Word of the end of Gawker (by the New York Timeshere and by me here) turns out to have been premature. Its nasty crab antics continue unabated.
Before its prematurely announced demise, in April 2007, Emily Gould (then a Gawker writer and at the time a good [read: viciously-anti-celebrity and anti-elitist] ideological fit with Choire Sicha and head honcho Denton) went on Larry King Live (hosted by Jimmy Kimmel that night) to defend the “Gawker Stalker” feature (which encourages people to write in with their celebrity sightings) as “citizen journalism”; she stated that celebrities were rich enough to defend themselves against unwanted scrutiny, and in any case, she suggested, they had invited exactly such scrutiny because they had wanted to be famous and become celebrities).
Gould was very young (25 or so), and she has since recanted (sorta; she hasn’t really been deprogrammed. Now that she herself has become a target of the crab antics she herself once practiced at Gawker, she seems to regret her participation but doesn’t ever apologize; indeed, some in the media accused her of continuing to malign people in order to build herself up. Others tried to explain to long-suffering “women writers” why Emily Gould (the wrong person, and role model) became famous while they continued to suffer in unpublished silence and while they witnessed the reputation of “bloggers”—all of them—being tarnished by this little exhibitionist.
[T]he piece reminded me of much of the “new journalism” of the 1960’s. One of the principal sources of that kind of writing was Esquire magazine, which in those days was the most exciting and interesting magazine in the world, unlike the superficial and irrelevant waste of paper it has since become. The modus operandi of the editor, Harold Hayes, as he himself described it, was to contract the best writers in the country and let them write about anything they wanted. The result was a vibrant voice that no publication has achieved since.
For years I’ve yearned for some contemporary equivalent — a source of insightful, perceptive writing illuminating the times we live in. Your NYT piece is precisely that. And I love it. At nearly 69, I’ve felt tremendously deprived not to be able to enter the world your generation lives in via the observations and insights of one of its members. (That was what the “new journalism” and especially the Esquire of the 1960s and very early ’70s provided for my generation. Your piece, for instance, reminds me a little of James Baldwin’s account of his relationship with Norman Mailer, “The Black Boy Looks At The White Boy.” Much of the best of that Esquire can be found in the wonderful, voluminous collection the magazine put out at the end of the ’60s, Smiling Through The Apocalypse.) I’m so grateful to have discovered a writer who again unlocks my mind and opens my eyes and takes me into the world she inhabits.
If you wouldn’t associate your real name with a comment or you wouldn’t express those same ideas in person, given the opportunity, chances are you’re a cowardly asshole who should keep his or her thoughts to him or herself.
So that’s a good bit of the backstory, if you’re still following along. (It’s trying, I know.)
Denton asserts (in not so many words) that his vicious attempted takedowns of a new “media elite” are the essence of journalism: the public’s right to know [e.a.]:
@Choire: The entangling of literary, journalistic and romantic relationships is a topic worthy of Gawker. You can’t understand how the media works unless you know who dated whom. Every job, every magazine commission, every anonymous quote, every resentment-they can only be fully understood if you know that X went to school with Y who introduced them to Z who commissioned X to write that magazine piece which turned into a book contract lined up by Y’s former lover. When you and I chat over lunch, that’s how we talk. Why should all this information be reserved for the private conversations of media insiders? That’s why Gawker exists: to put all of that invaluable social information out on the web and make the media machine a little less monolithic and intimidating than it can so often seem.
Now: I have written before about gossip as the ultimate weapon of the powerless against the powerful.
[[See Joshua Gamson’s book Claims to Fame and this post about Angelina Jolie, and this one, if you want to understand where I’m coming from with my celebrity obsession. It’s the scholarly approach, ha ha. And see how Gawker calls out Glenn Greenwald for getting on his high horse about The Politico. And see why gossip is good for us. Also: read Scorpion Tongues, by Gail Collins, former editorial-page editor of the New York Times, on how gossip has always been a weapon of the powerless against the privileged. And watch this space to see if I get it together to write up a more graceful version of my neat little theory about whyinfotainment rules.]]
[G]ossip has traditionally been a weapon of the powerless against the powerful [which is one reason I do not criticize infotainment–i.e., institutionalized gossip–but rather accept it; in the media age, gossip may be even a more potent weapon than ever against the powerful] , as Gail Collins wrote in her entertaining and informative book Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity, and American Politics [e.a.]:
For much of human history, [gossip] was one of the few weapons available to the powerless: servants who spread stories about their masters, peasants who irreverently speculated about the most private aspects of life in the manor. … In American history, gossip has sometimes been a reaction against heavily marketed politicians who voters might suspect were being thrust upon them against their will.
