…my biggest failure is the Republicans’ fault.
And it may also be that I work too hard. Although actually, that’s my biggest weakness.
Or maybe it’s that I care too much.
So, do I get the job?
Editing Stephen Glass
I was searching for something or other, and I happened across an article on a different subject that caught my eye—this 1996 article by Jonathan Chait (he of BDS pride) about his fallen buddy Stephen Glass, the serial liar whose career at TNR ended in ignominy.
Chait is very angry at Glass, and rightly so. Chait’s trying to excuse/explain how he, and so many of our Best and Brightest, could have been so fooled by a sociopathic con man.
An interesting subject, to say the least.
I know a certain amount about Stephen Glass and his deceptive career. I saw the movie “Shattered Glass,” and I’ve read the Vanity Fair article on which it was based. But I couldn’t remember encountering the following facts that Chait relates [emphasis mine]:
After [Glass] was caught, I often heard it said that he should write novels. Perhaps he heard this himself and took it to heart. But it was clear all along that this notion was terribly misguided. He never had much talent for prose. When his stories read well, it usually resulted from heavy rewriting, most notably by Kelly. (Very often he would hand his stories to me minutes before they were due, and, to save him from embarrassment, I would perform a kind of emergency triage on his text, rearranging it into something resembling a coherent structure.) Moreover, his stories were interesting only because they were purportedly true. The characters in his stories, as in his novel, lack any depth or believability.
So, in addition to being a long-undetected serial liar as a journalist, Stephen Glass was a writer who could not write. And yet he was considered a wunderkind at TNR for three full years, hired at the ripe old age of 23, and also wrote for Policy Review, George, Rolling Stone, and Harper’s, and had publishers interested in a book. Say what you will about the viewpoints and thought processes presented in those publications (and I’m not familiar with all of them), most of the articles in them seem to be decently—and even well—written, at least in the technical sense of use of language and the flow of prose.
It seems that Glass’s articles were so poorly executed that they needed an almost complete rewrite, leaving just the bare bones of the idea. It’s not that such a thing is never done in the publishing world, but it’s my impression that it’s usually done for someone more illustrious, someone with a reputation and at least a modicum of fame, someone whom the periodical wishes to pamper and court. But a 23-year old kid, at what is probably one of his first real jobs as an adult? Preposterous.
So, why? Why such a heavy assist? Reading the rest of Chait’s piece, and remembering some of what I already knew about Glass, I’d say it appears that everyone’s almost overwhelming desire to coddle Glass (sort of like a kitten) and keep him around had to do with his uncanny ability to ingratiate himself with people, to entertain them, and to seem personally vulnerable at the same time. A kind of fun mascot, he was the kid brother you want to protect.
I’m not sure what this has to do with politics; perhaps nothing. But it doesn’t escape my attention that most of those enabling Glass were liberals (although the late Michael Kelly, an editor who was a moderate, was a prominent one of Glass’s champions). Make of that what you will.
Here’s Charles Lane, the editor who finally caught Glass, on how it felt to be taken in:
We extended normal human trust to someone who basically lacked a conscience…We thought Glass was interested in our personal lives, or our struggles with work, and we thought it was because he cared. Actually, it was all about sizing us up and searching for vulnerabilities. What we saw as concern was actually contempt
I like to think my radar’s good enough that I wouldn’t be taken in by a con artist. And maybe I wouldn’t—and fortunately, so far I haven’t, at least to the best of my knowledge. But I realize that everyone is somewhat vulnerable, including me, to a really good con. That’s the hallmark of the best ones; they charm and disarm their victims.
I suppose I’m writing this because I continue to think of Obama as a con artist, one much of America has fallen for—and may fall for again, unfortunately. Once the mark has been conned, it’s very difficult to break the spell. The truth has to hit that person in the face with unequivocal certainty.
