Tom Wolfe: Prophet

So says Steve Sailer:

Trayvon: How the Case Was Spun

I have to agree since i wrote this back in 2006

Wolfe does not win literary prizes and is despised by many of the biggest names in the literary pantheon. (Check out "My Three Stooges" in Hooking Up). But Wolfe has this going for him: if the mark of greatness is having something to say about "where we are and where we are going", he trumps everybody on the list. Does anyone is Denver look up from her Sunday paper and say "this sounds just like a John Updike novel"? How many people turn on the cable news programs and think "Is Philip Roth scripting this"? Yet from Tawana Brawley to the Duke Lacrosse case, Tom Wolfe scouted the territory before anyone else.

Seymour Hersh

Good read:

The Deceits of Seymour Hersh

Related:

Seymour Hersh

Nanny Mike in the news

Mayor Warns of the Pitfalls in Social Media

“We are basically having a referendum on every single thing that we do every day,” he said. “And it’s very hard for people to stand up to that and say, ‘No, no, this is what we’re going to do,’ when there’s constant criticism, and an election process that you have to look forward to and face periodically.”

Those elections are so annoying for philosopher kings like Mike Bloomberg. Also, Bloomberg stood up for poor, abused Goldman Sachs.

Mayor Bloomberg, who didn’t throw his support behind the Occupy Wall Street protesters last year, visited Goldman’s headquarters to give the firm a pat on the back after Smith’s manifesto hit.


“The mayor stopped by to make clear that the company is a vital part the city’s economy, and the kind of unfair attacks that we’re seeing can eventually hurt all New Yorkers,” Stu Loeser, a spokesman for hizzoner, pointed out.

As Jon Friedman points out, Goldman might be good for the New york economy, but it is very, very good for Bloomberg's private fortune:

Loeser failed to mention that Goldman is a prominent part of the financial community which pays dearly to use the trademark Bloomberg terminals. These are coveted machines which offer finance-industry professionals and others a dizzying array of data and information about all kinds of financial instruments.

What did Fidel know and when did he know it?

The Kennedy assassination: Did Castro know in advance?

A new book by former CIA analyst Brian Latell details evidence that Cuban intelligence knew beforehand of JFK’s assassination.

Howie Kurtz goes in the tank for "Game Change"

In other news, I saw the sun rise in the east this morning.

On Reliable Sources, Kurtz did his best to help out the makers of HBO's docudrama. In his signature powder-puff style, he let them make their case that the movie was the real story of the 2008 campaign.

Roach[director]: I make a deal with the audience when we say it's a true story. I know the audience is expecting that. It would be not a very good story if it was deliberately one-sided. The best stories are layered and complex.


In this story, there are no real heroes and no real villains and - because it's all told within one campaign. And our commitment was only to the truth.
- - - - -


Strong [screenwriter] I also want to respond, though, to the allegations that the film is based on a false narrative of a couple of people. That's totally inaccurate. The film is based on, you know, not only the book "Game Change," but interviews that I and Jay conducted with 25 people, and, you know, the stories that we heard were corroborated by 10, 12, 15 people.

Kurtz never pressed the issue with them. He ignores the numerous cases where key figures in the McCain campaign emphatically deny that the events portrayed in the movie really happened. For instance, Steve Schmidt flatly states that John McCain never told him "find me a woman" during the VP search. A.B. Culvahouse, who managed the vetting process, insists, and has insisted for years, that Palin was vetted in the same thorough way as all other potential nominees.


Most importantly, Randy Scheunemann, the man who ran the foreign policy briefings for the campaign, disputes every aspect of the movie's portrayal of Gov. Palin as an ignorant dunce who is unsure of Germany's location or its role in World War II.

The idea that at any point that Gov. Palin expressed any uncertainty as to who were the various sides in World War I or World War II, or any other war, is absolutely untrue. She was incredibly intelligent. She asked very informed questions. She was very interested and she wanted to understand John McCain's view of foreign policy because she wanted to be the best possible vice presidential nominee.

See: Top 10 Lies of HBO's 'Game Change'

Kurtz gave the filmmakers a pass and let their self-endorsement stand without serious contradiction. Nor did he confront them with a telling point made by Jim Geraghty:

Each change from the book (presuming, of course, Heilemann and Halperin's reporting is accurate) moves the story in a particular direction. Palin becomes dumber. McCain becomes more craven, cynical, and desperate to win. McCain's campaign aides are sloppier, more panicky, a mess. What director Roach and screenwriter Strong are portraying is recent history as they wish it had been.

All in all, it was a typical day's work for Howie. He avoided the tough issues that make his buddies in the MSM look bad and, instead, gave them plenty of air time to brag about their devotion to the truth and their empathy toward Sarah Palin.


There was funny note that Kurtz missed completely. Jay Roach misspoke (Freudian slip or Kinsey gaffe) when confronted by the question of his ability to be even-handed in light of his contributions to the Obama campaign:

Kurtz: But, look, Jay and Danny, you both know that you are seen as liberal Hollywood guys. You both contributed to Obama's campaign last time around, as did Julianne Moore. Does that not create a perception problem for you, and were you aware of that going in?


STRONG: Yes. Now, look, I understand how there would be that perception. I think it's completely fair to talk about, and I think it's good for the audience to know those sorts of -- that contributions like that have been made. But that doesn't enable us to be fair, and it doesn't enable us to portrait the events as accurately as possible.

 

MSM finds out that twitter is not so fun when audience argues back

Last fall i asked this question:

Why do journalists love twitter and hate blogging?