But minor media and literary celebrities like Emily Gould and Keith Gessen do not exactly pose the same threat to the people (who do indeed have a right to know) as do “heavily marketedpoliticians” (who may eventually assumepositions from which they can perpetrate much harm on the electorate, and the country). So: invective about such minor celebrities under the guise of “media gossip”—even if it’s confined to the minuscule world of people who wish they too could be similarly celebrated—is hardly in service of the right of the people to know.
It’s “only”gossip—hurtful to those gossiped about and delightful to those who love gossip. The perfect gossip item, as Denton was quoted by the NYT as saying, is:
something triggered by a quote at a party, or an incident, or a story somewhere else and serves to expose hypocrisy, or turn conventional wisdom on its head.
New-media “gossip” is (formerly private but amusing and Schadenfreude-laced) dinner-party conversation released into the bloodstream of the internet, where it lives forever, as David Frum noted four years ago for New York magazine:
Frum was merely working with the rumors [about John Kerry] that everyone else was spreading around. That’s how opinion culture has evolved, and it’s been enabled by the Internet. Who cares if you’re wrong? As it happens, Frum says he does.
“I regret it,” he says now. “I read it in the paper, I heard it gossiped about, but I didn’t do anything like reporting. I joked about it on the Internet in a way I would at dinner. Then I learned the Net is like print, not like dinner.”
The “Net is like print, not like dinner [conversation].” Those sound like immortal words, right? Four years later, tell them to MayhillFowler, or to Arianna Huffington, both of whom have had an impact on the political campaigns of presidential hopefuls with their passing on of “dinner party” gossip.
For his part—and damn the consequences—Gessen is fighting back. He’s not fighting the gossip, mind you; he seems inured to that. He’s fighting for hisliteraryreputation, and against ad-hominem invective (masquerading as literary criticism) written by cretins:
Nick Denton, you fucking ninny: Everyone went to the same six schools. Everyone has dated everyone. Now what? What have you got now? Because once we grant you that, you actually have to start making aesthetic and moral distinctions between actual written texts. And you don’t know how to do that anymore. Because you’re a pissy little gossip. Your brain was once trained to think and write, and you’ve gone and turned it to mush. You don’t even put commas in the right places, much less think straight.
And Choire—I like you, I think you’re a good guy, you have a good written style—and yet I’m afraid the same goes for you. Choire, the trouble is not that Gawker makes insinuations. The trouble is that Gawker doesn’t know what it’s talking about. Just like you, when you write about books you haven’t read [he's referring to this "review" ---ed.]
*** And she has performed a public service for readers of the New York Times like my elderly mother, who keep hearing about blogs and blogging. In her immortal words: “I don’t understand why anyone would publish their private thoughts like that, and I don’t know who cares about this silly girl’s story. But now I finally understand what this blogging is all about!”)
Randi Rhodes agrees with Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro on everything - abortion, health care, climate change, you name it. Yet the first is “a f***ing whore” and the second is “David Duke in drag” merely because they disagree on which Democratic senator would make the best president. …
There’s something rather heartening about this for those of us on the right who’ve been on the receiving end of the left’s vehemence: Apparently there really is nothing personal about it. You can be a chickenhawk warmonger racist homophobe mysogynist Bush shill or a pro-feminist pro-gay pro-black icon of progressive politics for a generation, but, if you cross the likes of Randi Rhodes, you’re all the same and you merit the same four-letter words and KKK slurs.
I can see why Steyn would be comforted to know that his critics are irrational by definition and not just mad at him. But that doesn’t help us, as a country and as a society, deal with the dime-store demagoguery that now characterizes our public “discourse.”
Demagogues of all stripes should be discouraged, marginalized, de-fanged, deligitimized, and brought down. They’re dangerous in any society, because they stir up mob sentiment.
While we’re waiting for a John Le Carré -caliber*** thriller writer to emerge who is talented enough to address the war on terror, let me direct you toward twoposts (and their comments sections) over on the Belmont Club.
Long live the blogosphere!
————-
*** Le Carré has turned into an anti-American political crank, but his Smiley novels were deeply satisfying entertainments. And The Spy Who Came in from the Coldis one of the most astute books ever written about the moral compromises foisted on people by Soviet-style totalitarianism.
