CSotD: It’s always only business
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Trump's announcement that he will not be attending the White House Concubines Association Dinner provides a sort of Juxtaposition of the Day:
(Trump)
I'll give him this: He's gracious in his tweet, the mark of a businessman who has been around the barn a few times. I wish he'd bring those social skills to the job more often.
Which is to say, he's bullshitting, but it's polite bullshit and not intended to fool anyone but merely to provide an acceptable cover.
In the business world, that's how the game is played. Trust me: I've been there.
I had been pondering this upcoming event the other day and thinking what a good opportunity it would be — given Trump's open warfare on journalists — to finally put this ego-driven display of Beltway sycophancy out of its misery, perhaps with media companies simply making a no-show donation to the scholarship fund rather than ponying up to show off their lack of distance from their sources and their extraordinary distance from us.
But Guido Kühn makes a valuable point, which is that a bully is also a coward.
That's not something you can always rely on as a safeguard on the playground or in the press: Some bullies truly are powerful and you can find yourself on the right side of truth and on the wrong side of an ass-kicking.
And Dear Leader is a hero to a significant bloc of people who wish they had the power to be playground bullies, though, if he continues to alienate people at the rate he's gone so far — dope smokers and sports fans this week — he may find himself standing on a very small island with his little bitty hands over his eyes and his long tie hanging out.
Still, in the Race to Disgrace, he's way behind the preening, tone-deaf media stars who are egregiously out of tune with the 98% of Americans who don't live in the DC metro area. (Don't waste your time, too: I did the look-up and there are 319 million people in the US and 6 million in the DC metro area.)
I'm not against journalists mingling with sources, but it's best done on both sides with a light and cautious touch, and I say that as someone who once owned and fed a snapping turtle.
I liked him, but he was neither slow nor affectionate,
nor would it have been wise to piss him off.
When I was a business writer, one of the annual affairs to be covered was the Chamber of Commerce's yearly banquet, and I also attended the Home Builders Association monthly meetings and various Chamber mixers, all this in addition to sitting quietly in the corner at the chamber's executive board meetings.
Here's what kept it kosher: Everybody knew what I did for a living and so did I.
There were times at the executive board meetings when they'd start talking about an issue and someone would begin to speak a bit freely, then suddenly stop as they all turned to look my way.
Then they'd burst into laughter and continue with a little more discretion.
I also remember one year at the banquet when I was at a table with a powerful town supervisor — think Spencer Tracy in "The Last Hurrah" — and we started chatting about a controversial road to the Lake Champlain ferry he'd been pushing for years.
All I could think of was that I couldn't use any of it unless I could get the old fox to say it again on the record.
Which wasn't gonna happen, but knowing all that stuff you couldn't use made it much easier to get useable material because you knew what to ask and you knew when you were being bullshat.
That's the value of schmoozing with sources: As with the snapping turtle, you build a trust based on familiarity, not on friendship.
A certain tact was required. The executive director of the chamber and I used to meet about once a month for lunch to touch base and gossip, exchanging insights from her world and mine, but we did it at the food court in the mall.
Had we been seen in a booth at a restaurant, it would have signaled a Meeting.
Nobody schedules Meetings in the food court, so our being there was obviously a random encounter at lunch hour and nothing significant in the least.
Still, everybody knew the rules. When people came up to say hello, we'd invite them to join us, but they never did, because you don't.
And that's the problem with the WHCA dinner: They purposely draw gaudy attention to themselves, and bring in guests who don't belong.
Bad things happen when you forget the rules.
I was doing a Sunday biz-section story about shrinkage — minor theft losses — and a restaurant/hotel owner talked about losing silverware and various knick-knacks from the place and then told me a very funny story about missing bottles of good wine and discovering un-rented but messed up hotel rooms that led back to a night manager and a night custodian.
After it appeared in print, he called me to complain that he thought that he'd only told me that last part after the interview was over.
But he was simply venting and sheepishly admitted, "Yeah, I know, I know, it's never off the record unless we agree it's off the record."
It wasn't so funny the time something came up at a meeting which I couldn't pretend not to hear and which nobody would ever repeat on the record.
The aftermath involved my friend from the food court in tears, one board member sending me a note that said, "By God, you can write!" and the wife of another spinning on her heels in the grocery store to avoid having to pass me in the aisle, my friendship with her and her husband irretrievably shattered.
I'm sorry it happened, but I don't regret it.
Everybody knew the rules.
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