Showing posts with label interview. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interview. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Rachel Dolezal Does the Talk Shows - Says She is "Not White"

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Previous Related Posts:
Melissa Harris-Perry Loses Her Mind Over Rachel Dolezal
Twitter Mocks Rachel Dolezal
Rachel Dolezal: Con Artist Passing as Black Causes Confusion

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Rachel Dolezal resigned from the Spokane NAACP yesterday:

Dolezal's Complete Statement from Facebook
Dear Executive Committee and NAACP Members, It is a true honor to serve in the racial and social justice movement here...
Posted by Spokane NAACP on Monday, June 15, 2015

Dolezal expressed no remorse, nor did she apologize for any deception on her part:

. . . Police brutality, biased curriculum in schools, economic disenfranchisement, health inequities, and a lack of pro-justice political representation are among the concerns at the forefront of the current administration of the Spokane NAACP.
And yet, the dialogue has unexpectedly shifted internationally to my personal identity in the context of defining race and ethnicity.
I have waited in deference while others expressed their feelings, beliefs, confusions and even conclusions - absent the full story.

So she is viewing herself as the victim of the press.


In the last 24 hours Dolezal has also drawn scrutiny to her other activities as a student, artist, college instructor and even columnist for a local Spokane newspaper. And there is probably more where all this came from!


Dolezal has been let go from Eastern Washington University where she was an African Studies Professor (or adjunct instructor - there's some disagreement).

From CBS News
Her biography has also been removed from Eastern Washington University's website. The university said her contract to teach ended this month.

The material below was captured before her biography was scrubbed from the college's website.



While a student at the traditionally black Howard University, Dolezal for discrimination - because she was white!


From the Daily Beast
The Smoking Gun reported Monday.... Dolezal accused the historically black college of improperly blocking her job as a teaching assistant, rejecting her application to be a post-graduate instructor, and denying her scholarship aid. Dolezal also claimed the university removed some of her artwork from a student exhibition because it was “motivated by a discriminatory purpose to favor African-American students over” her. An appeals court dismissed the complaint in 2004 because it found there was no evidence of discrimination.

The details are rather fascinating, via Smoking Gun
Dolezal, then known as Rachel Moore, named the university and Professor Alfred Smith as defendants in a lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C.’s Superior Court. During the pendency of the civil case, Smith was chairman of Howard’s Department of Art.

According to a Court of Appeals opinion, Dolezal's lawsuit “claimed discrimination based on race, pregnancy, family responsibilities and gender.” She alleged that Smith and other school officials improperly blocked her appointment to a teaching assistant post, rejected her application for a post-graduate instructorship, and denied her scholarship aid while she was a student.
The court opinion also noted that Dolezal claimed that the university’s decision to remove some of her artworks from a February 2001 student exhibition was “motivated by a discriminatory purpose to favor African-American students over” her.
As detailed in the court opinion, Dolezal’s lawsuit contended that Howard was “permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult.”

Judge Zoe Bush dismissed Dolezal’s complaint in February 2004, 18 months after the lawsuit was filed and Dolezal was deposed on several occasions. Bush found no evidence that Dolezal was discriminated on the basis of race or other factors. The D.C. Court of Appeals subsequently affirmed Bush’s decision.
Following the dismissal of Dolezal’s lawsuit (and the Court of Appeals decision), she was ordered to reimburse Howard for a “Bill of Costs” totaling $2728.50. During the case, she was also ordered to pay the university nearly $1000 in connection with an “obstructive and vexatious” court filing that sought to improperly delay her examination by an independent doctor.

It's fascinating that Dolezal's art was the sticking point. It has now come to light that Dolezal copied (try plagiarized) a famous painting by British artist J.M.W. Turner called "The Slave Ship" and called it her own original work. In her catalog only speaks of her own interpretation of the scene. It's audacious!



This photo of Dolezal in front of the plagiarized painting as published in TheEasternerOnline bears the caption:
Rachel Dolezal, an EWU Professor, sits on a couch at her home in front of an original painting she created. Dolezal obtained her master's in fine arts at Howard University.

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Dolezal tried to fill in some of the blanks in her "full story" by giving an interview to NBC's TODAY Show with Matt Lauer. But again there are more questions than answers as Dolezal dodged the basic question of why she has lied about her racial identity.
From TODAY
"I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon, and black curly hair," she told Lauer. But she insisted she never deceived anyone as numerous critics have suggested.
"I do take exception to that because it's a little more complex than me identifying as black or answering a question of, are you black or white?" she said.
. . . "As much as this discussion has somewhat been at my expense recently, and in a very sort of viciously inhumane way come out of the woodwork, the discussion is really about what it is to be human," she said.





From Washington Post
“I definitely am not white,” Dolezal told NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie in an excerpt of the interview which will air on “Nightly News.” “Nothing about being white describes who I am.”
. . . “I identify as black,” Dolezal told NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday morning. “I did feel that, at some point, I would need to address the complexity of my identity.”
In a series of interviews with the network — a first since she was thrust into the national spotlight — the 37-year-old Dolezal was challenged about her race and the accusations that she had been deceptive for years.
Dolezal told Guthrie: “I am more black than I am white.”
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Sunday, June 7, 2015

Duggar Sisters Downplay Abuse from Brother

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Previous Related Posts:
Excuses, Excuses: The Duggar Interview On Fox
TLC's Duggar Family Has an Incest Problem

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The Duggar Denial continued on Friday night as the sisters of Josh Duggar took to Fox News and sought to minimize the impact of his abuse.



