A commenter on my blog about Jennifer Rubin tells me that he knew her in Hollywood, where she was known to be conventionally liberal as late as 2004:
I knew Jennifer fairly well for a number of years. She worked at DreamWorks and DreamWorks Animation. She worked with Jeffrey Katzenberg on issues and I had lunch with her lots of times. (I’m the labor rep for the Animation Guild, Local 839 IATSE and she was on the company side. You tend to get to know your opposite number.)
We talked about the 2004 campaign endlessly. She was always funny, with sharp observations. I never got the impression she was anything but a Democrat (as am I.) Maybe she was taking on that coloration because Jeffrey K. is a Big Time Dem, or she genuinely felt that way, or she had a religious conversion. She was mildly critical of some of Kerry’s campaign moves during the ’04 campaign, but she wasn’t in the Bush camp.
It’s somewhat startling to me that she is now hard right, but stranger things have happened. Whether she sees this as where the money and fame is, or what she honestly believes, or something in-between, I know not.
A rather startling revelation to be sure. Though it makes a bit of sense with my discovery that she has a rather sparse Wikipedia bio that even sees fit to list my humble blog as a reference! One can not assume that there has been no opportunism in her turn to the right. Certainly she’s milked her status as a “labor lawyer” in working for Jeff Katzenberg to go on the warpath against trade unions, perhaps because, as Marty Peretz might say, she hates her inheritance.
To be sure, one can only assume that even as a solid Kerry supporter she was in the Chuck Schumer/Brad Sherman camp on foreign policy. Yet she has certainly gone the extra mile in changing many of the views one associates with a good Jewish Democrat in her adoring embrace of Sarah Palin. And this is what forces me and others to conclude that there are much deeper, darker pathologies with this woman than simply being mugged by reality on Israel. As Daniel Luban points out in the above link, a pathological hatred of Obama is at the heart of it all, so frankly, simple racism can hardly be ruled out.
Even so, the revelation of my correspondent that our museum-quality specimen of the fundamental Jewish self-hate of the neocons was but five years ago a perfectly contented quintessential Hollywood Jew is a shocking one. Perhaps Jennifer Rubin is but the farcical repeat of the tragic case of Theodor Herzl, of whom a contemporary German editor got it about right – “if Herzl needs to be taken to a lunatic asylum, I shall happily put my carriage at his disposal.”
Mark 
steve hulett 
Dear Jack: Interesting posting!! I don’t know much about Ms. Rubin, but it is well to remember the immortal words of the late British Prime Minister Harold Wilson: “A week is a long time in politics, and a year is an eternity.” The 2004 campaign was six eternities ago–more than enough time to rethink one’s views and outlook on politics. Also, let’s not have any illusions about John Kerry–remember, he begged and pleaded with John McCain to be his running mate–not exactly behavior to be associated with dovishness on foreign policy. But, I do think that, if this report is accurate, Ms. Rublin really should explain exactly when and why she switched from being a John Kerry devotee to being a Sarah Palin devotee–John Kerry has a lot of flaws, but politically he is no Sarah Palin. Lastly, remember the immortal words of “Deep Throat”: “Follow the money.” As the Good Book says: “A love of money is the root of all evil”–who has the most money is a most important factor in determining people’s political beliefs–in the 1950′s when there was no money in being conservative there were few avowedly conservative intellectuals–now that there is an enormous amount of money in being conservative we have a flood of self-proclaimed conservative intellectuals. (That fact probably explains why, from an intellectual point of view, National Review in the 1950′s and 1960′s was an infinitely more intellectually credible journal than it is today.) Sincerely and Respectfully, Ernest Evans PS: As the Mexican dictator Profirio Diaz said of Mexico’s intellectuals: “The rooster wants corn!!”