Monica…
“The Obama You Don’t Know” is the Obama most people don’t care to read about
The Washington Examiner has a multi-part series of short articles called “The Obama You Don’t Know,” debunking some of the myths of Obama’s “narrative.” It punctures such tales as the one about how poor Obama’s family was when he was growing up, and his stellar reputation as a law professor, as well adding whole bunch of unpleasant details about the Chicago political machinations of his earlier days.
You can send a link to people you know who voted for Obama last time but have become dissatisfied with his record in the last four years, especially those who might live in swing states. Perhaps they’ll read it, and perhaps they’ll even care what’s in it.
I have my doubts. I freely admit I could be wrong (and I hope I’m wrong), but I think the reaction to this information of most people who supported Obama in 2008 will be either to say it’s all right-wing lies, or to say he’s changed, or to give a big shrug and say who cares. My gut feeling is that if a person was able to resist all the information that was out there already in November of 2008—Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, Alinsky, and the rest—this stuff is certainly not likely to sway that person now, at a much later date.
A greater challenge would be to get them to learn about the Romney they don’t know. The irony is that every misstep Romney has ever made in his life (and some he hasn’t, but that have been manufactured) has been quite well-aired by the MSM, and few of his many many pluses have seen the light of day. It’s exactly the opposite of what’s happened to Obama. The press on the right has been trying to reverse the trend (and of course the Washington Examiner is part of that press on the right), but it just doesn’t reach that many people. If you want to try to do so yourself, I suggest sending people a link to the videos on the right sidebar of this page, which have the advantage of being from a very liberal rag, the Boston Globe. Or even lend or give them this book, written by two Globe reporters.
Time’s a wasting.
There’s another problem, too, one well-stated by Robert Stacy McCain:
Obama seems presidential, and vast numbers of Americans have lost the ability to distinguish between seeming and being.
That’s certainly part of it. Another part (which I believe was one of the things Romney was trying to get at in his 47% remarks) is that “vast numbers of Americans” have become dependent on the welfare state, and/or see nothing wrong with the country becoming more like Europe. The Fabians and Gramscians have been very, very busy all these years, and their work has borne fruit.
Overheard at the hairdresser’s
Yesterday I went for some R&R at the hairdresser’s.
I tend to find this rather relaxing. It’s a chunk of time in which absolutely nothing is expected of me except to sit there, perhaps sip some chamomile tea, read a People magazine (or worse) while I wait, and chat about whatever comes up—often, the topic is the always-fascinating one of hair and its vagaries.
I tend to keep it light. I certainly don’t want to talk about politics. For one thing, I assume that I am odd woman out on that score, as I usually am in any social gathering in which I happen to find myself. For another, this is a break, not a busman’s holiday.
But yesterday there was a woman in the chair across the way from me who was talking to the woman cutting her hair, and I couldn’t help but overhear her (it’s a small salon) say:
“John won’t even let me say the words ‘Fox News.'”
Ha ha ha. One can laugh, or one can cry. Here’s a woman, no doubt proud of her modernity and independence from her husband, making a little joke whose irony she probably has no way to perceive. But her little yuk depends on the following:
The notion that her husband tells her what to do and what not to do.
That the best way to deal with competing narratives (or even facts that challenge your narrative) is to shut yourself off from them.
Beyond that, that it’s good to pretend they don’t even exist, and to ban their very mention from your house and your life—except, perhaps, to make a little joke that lets another person know that you’re on the side of truth and good, just like they are.
When you think about it, it’s no surprise that many leftists support the Islamists’ demands for censorship of any speech they deem to be blasphemy. Fox is the leftists’ blasphemy. And many of them would dearly love to wipe it off the face of the earth.
And they don’t see a thing wrong with that.
The missing minutes
Now it’s being reported by William Jacobsen at Legal Insurrection that one or two minutes of the Romney 47% tape is missing, and that the missing portion occurs close to the time of the controversial part where he’s speaking about the 47%. David Corn, the writer at Mother Jones responsible for publicizing the tapes, is saying it was a random camera malfunction.
