Most of The Country
May Have Moved On,
But One 70ish Scribe
Emphatically Has Not

Just when you think the impending presidential election will finally prevent the Bush White house from starting any new hostilities shortly before the scheduled regime change in the U.S., a veteran reporter named Sy Hersh tears back the curtain again on what is perhaps history's most secretive American administration and shows the unpleasant realities at the heart of the corrupt Cheney co-presidency. The Veep and his henchmen continue to collectively motor on in their path of destruction right down to the last hour, as if it were one big cyborg sent from a future century to kill everything in its path.

In recent weeks, we witnessed far too much obligatory praise of the late Tim Russert and his supposedly fine, aggressive journalism. But I ask you--did official Washington really hold him close to its bosom and elevate him to a pedestal because he was adept at digging into its dirty laundry and challenging its basic assumptions as a member of the Fourth Estate, or because he subtly served as a megaphone for the conventional wisdom?

Since Russert's death, many have observed that the most serious kinds of journalists inspire not admiration so much as fear in their subjects. Sy Hersh is of course one of those kinds of reporters, and he has been for 40 years (since he broke the news of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam war, earning a Pulitzer prize in the process). This past week, he was at it again, breaking the news of secret Congressional approval of a new pot of money with which the White House can make trouble in Iran, possibly touching off a reaction that could be used as a pretext to make war on one more Middle Eastern nation. This splendid interview he did with Terri Gross on NPR's Fresh Air is a nice companion piece to the article. I hope you'll closely read and listen to them both when you have the time.

We've mentioned Sy Hersh several times in the past. We've perhaps implied it before, but let us be more explicit now: Seymour Hersh is a national treasure.

Odds & Ends

Our Short Memory. Gore Vidal, who's lived and written long enough to have just published his second memoir (here's his first), likes to call his native land The United States of Amnesia. But Los Angeles is perhaps even worse than the rest of the country. In a recent NYTimes piece, the acutely insightful urban historian Joel Kotkin had this observation about the city he's called home for the last 30 years: "Los Angeles is such a rapidly evolving city. There is an enormous turnover of people here. You talk to people about the '80s here and it's like you are talking about the Conquistidors."

Google Tends to Take the Path of Expediency. Adam Penenberg, a business writer turned journalism prof (who is credited with blowing the whistle on infamous New Republic plagiarizer Stephen Glass while at Forbes Magazine) has a great piece about Google in the current Mother Jones Magazine. He notes that the company bears keeping a close eye on, since it has better information on most people than even the infamous National Security Agency. He writes: "From the start, Google's informal motto has been 'don't be evil,' and the company earned credibility early on by going toe-to-toe with Microsoft over desktop software and other issues. But make no mistake. Faced with doing the right thing or doing what is in its best interests, Google has almost always chosen expediency." And speaking of Mother Jones, that article that I mentioned some time ago about Cleveland's foreclosure scandal (written by Penenberg's NYU colleague, journalism prof Alyssa Katz) is now online. Do read it when you can. It's an eye-opener. And while you're on that subject, you might also check out some great additional coverage by my favorite grassroots factsmonger, Bill Callahan, here.

Our National Tourette's Syndrome. I thought Time's James Poniewozik had one of the more interesting takes on the whole Michael "Kramer" Richards racial-rant affair. When combined with the latest Mel Gibson outrage, the scuttled O.J. Simpson book and other bizarre moments, he writes, "it's as if the U.S. were experiencing collective Tourette's, regurgitating decades of dutifully sublimated hate." He also makes a great point I'd never thought of: that our often-reflexive distrust of political correctness can sometimes get us in trouble. Speaking of the (what I consider lunatic) popularity of the Borat movie, he writes "it's reasonable to ask whether our culture has become so anti-p.c. that a racist comic can defend his rant, as Richards did, as going into character."

God Bless Sy Hersh. The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh is in his 70s, but you'd never know it by his astounding output. He fired away again last week with this rousing piece on the White House's plans for Iran, in which he explores whether the post-election ouster of Rumsfeld will only prove to be so much window dressing without a real corresponding change in policy. While the uneducated masses might consider his longtime rival Bob Woodward America's leading investigative reporter, more discriminating readers (I hope) understand that he's merely been playing the part for several years. Hersh, though, is the real deal. And it's his stamina (along with his moral seriousness) that sets him apart. I count 19 major articles carrying his byline in this New Yorker archive of post-9/11 coverage, and it may be missing a piece or two. The way he has uncovered what's really been happening behind closed doors in the capital for decades simply defies belief. I would argue that his relentlessness on this subject helped change the entire course of the American media's coverage of the war (as they tried their best to keep up with him), and thus influenced the elections and the course of history. There will never be another like him.