I’m as stumped as everyone else about the NIE report on Iran’s nuclear status. Essentially, our intelligence agencies have done a 180 since 2005.
What could account for such a turnaround? Right now, there are too many variables to consider to make sense of it all. Most interesting to me has been the reaction abroad, reported by the NYT’s Elaine Sciolino:
Of the three Western European governments involved in diplomacy with Iran — France, Britain and Germany — Germany seemed to cast the American assessment in the most positive light. … Of the three Western European governments involved in diplomacy with Iran — France, Britain and Germany — Germany seemed to cast the American assessment in the most positive light. … The French Foreign Ministry said there would be no comment until Tuesday….
Then there’s Israel:
In Israel, officials said there would be no official response on Monday.
But a senior Israeli official said that “the Israeli government is familiar with the report,” and that Iran was a major topic of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s meeting with President Bush last Wednesday, after the Annapolis meeting.
The official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the subject, said Israel remained extremely concerned. “We think there is enough information in the report to give a strong factual basis to our very real concerns about the Iranian nuclear program,” the official said.
Iran Welcomes U.S. Report While Paris Wants More Sanctions
The remarks of one European are the most interesting of all, revealing cui bono[e.a.]:
A European security source familiar with intelligence on Iran said the change of American stance was welcome, and would undermine the position of U.S. hawks.
“The American agencies have in essence come closer to the position of the European ones,” the source said.
“I think a political process (in dealing with Tehran) is more of an option than what we’ve perhaps been seeing from the hawks in the United States, the positioning for a military attack on Iran and so on.”
The official said there was “no definitive proof either way” as to whether Iran had halted a nuclear arms program in 2003. “And … we keep seeing (Iranian) procurement attempts in Europe … to acquire proliferation-relevant material.”
So: No one is saying that Iran hasn’t halted its nuclear ambitions. In fact, there’s ample evidence they’re very energetic on behalf of their larger program. The question is: why release this report now? cui bono?
Obviously: those who want to take military action against Iran off the table, and to thoroughly discredit Iran hawks. So it looks like a massive political hit job.
But there are so many other possibilities: maybe Iran did shut down its “nuclear arms effort” in 2003, as the NYT says in its headline–and that it did so out of fear, in reaction to Bush’s invasion of Iraq, and that it has simply been doing a lot of chest-pounding for a couple of years as a diversionary tactic. There’s also the possibility, of course, that the NIE is dead wrong.
Upshot: I’m stumped but deeply suspicious. This doesn’t pass the smell test. Occam’s razor (the simplest answer) would indicate that the NIE was wrong in 2005 and is right in 2007. It just doesn’t wash, though.
Norman Podheretz takes time out of his 24/7 job counseling that the U.S. bomb Iran to answer a charge brought by Andrew Sullivan and now spread further by The Economist:
Linking to the Economist post, Sullivan accuses me of intellectual dishonesty for failing to admit that I have made an “error” in relying on a “bogus quotation” to bolster my argument that if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, it would not be deterred from using them by the fear of retaliation.
I do not usually bother responding to Sullivan’s frequent attacks on me, which are fueled by the same shrill hysteria that, as has often been pointed out, deforms most of what he “dishes” out on a daily basis. But in this case I have decided to respond because, by linking to a sober source like the Economist, he may for a change seem credible.
The Economist concludes its piece by challenging Amir Taheri to produce “the original source for this quote.”
In response to a query from me, Mr. Taheri has now met that challenge.
Taheri, whose reliability has come under suspicion before, says the remark was purged or censored or removed in subsequent editions of the book. I have no independent way of confirming any of this. Taheri, it should be noted, was the source of the story that Iran had recently required that Jews wear yellow stars in public, a story that was subsequently debunked.
Well, I hate to say it, but The Economist ’s counter-translator, Shaul Bakhash of George Mason University, also seems compromised—not at all an disinterested party. He’s the husband of the Iranian American scholar Haleh Esfandiari, who was detained in Iran this past year and, under great international pressure, released. I wouldn’t be surprised if Iranian agents haven’t put tremendous pressure on both Esfandiari and Bakhash to toe the line.
