THE MAN WHO INVENTED CELEBRITY POLITICS.

• Date: 01 November 2019
• Author: Meacham, Jon

My time at the Washington Monthly was coming to an end when Neal Gabler's wonderful biography of Walter Winchell, Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity, was published in the fall of 1994. A widely read and watched columnist and broadcaster, Winchell was an architect of the twentieth-century media ethos in which fame, rather than birth or achievement, became America's dominant signifier. Drawing from show business and politics and sports, Winchell created a national cast of characters who trouped across his virtual stage. Before People magazine, before Larry King Live, before TMZ, there was Walter Winchell.

Then, as now, Monthly book reviews were often a vehicle for wide political and cultural commentary, but I, at age...