A new spin on the obvious

I don't give a damn about Scott McClellan's memoir, wherein the former White House press secretary makes the shocking revelation that Bush isn't such a great president. Thanks for the news flash, Scott. This is something we'd never have guessed, since things have gone so well over the past eight years.

I understand why disgruntled employees write books like this, but I can't understand why anyone buys them. Twenty-some bucks seems a little steep for a too-thick tome that confines itself to the obvious. Also, this is a book about liars written by a guy who earned his living telling them for three solid years. When Scott McClellan writes that the president "convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment," it sounds like a pretty apt description of Scott McClellan.

Not to preach, but the time to act on moral qualms is when it matters, not when the ink is dry on the book contract. I'm reminded of Robert McNamara's confessional In Retrospect: Yeah, we all knew Vietnam was a mistake, but what's a defense secretary to do?

Here's what you do: You keep your trap shut and make a lot of money further down the road. You get on the talk shows again before everybody forgets your name. And you trust the credulous to pay again for information they already learned the hard way.

Comments

Peter Rozovsky said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
May 30, 2008 at 3:37 AM
Peter Rozovsky said…
You nailed the weirdest aspect of this: that of a press secretary being shocked that a president chose the path of convenience rather than hard, cold truth.

Look at the McLellan. Would you trust a piggy-eyed little mother----er like him?
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
May 30, 2008 at 3:50 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sleuths are only as good as their sidekicks

Image
I recently read the much-lauded Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands , by French author Fred Vargas, and like many others found it quirky and engaging. Her deft writing left me happy to have found another series character to follow: Commissaire Adamsberg. But that's not what this post is about. I've decided that others do a lot better job with reviews than I do, and I hate laboring over my shallow insights only to find later that I've echoed what everybody else said a long time before. (And yes, I can hear you saying: "But that's never stopped you before." True enough. Nor will it now.) So, short version: Wash This Blood is a good book. Buy it. But for all the talk about it being "eccentric" or even "kooky," it does share one key device with nearly all other detective fiction: the sidekick. Adamsberg's reliance on gut instinct and intuition is sharply defined by the hard-nosed, scientific approach of his second in command, Capitaine
Read more

A farewell to copy

Image
On Friday I walked out of a newspaper building as an employee for the last time. During the stroll to the far end of the parking lot, I did a brief review of my career. Here's the high point: I've worked at newspapers that have won Pulitzer prizes. And the low point: None of those Pulitzers were won while I was working at the newspapers in question. Hey, I'm sure that's just bad timing. Of the half dozen papers I worked for, the best was the Philadelphia Inquirer. The worst was the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont. When you enter the cavernous newsroom of the Inquirer, you pass by a wall festooned with pictures of reporters and editors who have won Pulitzers. It is a measure of my love of journalism that when I looked at these pictures, I usually reflected not on the prize-winning stories they reported, but on the clothes they were wearing. Look at them: All these gifted journalists, photographed at the very apex of their careers, and most of them are dressed like t
Read more

Wall Street and Willa Cather

Image
I've been reading My Antonia , Willa Cather's 1918 novel about growing up on the Nebraska prairie. It's a beautiful book, poignant and uplifting, full of characters who reflect the truth of life in all its joy and pain. It's also an instructive portrait of the time in America when explicit toil was required for mere survival, never mind success. I've been reading it against the background noise of Wall Street's collapse, men and women on CNN droning gravely about the consequences of greed, and the need to ensure that the greediest of all do not, in the end, go broke. It's a complex issue. It takes someone like Yale business student David Bledin, writing an op-ed for the Washington Post, to put a human face on the unfolding tragedy. You think you have it tough; think what it's like for Masters of the Universe-in-training who now rue the rigors involved in chasing a seven-figure salary: "... once I could afford to splurge on a Zagat-rated "$$$
Read more