Once Haleh was arrested, however, silence was no longer an option. It is preposterous that she is accused of conspiring to overthrow the Iranian government by organizing conferences and encouraging dialogue between Iranians and Americans. The Wilson Center issued a fact sheet; Lee Hamilton, its president and director, held a news conference; and I began to speak openly about Haleh’s frightening predicament.
The extraordinary media attention, as well as the support for Haleh from presidential candidates and political leaders, from scholars and academic associations, from the students at Princeton University who she taught to love the Persian language, from women’s groups, human rights organizations and people everywhere have astonished and gratified her family and friends.
It is easy to feel powerless in the face of a state’s overweening power — especially a state that arrests, incarcerates and accuses its citizens at will. But the events of the last few weeks — the universal condemnation Iran has earned by imprisoning Haleh and others — have taught me that people also have power when they condemn injustice and stand up for wronged individuals. Is the Iranian government listening?
Americans are too naive about Iran, and about the Middle East. It’s time to get with the program.
Here’s the background to the Norman Mailer–Norman Podhoretz “feud” that Andrew Sullivanso generously alluded to and so stingily failed to provide the context for. (Every story has at least two sides.):
In taking a critical stand on the Berkely [Free Speech Movement] uprising, we did not deny the reality of the grievances against the university that had presumably caused the trouble. Nor did we deny the need for changes in the way Berkeley, and the American educational system in general, operated. That would have been the conservative or right-wing position. What we did deny was that the situation had become so bad that nothing less than revolution could possibly do any good. We thought that Berkeley was a fundamentally sound institution that should and could be improved without resort to “tactics of force and disruption” and the rhetorical violence that always seemed to accompany tactics of that kind. …
[We were served notice] that to deviate from [the Movement party line], then, even gently, was at a minimum to risk abuse and to open oneself up to the most insulting interpretation of one’s motives.
This too was reminiscent of the experience of our intellectual elders in the thirties….
In the sixties things were a bit different, but what s ome were later to think of as the “terror” also came into play then. The word “terror,” like everything else about the sixties, was overheated. No one was arrested or imprisoned or executed; no one ws even fired from a job. … The sanctions of this particular reign of “terror” were much milder: one’s reputation was besmirched, with unrestrained viciousness in conversation and, when the occasion arose, by means of innuendo in print. People were written off with the stroke of an epithet—”fink” or “racist” or “fascist” as the case may be—and anyone so written off would have difficulty getting a fair hearing for anything he might have to say. Conversely, anyone who went against the Movement party line soon discovered the likely penalty was dismissal from the field of discussion.
Seeing others ruthlessly dismissed in this way was enough to prevent most people from voicing serious criticisms of the radical line, and—such is the nature of intellectual cowardice—it was enough in some instances to prevent them even from allowing themselves to entertain critical thoughts. The “terror,” in other words, could at its most effective penetrate into the privacy of a person’s mind. But even at its least effective, it served to set a very stringent limit on criticism of the radical line on any given issue or at any given moment. A certain area of permissible discussion and disagreement was always staked out, but it was hard to know exactly where the boundaries were; one was always in danger of letting a remark slip across the border and unleashing the “terror” on one’s head. …
They were afraid of what might be said about them … and not only to their faces but behind their backs when they would be unable to defend themselves and when, as they knew all too well from their own reluctance to defend others against such insulting charges, there would be no one else to stand up for them either. …
Of course one could recant and be forgiven; or alternatively one could simply speak one’s mind and let the “terror” do its worst. Yet whatever one chose to do, the problem remained. …
[In 1968] the new radicalism was riding so high that it was in no mood for anything but allegiance, praise, and flattery. This had been enough, and more than enough, to frighten William Phillips. but what was more surprising, and more significant, it was even enough to intimidate Norman Mailer, whom Phillips commissioned to write the piece for Partisan Review about Making It.
The author of these words is Norman Podhoretz. This is from his book Breaking Ranks (1979).
I would add two things:
One: Norman Mailer has said (I can’t find the reference, but I will) that judging a man by his politics is like looking at him from the perspective of his asshole. He and Podhoretz were friends, and that Mailer tried to keep up the friendship after this, Podhoretz reports. Under the circumstances, the friendship withered.
Two: Podhoretz went on to have a magnificent career, and a profound impact on two generations of thoughtful, politically engaged Americans—as did Norman Mailer.
The U.S. Congress wants to ban use of the terms “war on terrorism” and “Long War.” I have no dog in that fight, just so long as they understand it—and explain it and contend with it—as a war, in which the American public must be engaged.
