This just in: James Frey has sold a novel titled Bright Shiny Morning to HarperCollins for - rumor has it - one million dollars. Depending on who you ask, it might actually be a book of short stories.
Anyway, if you’ll excuse me I have to go write my memoirs about those harrowing years I spent in the wilds of Vietnam.
An LA Times story this morning is a good example of why naming your sources is important. The story, about that disrupted German terror plot, reports that the interception of communications between the terror suspects and Pakistan by U.S. intelligence was a “key factor” in bringing the plot down.
The source: “A U.S. counter-terrorism official,” which is more or less the only source for all the fresh news in this story.
Now, let’s think about this. Are high-level U.S. counter-terrorism officials just dying to run off to the nation’s newspapers and anonymously spill their guts? Like, what, for the thrill of giving the LA Times a scoop?
No. They’re not. It’s more likely that the newspaper got a call from some shadowy figure at the Department of Defense or the White House or the Ministry of Truth offering an exclusive interview with an un-named counter-terrorism official.
That official then said things like, “The U.S. counter-terrorism community supported efforts to draw links, to do intercepts and to monitor communications between Pakistan and Germany,” and described how U.S. intelligence eavesdropped on e-mail and wireless communications.
Suddenly the German terror plot has a fancy new spin: U.S. intelligence saves lives by using the sketchy big-brother spying tactics that have been the source of legal battles and endless criticism at home! Maybe the ends do justify the means!
Now this LA Times article kind of sounds like a U.S. government P.R. drive-by, doesn’t it? The only way to prove my suspicions wrong would be to produce this government official, find out why he talked to the LA Times, and corroborate some of his info with other real people.
But, of course, the official is anonymous. Dead end.
UPDATE: For an example of a better way to cover this story, check out the New York Times version, which came out on Monday and focuses on the law that allows more sketchy spying techniques. Sample paragraph:
This distinction is important because Mr. McConnell’s remarks, on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, were an important part of the Bush administration’s intensifying effort to make permanent the new law, which is scheduled to expire in about five months. Democrats in Congress have said that they want to write more safeguards for civil liberties into the law before renewing it.
Ah. Now we understand the reason for the LA Times “leak.”
Somehow New York Times columnist Frank Rich’s son (just out of Harvard or something) got published in the New Yorker this week. In the humor column. Huh. It must be because he’s so talented:
What I imagined the people around me were saying when I was . . .
Thirteen:
“Hey, look, that thirteen-year-old is walking around with his mom!”
“Where?”
“There—in front of the supermarket!”
“Oh, my God! That kid is way too old to be hanging out with his mom. Even though I’ve never met him, I can tell he’s a complete loser.”
“Wait a minute. He’s scowling at her and rolling his eyes.”
“Oh, yeah . . . and I think I just heard him curse at her, for no reason.”
“I guess he’s cool after all.”
Now for my next act, I shall suppress the urge to kill.
Oh man, the New York Times e-mail inboxes are screwed. In the graphic accompanying a science article about invisibility, they somehow identified a Klingon warship (clocking device and all) as Romulan.
How did I notice this, you ask? I’m wondering the same thing myself. I think I’ll go back to bed.
Blogging looks easy, right? Just whack out a bunch of poorly-researched, polemical crap about some inane topic and hit the “post” button. But what’s really hard is to do that over and over and over again. Not because it’s difficult, mechanically speaking, but it’s hard to keep up the requesite outrage.
It’s fatigue, I think.
Like when I see an article in The Nation about Cuba. Right there, I know I shouldn’t read any further due to blood pressure concerns, but maybe I skip to the author’s bio, and I see that “Rosa Miriam Elizalde… is a columnist for the Cuban newspaper Juventud Rebelde and author of several books… She has twice won the Juan Gualberto Gomez prize, Cuba’s most prestigious journalism award.”
And I don’t know. I guess I could rant and rave. I could link to the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index that puts Cuba in 165th place out of 168 - that’s a shade below Burma, but a tad better than Eritrea. I wonder if those countries give prestigious journalism awards as well.
But really, so much outrage is exhausting. Best to take it slow.
There must be some odd energy coursing through the Universe this morning. Reuters, CNN, and - of all things - The Nation have all just run honest stories about Cuba’s sex tourism, rebelious rock bands, and media control, respectively.
Now, over to you Bob Woodruff.
From The Onion:
Middle East Conflict Intensifies As Blah Blah Blah, Etc. Etc.
In the aftermath of a whole series of incidents, there have also been troubling reports of just fill in the blanks. Middle East experts say the still somehow worsening situation has inflamed age-old sectarian tensions between the Sunnis, Shiites, Semites, Kurds, Turks, Saudis, Persians, Wahhabis, radicals, extremists, Baathists, mullahs, clerics, et al, which is likely to lead to more gurgle-gurgle over the coming weeks and months.
