Her political passions began through watching her big brother’s political career, which included Missouri state senator, running for Congress, as well as working for John Ashcroft as assistant attorney general; with her brother also being called on by Sen. Orin Hatch during Ashcroft’s confirmation.
Marsh’s political passions began organically by being a woman growing up amidst the modern feminist revolution. The times have shaped Taylor’s politics, her life, her writings and foreign policy views, and life’s work, no matter what she’s doing. Marsh is bringing it all together in a new project dealing with the “politics of sex” she is currently researching.
