CSotD: The Boy Who Cried Wolff
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Leading with Mike Thompson's cartoon because he takes advantage of one of the most astonishing press briefings to emerge from an astonishing White House.
In case you missed it, that insufferable teacher's pet that Dear Leader puts in charge when he leaves the room explained the objection to "Fire and Fury" thus:
“The president believes in making sure that information is accurate
before pushing it out as fact, when it certainly and clearly is not.”
The only thing left to debate is whether this surpasses (the real) Mayor Daley's explanation of the police riot at the Democratic Convention, "Gentlemen, let's get the thing straight, once and for all. The policeman isn't there to create disorder; the policeman is there to preserve disorder."
I, personally, am relieved to know that the president makes sure he verifies that information is certainly and clearly not fact before he pushes it out, and her mangled syntax is almost as delightful as her choice of verbs.
Marty Two Bulls is not the only cartoonist who has been out ahead of her on that metaphor.
Big Sis is rarely such a font of unintentional merriment, but I suppose that, like Mayor Daley, every once in a while you slip up under pressure and tell the truth.
Meanwhile, Clay Bennett provides a peek inside the West Wing with this cartoon.
There's been a rush of people claiming they didn't say what Wolff says they said.
The problem with that is that, when it all fits together, denials seem weak.
For instance, Tony Blair denies that he tipped Trump off that British intelligence was watching him, but, then again, would you expect him to confirm it? "Why, yes, indeed, I often disclose what MI6 is up to. Fascinating chaps!"
And some working in the White House understandably believe that, if they admitted to saying what they're quoted as saying, they would no longer be working in the White House.
But the main issue is this:
It's not so much that we have any great reason to believe Wolff. It's that we have, at latest count, 1,950 reasons to disbelieve Donald Trump.
Virginia Heffernan has a brilliant analysis of the whole thing in the LA Times, and I have to say that, for someone who never pounded the street as a reporter, she sure does know how it works.
For example:
It’s clear that Wolff uses all manner of sleight of hand — tricks common to a more reckless period in 20th century magazine journalism — to generate operatic effects in “Fire and Fury.” The dialogue, for example, is suspiciously Netflix-ready, although Wolff claims to have reported all from what he told New York was his “semi-permanent seat on a couch in the West Wing.” He conducted about 200 interviews with capricious flakes, and Wolff also has some skeletons in his sourcing closet that someone’s bound to drag out.
There is a rule in reporting that, even if a question is outrageous and answering it would be career suicide, you should ask it anyway, because you never know.
Even if your interviewee is not a capricious flake.
I interviewed Alan Shepard shortly after the release of "The Right Stuff," in which Tom Wolfe depicted him as "Smilin' Al," the hard-drinking married playboy.
So we talked about trusting your life to technology and so forth until I had enough for a story if he were offended and ended our interview.
Then I asked him about "The Right Stuff" and he not only didn't walk away but gave me a good 20 minutes on the topic.
I imagine Michael Wolff had some similar surprises.
This dovetails nicely with another of Heffernan's observations:
Say what you will about Wolff: Unless the book is wholesale invention, something in his I’m-with-the-band swagger in the West Wing attracted awesomely sordid material from Trump’s scurvy syndicate.
Being a familiar sight among people who are not PR professionals can be lethal for them and productive for you.
I often sat in the corner at meetings where the talk would get informal and loose and then someone would suddenly shut up, everyone would pause, turn and look at me, and then they'd all laugh because they knew I wasn't going to burn them.
Unless I did.
At which point they would admit that they knew I was there, they knew what I did for a living and they knew nothing is off the record unless we all agree it is.
If officers of some tiny chamber of commerce in the middle of nowhere can figure this out, I'd expect the White House staff to know it.
But the bottom line is this:
When you lie all the time, not only are you estopped from calling anyone else a liar, but who would believe you anyway?
The book, by the way, is fascinating and, however you feel about Kindle, it never sells out of copies. I expect to finish reading it this weekend.
Juxtaposition of the Day
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(We ain't none of us getting any younger, and cartoonists can't help but reflect that, I suppose.
Susan's New Years Resolution was to stop being so uptight and give herself permission to make mistakes. And she's at an age where you have to ask if the pleasure is worth the pain. I'm gonna guess Harv hasn't quite hit that stage or he would understand how indulgence and mistake become the same thing.
Orville, meanwhile, is happily embedded in the culture, in which more is better and the point of eating is to see how much you can take. Not only do they offer massive things that are free if you can finish them, but it's not enough to have Tabasco: It must be ghost peppers, because food is a test, not simply a meal.
Best have some salted caramels for dessert, because we barely get enough fat and sugar in our diets as it is, and what we really need is more sodium.
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