In the Washington Post this morning, former Clinton speechwriter Ted Widmer reviews Jacob Heilbrunn’s book, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons. What to make of these passages, from one paragraph?

Heilbrunn is well-placed to tell this story, as a former writer for the National Review , the magazine that sustained conservatism in its long wilderness years, and someone who drank the Kool-Aid when the neocons were up and coming….[H]e reminds us that the neocons were as clueless as the rest of the Bush administration about the imminence of the 9/11 attack (the cover story of the National Review that week was an essay by David Brooks probing the cultural significance of “Gilligan’s Island”)…

I didn’t know that Heilbrunn was a former writer for National Review. It’s not listed in his bio in other places, and a search of the archives shows that he has written a few book reviews for the magazine. And in fact, he is not a former writer for National Review. As far as “Gilligan’s Island” is concerned – I couldn’t remember any such cover. Turns out that “Farewell to Greatness: America from Gilligan’s Island to The X-Files” was indeed written by Brooks, but it was in The Weekly Standard, which – note to Widmer – is a different magazine.