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Simon's new column
http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=45630
CONFESSION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL
Who's Afraid of Going to Jail
July 25, 2005
QwikFIND ID: AAQ77Y
By Simon Dumenco
So I've been thinking that all the ongoing obsession with
off-the-record sourcing and White House leakery has to do with our
post-modern, irony-fueled, all-too-knowing discomfort with marketing:
the fact that we almost always see past the intended message and sense
the machinery of mass manipulation grinding away.
We're used to the idea that everything and everyone's for sale, that
everyone's always selling something or trying to pull a fast one on
us. So when journalists earnestly listen to the whispers of their
double super-secret background sources -- whether Ahmad Chalabi (Mr.
Weapons of Mass Destruction) or Karl Rove -- it seems so oddly
old-fashioned, so retrograde. As if there were any objective narrators
or reliable narrators, on- or off-the-record, left in the great
American consumer/sociopolitical storyline.
We forget sometimes that journalism is just part of the larger
infotainment-marketing ecosystem, wherein bits of information are
being bought and sold to advance the sale of goods and services (in
the traditional economy) or other bits of information (in the
information economy). Journalists especially tend to be in denial
about this, preferring to think of themselves as trafficking solely in
The Truth, which is why, when they're smacked out of their stupor upon
learning of duplicitous, scheming sources, it's always poignant and
more than a bit pathetic. A journo's job description often seems to
boil down to choosing between being a compliant stenographer of
on-the-record blather or being a daredevil who risks it all by putting
some faith -- imagine that, faith! -- in off-the-record sources.
Step back for a minute, and it doesn't take too much imagination to
see the off-the-record source or the leaker as nothing more than a
viral marketer: someone who is trying to bypass the usual channels of
pontification -- formal statements, press releases and the like -- to
attempt to get a message into the mainstream through a back channel.
The problem is, if the official message is dubious, then the
unofficial message is even more dicey. We've long ago learned that the
spin, the counter-spin and the secret spin are all on the same
perilously unreliable continuum. (Even Mark "Deep Throat" Felt is, in
the current revisionism, not so much a heroic steward of democracy,
but a careerist bitter about getting passed over for a promotion and
therefore out to get Nixon.)
Since the rising consensus seems to be that journalists can't have, or
be trusted with, secrets -- only the government can (not counting Karl
Rove) -- I've decided to tell all, even before I get subpoenaed.
You know why? `Cause I don't want any secrets anymore. You can have
your stinking secrets! For the next few paragraphs I'm going
full-frontal regarding my confidential sources. You heard me: In a
historic coming clean (for Media Guy, at least), my biggest secrets,
revealed. Mostly because the Supreme Court and Norm Pearlstine say I
can't have any, but also because I don't want to get sent to my room
(at the Alexandria Detention Center) without dinner.
All the Things Karl Rove Has Leaked to Me:
# Hillary Clinton? Total lesbo.
# Robert Novak looks surprisingly good in high heels.
Everything Robert Novak Has Revealed to Me:
# Karl Rove looks surprisingly hot in lingerie.
# Hillary Clinton? Total lesbo.
And, because 17 years ago this month Carl Bernstein's son Jacob told a
fellow summer camper that Mark Felt was Deep Throat -- which
effectively means, as Gawker.com noted, that Vanity Fair got "scooped
by an 8-year-old kid" in 1988 -- I'm going to go ahead and tell you ...
Other Stuff Jacob Bernstein Revealed to Me at Summer Camp:
# Charles and Di's marriage is on the rocks.
# Bush is going to win the election this year. (Also, something about
one of his sons being a drunk.)
# The 49ers are going to beat the Bengals at the next Super Bowl.
# You know that actor Tom Cruise from the movie Rain Man? He's a total
... (I didn't get the rest because we got called away by the camp
counselor to make s'mores.)
That's it. Next week I'm switching to writing horoscopes and/or
chronicles of the adorably precocious antics of Angelina Jolie's new
baby.
(Oh, right, one more thing: Rove tells me that Brad Pitt is really
taking to the li'l tyke!)
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he is so sharp and funny ......... no wonder Randy likes him! |
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