Jacobson also publishes a correspondence he had with Corn, in which Corn writes:
When we posted the complete tape, we stated there was a gap of one to two minutes, or less, according to the source. That seemed to be the appropriate time to do so. I will note that Romney, who clearly has thought about how to respond to this clip, has not said in the statements he has made since its release, “But then I went on to say”¦.”
This is disingenuous, according to Jacobson. Corn had not posted such a disclosure until Jacobson had written him to complain about the missing audio.
What’s more, Corn’s suggesting that Romney should have remembered his exact words from an unscripted talk he gave four months ago is, to put it bluntly, absurd.
But then, so many things are absurd these days. Perhaps the most absurd thing is that the MSM is a dedicated arm of the Obama campaign. There is so much important news happening in the world—and so much of it damaging to Obama—that the only thing left for the press to do is to ignore and/or distort it, and then to harp on “gotcha” stories of as little consequence as this talk of Romney’s.
We have indeed fallen through the looking glass, and we’re not about to emerge any time soon.
[BONUS POINTS: If you can immediately identify this photo, you’re probably at least as old as I am. My sympathies:
[ADDENDUM: Andrea Mitchell now says that NBC will not air the Obama “redistribution” tape because it’s not been authenticated.
Otherwise, of course, she would. Just as CBS was oh-so-careful with the Killian memos in September of 2004, and waited till they were completely authenticated to…
And then there’s the commendable reluctance of the exceptionally careful LA Times, which has been keeping from the public the Rashid Khalidi tape, said to be damaging to Obama, for well-nigh these long four years. What commendable restraint!:
Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a videotape of the 2003 farewell bash in Chicago at which Barack Obama lavished praise on the guest of honor, Rashid Khalidi ”” former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat?
At the time Khalidi, a PLO adviser turned University of Chicago professor, was headed east to Columbia. There he would take over the University’s Middle East-studies program (which he has since maintained as a bubbling cauldron of anti-Semitism) and assume the professorship endowed in honor of Edward Sayyid, another notorious terror apologist.
The party featured encomiums by many of Khalidi’s allies, colleagues, and friends, including Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, and Bill Ayers, the terrorist turned education professor. It was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), which had been founded by Khalidi and his wife, Mona, formerly a top English translator for Arafat’s press agency.
Is there just a teeny-weenie chance that this was an evening of Israel-bashing Obama would find very difficult to explain? Could it be that the Times, a pillar of the Obamedia, is covering for its guy?
The sad thing is that, in the four years since this story first appeared, it has become more and more clear that even the release of such a tape might do nothing to hurt Obama’s support. I wonder if there’s anything that could surface about him that could matter at this point.]
[ADDENDUM II: A commenter at Ace’s adds:
The missing minutes will show up in late October. In them, Mitt dances on the backs of the poor in an overcoat and top hat, prodding them with his cruel platinum tipped cane. Then he cackles for a while. Then shares with the crowd how to be a billionaire and pay no taxes. Then some weird Mormon ritual involving the blood of real Christians.
Then he goes back behind the podium andstarts talking truthfully and sensibly about boring foreign policy crap like China and Palestinians.]
Reagan’s farewell warning
Unfortunately, America didn’t heed it:
[Hat tip: commenter “beverly.”]
One more thing…
…about the press and the release of Romney’s fundraiser remarks. The video was taken on May 17, 2012, and Mother Jones (who published it) has not (to the best of my knowledge, anyway) said when it obtained the clip.
I’m wondering about the timing. If the video was made a full four months ago, why the release now? Did the person who made it just recently give it to Mother Jones? Or has the publication had it a while and decided to sit on it until a time considered most propitious?
If the latter, why now, and what else are they sitting on? We’ve long expected an October surprise of one sort of other, and yet it’s not even October.
No candidate is perfect. All candidates make errors, especially when talking to supporters in a supposedly private setting. The real question is the nature of those errors, and whether voters care about them deeply or are more attuned to fundamentals. Sometimes the errors appear very small and yet they seem to matter to voters: Romney’s own father’s “brainwashed” remark, Ed Muskie’s tears (or non-tears, depending on who you believe), and the utterly ridiculous “macaca” episode of George Allen. I make no predictions about the American public, but I will say that “bitter clingers” didn’t seem to hurt Obama at all—perhaps because it only offended people who already were unlikely to vote for him. Will it be the same for Romney?
