Movers & Shakers
We See You: Molly Jong-Fast
This outspoken political analyst-podcast host-salon hostess was once described as “the Joan Rivers for slackers.”
The people—young, old, and everyone in between—who most intrigue us.
Why we’re watching her: MJF has parlayed a raging Twitter habit spawned during quarantine into gigs as a left-leaning political analyst for MSNBC, special correspondent for Vanity Fair and host of the podcast, “Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast.”
Pedigree: MJF’s life is not exactly unexamined. Mom is Erica Jong (she of the “zipless fucks”), Dad is writer Jonathan Fast, grandad was scribe Howard Fast. A notable upbringing? Yes. Easy? Maybe not so much. “Ms. Jong-Fast went to rehab at 19, married at 23, and wrote a couple of novels and a book of essays about her bohemia-by-way-of-Park-Avenue upbringing. Now, within a certain rarefied slice of American political life, she is a star,” wrote the The New York Times.
We beg to differ: Writing may have been inevitable for MJF but her sharp, funny takes (take-downs) were not always universally beloved. The Kirkus Review said of her 2005 book, The Sex Doctors In The Basement: True Stories From A Semi-Celebrity Childhood, “Jong-Fast is the Joan Rivers for slackers.” They clearly have a different definition of slackers than we do.
Catch her in the wild: The mom of three is known for throwing soirées in the Upper East Side apartment she shares with husband, professor-turned-venture capitalist, Matthew Adlai Greenfield. The salons have become the status invite among social intelligentsia.
Just don’t bore her: “I get very bored very easily,” MJF told The Guardian. “Besides being dyslexic and a horrible student, I have terrible, terrible ADHD, which has never been medicated. I don’t take medicine for it because I’m 23 years sober, so it just would be too complicated for me.”
Party spirit: The cheetah, known for its passion, quick-witted freedom, and flexibility.
Prediction: Whatever goes down in the coming election (hopefully not democracy), MJF will be speaking up and speaking out. And we’re here for it.
Hero photo by Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images