16 Comments

1. Mother fucking Dolly Parton. More amazing everyday.

    

   Aesop’s ode…

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   • she can do everything!

     yeah sorry….i got bored

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2. I’m excited about the George and Tammy biopic. I’m a big fan of Michael Shannon, another local boy made good.

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3. I will drag the habes to eternity and back.

    

   Fuck her!

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   • Basically the best defense any of these apologists can come up with is that we shouldn’t complain about the hopelessly thin gruel she serves up hours late because at least there’s a gallon of it.

     She was in the White House while coup planning raged, and for all of her access we got nothing about it when it would have mattered. Either she was too dumb to recognize it, or too much of a hack to blow the whistle on it. Or some of both.

     As Covid was looming in the first months of 2020, she barely touched the issue, again either too dumb to see it or too much of a hack to blow the whistle on the deadly path where Trump was taking the country. Or some of both.

     Her defenders want us to be glad she occasionally jumps in after an issue is too big to ignore, and pretend we don’t know the difference between real reporting and the clean up duty she performs. Maybe they’re too dumb to see what she’s doing, or too hackish to blow the whistle on it. Or some of both.

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     • …this is a thing I consistently get confused by…I get that access is an asset to a reporter & nobody wants to sacrifice a potentially golden goose by burning that access for something when it might have led to something bigger in the future…but I also get that it’s generally considered important to verify facts by having at least one method of corroboration

       …so if you can corroborate it more than once there ought not to be any need to burn the avenue with access in order to introduce one or other of the two sources used to corroborate it as a means to put the story out if it’s something that ought to be a big deal

       …as the wapo piece mentions some of this stuff was reported in advance of the book pretty much as soon as she had it…but I don’t think that goes for everything in her case & it certainly hasn’t where some others are concerned

       …some things I could see holding back for color in the inevitable book…provided that they were by way of reinforcing something that was already known from more timely reporting

       …but the sheer number of things that have been selling points for books about the alleged administration which seem like they might have made a material difference to some pretty significant shit had they been made known more or less contemporaneously is baffling

       …on the one hand it seems like individually a lot of the people who wound up with book deals can’t have been blind to the ways that keeping quiet for as long as they did damaged the possibility that the thing would result in appropriate consequences…& on the other hand there seem to be so many people in that position that I don’t really see why any of them had any confidence that holding this stuff back wasn’t just an invitation for someone to scoop them

       …to a limited extent I could buy that the likes of haberman aren’t really reporters in the woodward & bernstein sense so much as the journalistic equivalent to a sports commentator…so her revelations mostly don’t seem to be as telling as some of the other stuff to have come out in books…& another observation offered in the wapo article is that some sources were willing to say things for a book they weren’t willing to say for a story that would be out soon enough to blow back on them while he held office, which passes the buck from reporter to source on the delay to some extent

       …but what really confuses me is who buys most of these books…mary trump’s or I guess bob woodward’s I could see picking up a copy of & actually reading…but haberman’s?

       …surely anything in it we don’t already know is going to get reported on now so there’s no need to actually pay to find out?

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       • I can see the argument for not risking your access for an sarly scoop on EPA funding or talk about divorce.

         But a worldwide pandemic that was expected to kill enormous numbers? A violent coup?

         People can quibble where the line should be drawn, but if preemptive  reporting on Covid and the Coup attempt didn’t count, then access is worthless.

         What’s more, any access agreement which runs one way — the reporter fluffs sources — instead of two ways — the source has to drop the spin when the reporter deems it a code red — is a nonsense agreement.

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         • …I don’t know that I’d advocate for anyone particular as an example of toeing it well…but I think there has to be some sort of line to be drawn between reporting the truth of what’s presented to you & reporting the truth in so far as it can be known

           …so I don’t think you can entirely obviate the need to, for example, convey what it is a president or a governor or whoever says even if you know it to be a dangerous misstatement…particularly in this day & age if that bullshit only comes up from sources who buy all the way into it then nobody trying to find out what the deal is will find anything that says otherwise when they look into it…so although I share the general sense of relief that barring the dotarded one from meaningful forms of social media has brought I don’t go so far as the folks who condemn people for putting bits & pieces of his drivel on truth social up on twitter or whatever

           …I guess for me haberman for the most part fulfills a similar function…& although I don’t recall exactly how she did or didn’t contextualize the fact he was blowing smoke about covid I think there were plenty of people picking up that slack

           …& to the extent that jan 6th was telegraphed I think something similar might be true…I know the stuff I was reading & listening to painted a pretty clear picture of it looking like something was going to come to a head somewhere between the result being called & biden taking office…& even some pretty specific suggestions about that date in particular from some way out…& honestly I’m impressed with the stamina of the people who wade through the crap that gets posted by intolerably intolerant people precisely because those kinds of folks did make what noise they could about what some of them aimed to get up to well in advance of things kicking off on the 6th

           …but…rightly or wrongly…my feeling is that it’s not implausible that someone with haberman’s “beat” might not have had the scoop on that in a way that would have provided any means to have prevented what happened…certainly not when people were ringing a variety of alarm bells about it & it didn’t prevent it…though it’s very possible it might have mitigated it

           …I guess I agree with the principle of what you’re saying…& I tend to agree that haberman begs some criticism…but I don’t think she’s been in a position to withhold much that could have moved the needle on its own…so I tend to think the crux of the problem is closer to being the part where the bulk of the overton window is deliberately filled from a poisoned well…since that’s a good part of what sets what pass for the rules of the game that school of reporting boils down to in at least some respects?

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     • Just as all Gawker bloggers aspire to be employed by New York Magazine, all New York Magazine writers aspire to be employed by The New York Times. The writer of this embarrassingly exculpatory piece is trying particularly hard.

        

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4. “Disconnect” is not a noun.  Thank you, that is all.

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   • I use disconnect as a noun regularly at work.

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5. There’s another book out about The Rolling Stones, called The Stone Age: Sixty Years Of The Rolling Stones. In it, the author claims that not only was Mick sleeping wiv our Keef, but also with the little remembered Mick Taylor, a guitarist with the band from 1969 to 1974. The Daily Mail, bless, regurgitated this “bombshell” and ran a photo of the Rolling Stones with this caption:

   Before the bombshell: The Rolling Stones pictured in Hyde Park, London back in 1969. Mick Taylor (white jacket) was the other bandmate in addition to Keith Richards (left, dark glasses) that allegedly had an affair with Mick Jagger (back left) in the band’s early days. Former bassist Bill Wyman (back right) has not been included in the rumors.

   You feel kind of bad for Bill Wyman, don’t you? It’s like being a third grader and the only one not invited to a classmate’s birthday party.

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   • Mick Taylor played on all of their best records.  Loveshaq and I saw him play with John Mayall.  I remember he played in bare feet.

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6. Just hanging out at the DMV with 46 other cranky people who need to renew licenses, get plates, etc.

   And the 4 employees stuck dealing with us

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   • I have to renew my plates this month myself, actually, but I’m planning to take advantage of the court-interpreting gig that I have in a town with less of a population than my neighborhood and get it done there. I’m just hoping that 46 other people don’t get the same idea.

     Not that I wouldn’t love to stop by and say hi, of course, because I’m assuming you’re still there: It’s just that I have to get ready to go to CVS to get my flu shot and COVID booster . . . and then work four hours after lunch to make up for taking off early the night before I leave for L.A. (I really hope today doesn’t suck.)

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     • Over an hour wait unfortunately. Luckily once I got to the counter it took less than 5 minutes.

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