As for the issue of politicians speaking off-the-cuff to fundraisers, and getting burned for it, I had this to say about that, back in 2008 during Obama’s “bitter clinger” controversy:
For example, the San Francisco fundraiser at which Obama described the bitter clingers of Pennsylvania was meant to be a very private affair, no press allowed. But merely keeping the press out no longer keeps the media out, because we are all media (or potential media) now.
It used to be that candidates could feel safe from prying eyes and ears at these events. They were among friends. Now even friends can unintentionally betray by having access to internet sources””be they the Huffington Post (in Obama’s case), a blog, or You Tube””that can reach the general public with material that was supposed to be off the record. Loose lips can sink campaign ships, or at least cause them to take on water.
Romney should have known that. In fact, I’m sure he did know that. How careful a person must be, though, to have his/her every public utterance be something that can’t be used by opponents and enemies. Such a person really would be a robot.
Keeping shadows light
I’ve been reading a biography of the painter Edward Hopper. Perhaps “reading” is too strong a word; like many biographies these days, it’s way too long, in this case nearly 600 pages of text plus a ton of notes.
So I’m skimming it; I’m interested in Edward Hopper, but not that interested, and the book itself just isn’t well-written. Where have all the editors gone?
Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I was struck by this statement of Hopper’s, as recorded by his wife Jo in one of her diaries [“the Cape” here refers to Cape Cod, and “E.” is Edward Hopper]:
The Cape looks so brilliant. E. says it is because the shadows aren’t dark, like Maine. Shadows light, because of greater density of atmosphere. The brilliant light is diffused. A great deal of reflected light keeps shadows bright.
Hopper’s paintings were famous, and have become beloved—despite, or perhaps because of, their brooding atmosphere of solitude.
Light was one of the key ingredients. Hopper said that all he wanted to do was to “paint sunlight on a house.” He certainly did that, but I disagree with the reviewer in the NY Times that that was all Hopper did. Mere “sunlight on (or in) a house” cannot evoke moods quite like these:
And of course, one of Hopper’s most famous paintings of all is of the night and the sharp illumination of harsh indoor light:
It’s all a little gimmicky, I guess. But I think it only looks that way now that we’ve become so familiar with Hopper’s work, so much so that it seems a bit cliched.
It wasn’t a cliche at the start. And it was always heartfelt and uncontrived, which comes through loud and clear; Hopper was a difficult man and probably a loner, despite his long and troubled (and intense) marriage.
So, is the light in Maine different from that in Cape Cod? I’ve been to both many times, and I have to say I’ve not really noticed it.
But then again, I’m not Edward Hopper.
Mitt sez…
…that a lot of people want to be on the dole, and they won’t vote for him anyway.
Mitt sez the Palestinians don’t want peace.
This is scandalous? This is news?
Ah, but the media can make a statement that the sky is blue into a gaffe, if Mitt sez it.
Meanwhile, Obama’s Mideast policy is in flames, his State Department failed to offer the Benghazi consulate the basic protection that it obviously needed, and from the MSM we hear the sound of crickets chirping.
The Fourth Estate and the end of the republic.
One possibility, though (and it’s only a possibility): do the majority of voters secretly think what Mitt said on those secret tapes was correct?
The Twitter button
Well, the Twitter button is now there, and I don’t like the way it looks. But I’ll keep it up for a while and see how it goes. It can always be removed at some point if it continues to be more of a nuisance than a help.
I’m going to stop there, though, at least for now. No Facebook button. I don’t use either Twitter or Facebook, but my ever-helpful tech adviser has told me that people can tweet a post or recommend it on Facebook pretty easily, even without the buttons.
Interesting
From Datechguy, on the all-important question of party affiliation and turnout.