Why the New Yorker
Is As Good As It Gets

The current (April 17th) issue of the New Yorker will probably always be best remembered for "The Iran Plans," Seymour Hersh's latest masterpiece of reporting on the worst national security outrages by the Bush White House. Since its publication, it's made news everywhere, not so much because it broke the story that the adminstration is seriously gearing up for a war with Iran--the piece itself quotes from several earlier reports by such publications as the Washington Post to that effect--but because it brought all of the threads of this story together so forcefully and coherently, and of course also because the uniquely impressive body of Hersh's lifetime work stands behind it. For a comprehensive online archive of the magazine's coverage of the current Iraq conflict, which includes all of Hersh's work on the topic but so much more as well, click here. And you might also be interested in this piece from Foreign Policy magazine, which drew considerable traffic after Hersch mentioned it admiringly.

That article notwithstanding, one mark of the greatness of this magazine--despite my earlier cooing over The Atlantic, I still think the New Yorker remains, hands-down, the best magazine of all--is how it managed to publish in the same issue another equally memorable piece, a luminous profile of the folk singer Pete Seeger. It's written by staff writer Alec Wilkinson, who has a faintly unfamiliar byline, at least compared to many of his better-known colleagues in that murderer's row of a writing staff. But this latest piece is so wonderful, so deeply reported and delicately written, that I'll be sure to read everything I ever see again under that byline.

Since it's not online, and since I wouldn't want to ruin it for you anyway, I just want to give you a flavor of how good it is, in hopes that you'll go and find it somewhere (perhaps even subscribe to the magazine if you don't already). It contains one long and beautifully rendered paragraph that reads like a wonderful short profile within the larger profile. If you read nothing but this paragraph, you would still come away with a pretty good idea of the man.

Seeger is 86--he was born in May of 1919. He and his wife, Toshi, who is half Japanese, live in Beacon, New York, about sixty miles north of Manhattan. They have been married for more than 63 years. Their house is remote and surrounded by woods. Seeger chops wood almost every day and complains when he can't. The woods around the house are so clean that it is as if someone had gone through them with a broom. Trying to recall a name or a fact, he sometimes places his hand over his forehead and closes his eyes. When he speaks at any length, he tends to look into the middle distance, as if reading the words there. He has a sharp nose and full, round cheeks. His eyes are blue and heavily lidded and so small that he seems to be regarding a person from some remove. His conversation passes quickly from one subject to another, as if many things were occuring to him at once. He never aspired to a career as a singer, and he dislikes being so well known. Celebrity, he thinks, comes for most people at the expense of others, whose accomplishments are more practical and serious. He and Bruce Springsteen met several years ago, either at a tribute to Woody Guthrie or at the Grammys; Springsteen thinks the former, and Seeger the latter. Seeger is pleased that Springsteen, whom he regards as a friend, has recorded songs from his past--he thinks they're good songs, and he is gratified by the thought that people will hear them--but he is not looking forward to the mail and the attention that will follow. He has work he wants to do. He gets so many letters as it is that he can answer them only with postcards. His nature is almost unflaggingly hopeful, but a line of melancholy runs through it. Once, after a performance in Spain that didn't go well, he worte in a journal, "I seem to stagger about this agonized world as a clown, dressed in unhappiness, hoping to reach the hearts and minds of the young. When newspaper reporters ask me what effect my songs have, I try and make a brave reply, but I am really not so certain."

I love this passage for many reasons, not least among them because it manages to say something new and fresh about an iconic figure who's already been written about many times. But also because the language is stripped down and so clean. Bad and even mediocre writing tends to try to be fancy, while great writing such as this piece manages to evoke mental pictures through great observation and masterly selection of telling details. Pieces such as this work so well because they successfully do perhaps the hardest thing of all in writing--they usher the writer off stage and out of view, so that all of the attention is on the subject. It's a feat far harder to accomplish than it might sound. And Wilkinson carries it off with a light minimalist touch, nicely consistent with its subject, a simple man of quiet power and dignity. The article's ending may leave you in awe (at least it did with me). Just do yourself a favor and read it sometime.

Taking Up the Torch for a Dead Colleague

There was a touching piece in today's New York Times about the late David Halberstam, and how his work is being continued even after his death. It seems that some of his more famous writing comrades (including Bob Woodward, Sy Hersh and Joan Didion) are going to pitch in and donate their time this autumn in helping to do a book tour for his new, posthumously published book, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War. There's a pleasing symmetry to this story, the Times notes. Many years ago, after his friend, the writer Anthony Lukas, had died, Halberstam had arranged for some writing friends to represent Lukas's book at bookstores around Boston. Shortly after he died this spring in an auto accident, I wrote this tribute to Halberstam. The great one also spoke from beyond the grave in this powerful essay about the Bush White House's use and misuse of history, published in the August issue of Vanity Fair.

