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Bush PDB Writer Resigns, Starts New Career With Cliffs Notes
The White House bade farewell this week to a key, yet rarely seen member of the Bush Administration. Fred Morgan, author of President Bush's daily briefings, is headed for a new career with Cliffs Notes.
Cliffs Notes produces "tools" that allow students to appreciate classics in literature and other topics without the burden of actually reading them. Morgan will serve as head-writer, a position for which he feels he is well-suited.
"My work for President Bush really honed my synopsizing and summarizing skills," Morgan explains, noting that he often reduced hundreds of pages of information into a single page.
Morgan is looking forward to the freedom his new position will give him to "really be able to discuss someone's work more thoroughly than the PDBs allowed."
Although Morgan has a knack for reducing large amounts of complex information into a form that is manageable by disinterested high school students and presidents alike, he admits the new position will have challenges.
"It's one thing to reduce Osama bin Laden's threat to America to a page and a half of tightly written prose, but it's another to try to give students an understanding of The Canterbury Tales or The Grapes of Wrath. I'll always be worrying that I left out something that's going to be on a test or that I didn't give them enough to write a convincing paper."
Morgan's last task was to prepare a brief on the 9/11 Commission Report, a 585-page report that he was able to reduce to three paragraphs. "You just need to know what [Bush] wants to know and give it to him. In this case the report could be reduced to '9/11 was bad and we shouldn't let it happen again.' He can take it from there."
Morgan's successor will be Stan Fanberg, a longtime writer for TV Guide. The President expressed his confidence in Fanberg: "For years he's accurately and simply told me what would be happening on my favorite shows, and I am confident he can bring that same accuracy and use of few words to his work at the White House."
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