I don’t know who dreamed up the distasteful and repellent tactic of allowing the 15 British military personnel held hostage by Iran to sell their stories to the voracious British press, but I do know that the person who gave it his okay understands reality, the war, and the stakes.
The 15 Royal Navy personnel held captive by Iran are to be allowed to sell their stories to the media.
The Ministry of Defence said their experiences amounted to “exceptional circumstances” that allowed its usual ban on such payments to be lifted.
Politicians and military commentators have attacked the move, warning the crew may lose public sympathy. …
Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox said: “Many people who shared the anxiety of the hostages’ abduction will feel that selling their stories is somewhat undignified and falls below the very high standards we have come to expect from our servicemen and women.”
I haven’t had time to think this through yet—it is an extraordinary turn of events. The British wartime government has decided to allow information to go deliberately out of its control. Clearly, it is a calculated strategy. To me, it looks bold, daring, risky, cunning, deeply cynical, and clever. Let us hope that it’s not too clever.
The notion of an “information war” is not limited to the battlefield of the Middle East. Increasingly, politics will be fought through PR-Bordering-on-Propaganda.
Well, if you’re Hezbollah’s would-be rock star Hassan Nasrallah, you soften your tone, admit to mistakes, cop to your own international support, clarify your opponents’ failures and your own heroism. Oh yes, and you project your 40-foot-high image on the wall of a government building so that no Lebanese need miss your TV interview.
Hizbullah supporters gathered near the government house watch on a giant screen Nasrallah speaking during an interview on Hizbullah’s Al-Manar television, in Beirut, Lebanon. Photo: AP
by Jane Friedman. Those are the only facts we know—that her relationship with the HarperCollins division of NewsCorp is over, and that HarperCollins is taking over the very profitable Regan Books.
Eat the Press reports that it’s unclear if Regan has also been fired from NewsCorp. It doesn’t look that way, although Murdoch is certainly keeping her at arm’s length. My guess is that he’s not quite ready to let her go—she’s been a cash cow—but that the “ill-considered” O.J. project continued to reverberate inside his world in such a way that Regan had to be repudiated.
You can’t get more cynical than I am about the media and the public’s voracious voyeuristic appetite for the grotesque—particularly as we’re living in an era of almost incomprehensible horror, in which beheaders videotape their handiwork and broadcast it across the globe—but the term “shocks the conscience” was made for the O.J. project. Not only was the project offensive; Regan’s “explanation” of why she did it was equally offensive, because it was utterly implausible.
I still maintain that a culturally/socially comparable project in Britain would not have caused this kind of stir in Britain, where tabloid excess is considered first-rate entertainment, as I just mentioned here. In America, however, the Puritan spirit not only lives and breathes, it spits fire. (I’ve noted the trend for the last four or five years, and hope to explore this in depth…someday, when I get the time…because it’s central to my “infotainment rules” thesis.)
When it became public, the O.J. project stained everyone inside HarperCollins, offended everyone at Fox, and made NewsCorp look bad (yes: that’s possible). Curiously, Murdoch removed the stain from himself and NewsCorp rather easily, I thought. The talking heads gave him credit for pulling the plug. Fox got off, too.
Jane Friedman, however, works in a more rarefied atmosphere: the “publishing world.” Despite the fact that Publishers Weekly got behind her, Friedman was stained by the project. She approved it. Worse, she stained her employees with it, because, reportedly, she would brook no internal criticism about it while it was in process. She was called out on that unpardonable offense as soon as the scandal broke: HarperCollins started leaking like a sieve. Finally, she stained the authors who are associated with HarperCollins. In publishing, you really don’t want to do that: it’s bad for business. She stained the publishing world.
And the only remedy was to get rid of the proximate cause: Judith Regan. Actually, it’s a cheap way to remove “the problem” from the “publishing world,” where Regan is “an embarrassment,” as they say in polite society, and “everyone” loathes her anyway. Friedman even comes out ahead—she gets rid of a longtime thorn in her side, scores PR points (even if belatedly), and the profits from Regan Books’ coffers plump up her bottom line.
It’s surely not the last we’ve heard of Judith Regan, though. Stay tuned.
"Even in the most civilized societies the demagogues are
always in wait, ready and testing. They are indefatigable and we will never entirely prevail over them. And that is OK.
But if we stop resisting them, they will prevail over us. And that is not OK."
Nick Denton at 01:20 PM on 06/05/08