Character Sketches of McCarthy
Don't Get Any Better Than This

'McCarthy built his image as a farmboy and ex-Marine, a straight-shooter and plain-talker. America's brawler. 'You would,' observed Alice Roosevelt Longworth, 'be glad to have someone like Joe McCarthy on your side if you wee in a big row or a street fight. I think he'd throw paving stones very well-0awful things.' As a political property, McCarthy was self-made--self-invented, really--with somethign of the appeal of the compassionate charlatan, the type who bluffed you out and then let you in on the con. He could be funny--irreverant, iconoclastic--and, when you expected it least, generous and forgiving. In rigidly stratified Washington, he always kept treats in his pockets for the community's mutts--ex-FBI types, newspapermen and aides on the rise. Because he was a fraud and he knew it--relished it, capitalized on it, inflated it until it became his style. Challenged, he counterattacked, bullied drowned every studied refutation in a dense spray of countercharges. As a personal tactic, this worked for awhile, but as a strategy it was imbecilic. It destroyed him early, and undoubtedly he knew it would.'
--from an absorbing new book by journalist and historian Burton Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar--The Historic Face-Off Between the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover. Among the book's other virtues, it contains one of the best comprehensive treatments I've ever encountered of how family patriarch Joe Kennedy really accumulated his fortune, as well as a hilarious account of how the uncoordinated, non-swimming McCarthy fared poorly when invited to mingle with the Kennedy's at Hyanisport. According to the author, he briefly dated JFK's sister Eunice, who thought of him as an amusing form of "junk food after the Kennedy's restrictive diet."

Tuesday Stuff

Peace Festival. Did you know that activists have staged a peace festival in Cleveland the last few years, as a counter-demonstration to what they consider a militaristic Cleveland Air Show? Until recently, I didn't. Here's one leftie's account of this year's proceedings.

Parents of College Kids, Take Heart! Open source textbooks might one day deliver you from the outrageous prices for college textbooks.

Piercing Media Tropes. You've gotta love how the prolific Michael Lewis returns to his native New Orleans and vividly describes how different it is from the cartoonishly surface depictions you might have noticed in most media accounts. I especially enjoyed his lampooning of the fake storm reporting overseen by ABC's resident fake reporter, Charlie Gibson. Just the latest reminder of how TV, where it's increasingly only about the ratings, rarely gets even mildly complex stories right.

A New Addition to My Must-Read List. Do you want to know what's really going on with defense and foreign policy issues? Then I suggest you occasionally peruse Steve Coll's new blog on the New Yorker's website. He's the former managing editor of the Washington Post, author of two important books (which you'll find here and here) about Osama Bin Laden and related subjects, and now a staff writer for the magazine. With Sy Hersh writing far less than he used to, Coll has partially filled that vacuum.

Smarmy Joe. New York magazine nicely deconstructs one of America's smarmiest politicians, the oily and obnoxious Joe Lieberman. The good news is that McCain was talked out of naming him as his running mate at the last minute. That means he gets to return to the Senate, where the fate he's earned for himself awaits him: an outcast in his own party, but a man who can't really be respected by the Republicans either. At least we won't have to keep seeing that oily smile of his so much, as his national profile begins to slowly wane.

On Surges & Having the Last Laugh

Is the Surge Beginning to Work? The Economist lucidly explores that question this week. And because the authoritative British weekly has been a persistent, sensible critic of the Bush Administration's go-it-alone strategy in Iraq, I think it speaks with far more credibility than most publications. In any event, it's worth reading. Another persistent White House critic, former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith, offers his own take on the surge in this week's New York Review of Books. He notes that by depending on the neoconservatives for this latest idea, "Bush's continued reliance on them was, even more than the proverbial second marriage, the triumph of hope over experience."

Chris Lydon Gets the Last Laugh. A few years ago, Boston-based Chris Lydon got into a beef with his local NPR affiliate, Boston's WBUR, over who owned his show, beamed nationally (though only on a few stations, with a total audience of under a half-million listeners). The clash of wills with the station drew considerable media coverage, in part because of some of the eye-popping numbers (Lydon earned, and later walked away from, well over a quarter-million dollars in salary) for ostensibly "public" radio. This piece nicely describes the controversy. Lydon eventually moved on to Harvard, where he hatched a comeback. That became Radio Open Source, an interesting experiment in blending radio and the web (check out this program with the New Yorker's Sy Hersh). As the show itself describes it: "Open Source is a conversation, four times a week on the radio and any time you like on the blog. We designed the show to invert the traditional relationship between broadcast and the web: we aren’t a public radio show with a web community, we’re a web community that produces a daily hour of radio." Anyway, the happy ending just got written. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation, the same visionaries responsible for the annual "genius grants," have just awarded Radio Open Source a $250,000 grant. At least that should cover Lydon's stipend for the better part of a year (he says, jealously).