My tentative answer was:

Blogging was a direct attack on MSM hegemony at both the micro (fisking) and macro levels (explanation space). I just don't see Twitter as the same threat. It is a flood of unmermorable chatter that is easy to ignore. Blogging had the potential to break the power of the MSM guild. Bloggers, at their best, presented arguments. Arguments can both change minds on the immediate subject and undermine the credibilty of those establishment pundts who present weak cases on a regular basis. (Yes, i'm looking at you Brooks and Frum).


At a minimum, blogging brought a lot of outsiders to the pundit/editor game. Twitter seems more useful as a way for insiders like Kurtz to extent their brand and magnify their voice.

Soledad (D-CNN) now provides evidence that this theory is true. Tweeting was once all well and good for the news reader but she is out of patience now that listeners are arguing back about her attempt to obfuscate on Critical Race Theory. Ace has the details:

Stop Tweeting Soledad_OBrien

Look whose still fighting the Cold War

Left avoids minute of silence to communist victims

Andrew Breitbart, RIP

I think this Kaus tribute is the best I've seen

An important new book on Watergate

Jack Shafer's review:

What made Deep Throat leak?

Leak overturns once and for all the romantic, popular interpretation of the Watergate saga of one inside source risking it all to save democracy. “Nixon’s downfall was an entirely unanticipated result of Felt’s true and only aim,” Holland writes. Although Holland never disparages the enterprise of Woodward and Bernstein, acknowledging the impact their reports had on Judge John J. Sirica and the senators who formed an investigative committee, neither does he bow to them. “Contrary to the widely held perception that the Washington Post ‘uncovered’ Watergate, the newspaper essentially tracked the progress of the FBI’s investigation, with a time delay ranging from weeks to days, and published elements of the prosecutors’ case well in advance of the trial.”


Leak, to be published Mar. 6, vindicates journalist Edward Jay Epstein, one of the earliest critics of Woodsteinmania. In a Commentary piece published in July 1974, about a month after the Woodstein book came out, Epstein eviscerates what he calls the “sustaining myth of journalism.” Naïve readers believe that intrepid reporters expose government scandals by doggedly working their confidential sources. Of course such scoops do occur, but the more conventional route to a prize-winning series is well-placed leaks from well-oiled government investigations, which Holland maintains was the case with Watergate.

Related:

Howie the Weasel never disappoints

The high utility of myth and ignorance

On leaks, bias and truth

Woodstein gets played: Deep Throat, Gray, and Hunt's notebooks

Deep Throat: The irreconcilable differences between image and fact

Duke lacrosse: Custom, interest, and the pursuit of truth

Pre-Venona minds at work

Historians and the press still refuse to face the facts of the Red Decade and the "Red Scare".

J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Spy? No. But a Communist Once? Yes.

That only one of these eight biographies of Oppenheimer accurately assessed his relationship to the CPUSA reinforces the themes we discussed in our 2003 book In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage. By and large, American scholars and historians cannot bring themselves to write dispassionately about the elephant in the room, domestic communism, anticommunism, and Soviet espionage

In Denial: Round 11

[I. F.] Stone, however, is an icon in certain journalistic precincts, and to his devotees those six pages are the only ones in Spies that matter. Their responses match in distortion, whitewashing, spinning, and ad hominem viciousness any that we have received over the years and give us a better understanding of what Weinstein and Radosh had to put up with. The history of communism and Soviet espionage have never been fields for those seeking the scholarly quiet life, but the displays of rage (real and faux) in regard to Stone have been impressive.

Related:

A herd of independent minds

Jennifer Rubin earns her paycheck

The WaPo's resident resercon acts, well, like a resercon.

James Taranto, David Limbaugh Draw Jennifer Rubin's Wrath

Related:

Why Letterman matters (Part I)

David Frum had no comment

Question for the anti-Delay Republicans

Playing nice is not a strategy (at least not a winning strategy)

Emperor Romney has no clothes

Why Is Romney Seen as Electable?

RINO Romney Is the Least Electable

Previously:

Numbers that should scare Mitt Romney and the tools at Fox News

The naive faith of the MSM

The Chump Effect

Yet the allure of “science” is too strong for our journalists to resist: all those numbers, those equations, those fancy names (say it twice: the Self-Activation Effect), all those experts with Ph.D.’s!

To their credit, the Stapel scandal has moved a few social psychologists to self-reflection. They note the unhealthy relationship between social psychologists and the journalists who bring them attention—each using the other to fill a professional need. “Psychology,” one methodologist told the Chronicle of Higher Education, “has become addicted to surprising, counter-intuitive findings that catch the news media’s eye.”

That’s a scandal, all right. Stapel’s professional treachery is a scandal, too. But the biggest scandal is that the chumps took him seriously in the first place.

Merry Christmas

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Luke 2:8-14

Good Point

Tebow’s Religion, and Ours

In short, people aren’t upset at Tebow’s God talk. They’re upset that he might actually believe it.

Inexplicable

Obama Admin Bans US Aircraft Maker, Favors Non-US Firm with Ties to Iran on Light Aircraft Project

Almost a half century ago

The Assassination of John F. Kennedy – 48 Years On

Wisdom in 140 characters

　'The Kim Kardashian definition of 'forever' is 'when the check is cashed. '

Quoted here.

Tweeted here.

Not good

Secret MI6 documents warn about al-Qaeda-linked Libyan rebels

What is the lesson of Libya?

Jerry Pournelle:

One lesson to be learned is, DO NOT LOSE if you are in the dictator business. The US will borrow money to furnish the Brits, French, and Italians with the means to kill you. Understand that, and be sure that you have the means for defending yourself. The more strategic your country the more important it will be to have defenses including personal defenses. Another lesson is, do not renounce your nukes. Get some. Get at least one and let it be known that it will detonate if you don’t talk to it at daily intervals.

Verum Serum made this point back in July:

Why, for instance, would Iran give up its nuclear program if the result is to wind up the focus of a Libya-style bombing spree once they’ve capitulated?