Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s long-time confidante, is looking for a book deal. Reportedly, her asking price is $2 million.
Jazz Shaw doubts that there’s a sufficient market for Abedin’s story to support this price. He may be right.
However, Abedin strikes me as by far the most interesting person in Hillary Clinton’s world, with the obvious exception of Bill. First, there is her family background and ethnicity. Her parents are said to have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. Quite apart from the Brotherhood, it’s safe to say that Abedin’s background doesn’t fit the profile of a top confidante to someone who just missed becoming the U.S. president.
Second, there is her marriage. I’d pay the price of a hardcover book for a plausible account of why Abedin stayed so long with Anthony Weiner, and I’d pay more to understand why, reportedly, she is taking him back now.
Abedin played a major supporting role (in two senses) in the movie “Weiner.” The film fascinated me, as it did John, who described her as “sometimes inscrutable,” but possessing the air of “a formidable person, fitted to do more than carry Hillary Clinton’s luggage.”
Some of Abedin’s facial expressions, as the train wreck of her husband’s mayoral campaign unfolds, are priceless. This is someone about whom I’d like to know more.
Finally, there is her relationship with Hillary Clinton. What is it really like to work for Hillary? What is the dynamic between these two women, both of whose marriages have caused them so much pain and humiliation?
I assume that, whatever the price of a book deal, Abedin won’t tell us. The Clintons are still her meal-ticket, albeit now at a lower class of eating establishment (they may even have some pull with publishers to exert on Abedin’s behalf).
Nor will Abedin be inclined to tell us much we don’t already know about her marriage, though she did consent to giving us a major glimpse of it in “Weiner.” More likely than not, Abedin would manage to write a boring book.
I know next to nothing about how the publishing industry decides to pay politicos for their memoirs. But if they it pays them not for what they are willing to reveal, but for what the public imagines they might reveal, then maybe Abedin will get a decent book deal.
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