…
Also, Ahmadinejad, Iran’s nuclear program, bin Laden at large, Moqtada al-Sadr, Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia, Fallujah, renegade mullahs, embedded and/or beheaded journalists, oil revenues, stockpiles of former Soviet armaments, freedom, racism, Halliburton, women’s role in Islamic society, the Quran, withdrawing troops, economic disparities, Sikhs, Pakistanis, oil, rebuilding, stories of hope, the Saudi royal family, the Holy Land, insurgents, and the tragedy of Sept. 11th.
And that about sums it up. I think I’ll give up newspapers for awhile. Or probably not.
As America’s fearless punditocracy rushes to politicize the tragedy at Virginia Tech, my ever-clever comment section has put together a handy little scapegoat list for them to consult. So far, we’ve got drugs, videogames, Buddhism/Atheism/lack-of-monotheistic-Christian-God, immigrants, liberals, conservatives, guns, bullying, and racism.
It’s a good start. Of course the school administration is taking a hit, and I imagine we’ll have some people losing their jobs over missed warning signs and whatnot. Predictably, the shooter was a “loner.”
Aside from all that, however, it’s remarkable just how random, unpredictable, and non-stereotypical this shooting was. First of all, the kid was a Korean immigrant, making vague accusations of an American culture of violence kind of toothless.
Second of all, the manner in which the shooting took place was unique, what with the dorm hit, then the classroom shooting spree. Third of all, I’m standing by my amazement that a lone gunman with two small-caliber handguns could kill so many people. There is so much that could have gone wrong for the shooter, and unfortunately for his victims, none of it did.
By all accounts, this just looks like some really, really awful luck.
Nevertheless, within a week or so the finger pointing will start in earnest. It’s part of the anatomy of a tragedy these days. First the shocking details trickle out. The President expresses horror. More details come out. The next day, we learn who the shooter was. A few days later, though the actual news has been beat to death, we still want to talk about it. So we turn to the op-ed pages. Blogs. Shouting matches on Fox News. There are news conferences where people resign. Maybe other news conferences announcing lawsuits.
The media dances its tragedy dance. Let’s dance along.
On a weekly basis, I consume a hellish amount of media. No television though - I stick to magazines, newspapers, internet, you get the idea. I read… crap. Most of it is crap, anyway, but there are a few magazines that are pure gold, magazines that make me glad to be a subscriber. The Atlantic comes to mind, as does the New Yorker.
Anyway, Conde Nast (is there an accent mark in there somewhere? I can never remember) today came out with a brand-spankin’ new title: Portfolio. It’s supposed to be, I don’t know, Vogue for businessmen (and women!). I like business reporting. I read the Wall Street Journal at least three times a week. Business and commerce are fascinating. So I thought I would check out this glittering new fragment of the Conde Nast empire to see if it would blow my mind to a degree worth the $125 million they shoveled into it’s development.
So let’s take a look. First, there are a whole bunch of short, chirpy features with flurries of illustrations and info-whatsits (graphs, timelines, etc.) Think Maxim, without the tits, and with much nicer wrist watches. But that’s the front of the book. See, they’ve got to ease you into the heavy stuff with appetizers and a few million bucks worth of ads.
OK, so getting to the heavy stuff, we have:
1) “Learning to love global warming” (cover story in the Atlantic, two months ago).
2) Ya heard? The newspaper business is in trouble! (Um, yes. I had heard that.)
3) Green technology is the New Thing In Silicon Valley (Economist, last year).
4) Hedge Funds! (New York magazine, all of last week’s issue).
5) Hedge Funds again! By Tom Wolfe! (In a nutshell: “These new money people are uncivilized brutes.” Sweet baby Jesus.).
6) So what is the deal with that Valerie Plame thing? (killing self now).
7) And to wrap it all up, have you heard they do Crazy Expensive Things In Dubai Like Thoroughbred Horse Breeding? (Decided not to kill self, now looking for someone else to kill).
And that’s what you get for $125 million and three years of development. Seriously. It occurs to me, therefore, that Portfolio is not aimed at intelligent or well-read business people, but perhaps just at business people who are really, really, really, ridiculously filthy fucking rich. You know - people like the hedge fund managers Tom Wolfe abuses.
I’ll let you unpack that irony. Meanwhile, I’m off to read a book.
What is it that makes the children of famous writers so publishable? Is it their precociousness? Talent? Is it in the genes, maybe? Are they socially conditioned to be brilliant? Or did they learn everything they know at Harvard, pulling themselves up by their Ivy League bootstraps?
Speculation is endless. Meanwhile, Frank Rich’s son (whom Mr. Rich describes as a “22-year-old … humor writer”) just published his first book.
I know, I know. He’s probably just a hard worker.
