Ain't that the truth. Was: DR STRANGELOVE &c.
John Camp
>
> John Camp writes:
>
> Francis Muir says:
>
> Once upon a time, in the good old days, everyone knew that
> the press was yellow and that journalists were scum-bags
> - heck, they even knew themselves and somewhat delighted
> in it. Remnants of this pattern can be seen in the WORLD
> WEEKLY NEWS or whatever it is called; you know, the
> newspaper at the check-out stand with Newt Gingrich
> chatting up an alien, and a 400lb 2-yr-old infant on the
> next page. Now we see journalists have become pompous asses
> sickeningly full of hypocrisy.
>
> As a former journalist -- 20 years hard at it -- I might argue with
> the sweep of your generalization, but I understand the sentiment
> behind it and tend to agree. I will say, however, the New Yorker
> article about the Bloomsbury wankers that you so rhapsodically
> reviewed in this forum was written by a woman who is perhaps the
> most suspect of all American journalists, and has the court losses
> to prove it. She has been made to admit, under oath, and on many
> different points, that when she ran out of facts she simply made
> stuff up. That she still writes for the New Yorker detracts from
> the credibility of the entire magazine.
>
>Oh rubbish. Janet Malcolm's problem was that her defenders - an unfortunate
>lot - sought to idolize her as representing the New Journalism which was,
>however, no more than the Old Journalism writ large. Her proper defense
>should have been that no defense was necessary, since the medium is there
>to ebtertain, not indulge in the sort of rubbishy Search for Truth that you
>seem to believe in.
Janet Malcolm had a number of problems. The first was that she walked into the open
by attacking Joe McGinniss for what she claimed was a betrayal of the man McGinniss
was portraying in his book "Fatal Vision." The opening paragraph of Malcolm's book,
"The Journalist and the Murderer," reads: "Every journalist who is not too stupid
or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally
indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on peoples vanity, ignorance or
loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.
Horseshit. That is Malcolm's view because that is what *she* does. She subsequently
demonstrated her beliefs with a piece of character assassination in which she not only
remanufactured a living man into a fool, but made up quotes and entire *locations*
for the purposes of rendering him a fool. She did this so brutally that she had no
cover at all in her subsequent libel trial. Her problem wasn't that her defenders sought
to make her a New Journalist; her problem was that this was her *only* defense.
She had to argue that journalism was so corrupt and dishonest that she
only did what was to be expected. Her beliefs are adamantly not shared by a shrinking
majority (I think it's still a majority) of non-stupid, non-too-full-of-themselves
journalists. And I doubt that the victim of the assassination found it particularly
entertaining...
>Her article in the NEW YORKER was what it was, chiefly an
>essay on biographies and a critique on some other biographies, together
>with some gorgeous photos of Charleston and the magnificent daubs that
>Duncan Grant and, to a lesser extent, Vanessa Bell, created for it. Or
>are you arguing that the whole thing was a fake and Janet Malcolm painted
>everything herself in some gigantic spoof?
You and I do not disagree about the purposes of her article in the New Yorker, except
that I would argue that the woman has so completely demonstrated her dishonesty
that you literally cannot know that she ever visited Charleston, or that any of
her reactions are true. (That was the problem with the LA article -- the
victim had never gone with her to some of the restaurants described as places
where the interviews, which had not taken place, had taken place.) I would cite
the following passage in the article: "Taking notes proved impossible: after an
hour in the unheated house, I could no longer move my fingers...The cold brought my
thoughts to the winter of 1918-19, when Vanessa was in the house with Duncan and his
boyfriend David Garnett -- known as Bunny -- and Julian and Quentin and her newborn
baby by Duncan...." C'mon, it was too cold to write; with her fingers freezing, do
you really think her thoughts turned to 1918-19? I don't; I think she was writing the
way she thought Vanessa might write a letter.
We go halves on your description of Duncan Grant's paintings as magnificent daubs.
I agree with the "daubs" part. His efforts amount to not much more than thinly
talented imitations of Gauguin, with a bit of poor Matisse laquered onto his figures,
all about twenty years too late. Duncan Grant is to post-impressionism (there really
isn't a better place to put him, I suppose) as a Nash Rambler is to a Jaguar. Virginia
was the biggest talent in the group, and I consider her at best, among women scriveners,
to represent a halfway mark on the downward spiral from Emily Dickenson to Maya Angelou.
>How can you possibly say you
>"tend to agree with the sentiment behind my generalization" when everything
>you say from that point on shows you do not so agree at all?
I do generally agree with your characterization of journalists as becoming "Pompous
asses sickenly full of hypocrisy." Those of us who took seriously the
journalistic/political
arguments of the late 50s and early 60s, especially as regards civil rights -- who
believe that journalists must work to be both factual and fair, and who believe
that those qualities exist -- are far harsher in their judgments of current
journalism than anything reflected in what you have said so far.
> I have't read anything about Teller in the past couple of years, but
> there was something (maybe in the New Yorker a few years back, or
> maybe Atlantic; *not* by Janet Malcolm, I trust) ...
>
>Truly pathetic.
Hey, what's an occasional cheap shot among friends?
yr savant
>
With fond regards to your family, etc.
JC
What'd you think about the Maya Angelou line? Pretty good, huh? 8-)
Robert Teeter
ethics, it's interesting that she has taken to writing about dead people
like Sylvia Plath and the Bloomsbury-ites. Dead people don't sue.
--
Robert Teeter
rte...@netcom.com
Francis Muir
Francis Muir says:
seem to believe in. Her article in the NEW YORKER was what it was, chiefly an
essay on biographies and a critique on some other biographies, together
with some gorgeous photos of Charleston and the magnificent daubs that
Duncan Grant and, to a lesser extent, Vanessa Bell, created for it. Or
are you arguing that the whole thing was a fake and Janet Malcolm painted
everything herself in some gigantic spoof? How can you possibly say you
"tend to agree with the sentiment behind my generalization" when everything
you say from that point on shows you do not so agree at all?
I have't read anything about Teller in the past couple of years, but
there was something (maybe in the New Yorker a few years back, or
maybe Atlantic; *not* by Janet Malcolm, I trust) ...
Truly pathetic.
yr savant