From Zerofiltered
Jessa Duggar said her brother was “a young boy in puberty” who was “a little too curious about girls.”
After the fondling, the sisters said, their parents restricted the children from playing games like hide and seek and placed locks on bedrooms where the girls and boys slept separately. Jill Duggar said she was 12 when the abuse occurred, and Jessa Duggar said she was 9 or 10. Both women are now married.
Jessa Duggar said that she wanted to defend her brother against people who call him a child molester, pedophile or rapist. She said people can get angry at her for saying this is overboard, “but I can say this because I was one of the victims.”
“He made some bad choices,” she said. “But really the extent of it was mild, inappropriate touching, on fully clothed victims, most of it while girls were sleeping.”



Josh was "sly and subtle" which is another way of saying he was creeping around like a devious deviant.

Transcript Via Alternet
JESSA DUGGAR SEEWALD: No. I think for us our situation is so different than most girls in that he was — he’s very subtle anyway. Like he knew in his mind my actions are wrong and I have bad intentions but he was very sly, like the girls didn’t catch on, you know. It was like, okay, if you catch the girl sleeping, you know, like a quick feel or whatever. Or it’s like, you know, if you’re just not really aware, you know, in the situation that happened when the girls were awake, it’s like they weren’t aware what was happening. It was very subtle. And so I think that for us it’s like, okay, we realize this is serious — but at the same time it wasn’t like a horror story or like this terrible thing.

And this unintentionally tragic interchange :(

KELLY: . . . What were the safeguards that were put into place just to make sure?

JILL DUGGAR DILLARD: I was going to say not, you know, being alone. My parents said, okay, we’re not going to do this hide and seek thing where two people go off and hide together — and not baby-sitting the girls.

KELLY: At night in your room?

DILLARD: Locks on the doors, you know, everybody’s in bed, girls in the girls’ room, boys in the boys’ room. And so, yes. And as a mother now, I look back and I think, you know, my parents did such an amazing job. For me, even when we went through the DHS investigation, they complimented my parents on what an amazing job they did through that process. And so, I think not only taking the legal actions that they did and then going the extra mile and I see as a mom I hope that I can set the same safeguards in my family that they did and, you know, reaching the heart of their children. And not only trying to take care of Josh but us girls.











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Thursday, June 4, 2015

Excuses, Excuses ~ The Duggar Interview on Fox

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Previous Related Posts:
TLC's Duggar Family Has an Incest Problem
Huckabee Jokes that Transgenders Want to Shower with Opposite Sex
Fox's Megyn Kelly Tells Kids that Jesus was White, Just Like Santa Claus

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The Duggar parents were interviewed by Fox host Megyn Kelly last night, and it was pretty much a train wreck. In their world of delusions, the Duggar parents think if they keep repeating that their son Josh is a "reformed" child molester - as if that is even possible - then the fans will believe and help them keep their show on The Learning Channel.

Of course they chose the sympathetic Fox News for the interview - the channel least likely to call them out on bullsh*t.

And if the parents' intervew wasn't bad enough, some of the Duggar girls who were victimized as children have also been interviewed by Kelly, and that will be broadcast this Friday. Of course these brainwashed young ladies are making excuses for Big Brother, saying folks should just chill out over Josh Duggar's predatory nature. Jesus forgave him, blah blah, and so did they.

According to their Daddy Jim-Bob Duggar on Fox, the girls "didn't know anything about it because they were asleep" and the touching was mostly "on top of their clothes." So what? That is still rape, you idiot! I think any kids still at home with these people are at risk, and it would be great if the state of Arkansas would get a clue and rescue them.

One of the worst questions asked by Kelly was whether the Duggars felt they were making a "Sophie's Choice," referring to the referring to the 1982 Film and William Styron's novel about a woman in a concentration camp having to choose to save one child or another. What Kelly missed with that question is that in "Sophie's Choice," both children were innocent victims, but in the case of the Duggars, one child was molesting the other children. Josh Duggar wasn't innocent, and it happened multiple times. The protection given by his parents was as much to save their own reputations and TV show as it was to save their firstborn son, while throwing the daughters under the bus. There is still no mention of how much counseling these very young girls were given, or how devastated they were. It's all about the parents and Josh - the true victims of "Christian Bashing" according to Kelly. It's beyond the beyond of the beyond!!!!

From Fox News
“I think as parents, we felt we’re failures, you know?” Duggar said as she sat down with her husband Jim Bob at their Arkansas home for an exclusive interview on “The Kelly File.”
Asked by Kelly if they thought the backlash against the family had been greater because of what they stood for, including their Christian beliefs, Jim Bob replied, “I think, you know what, Christianity is not about being perfect or about being a perfect family, but it’s actually about being forgiven….
“People on the outside think, ‘well Christians are supposed to be perfect…’ No, you know what, all of us as Christians we struggle every day.”
. . . “As parents we were trying to do the best thing we knew how,” Michelle said.
. . . Asked why they would launch a television show in 2008 with this episode in the family background, Jim Bob replied, “we had nothing to hide. We’d taken care of all that years before.”

From New York Times
Ms. Kelly also spoke to two of the sisters, Jessa Seewald and Jill Dillard. That interview will air on Friday.
In a clip from Fox News, Ms. Seewald said in the interview that she was one of the victims and that what Josh did was “very wrong.”
“I do want to speak up in his defense against people who are calling him a child molester or a pedophile or a rapist,” she (his sister) said.
“I’m like, that is so overboard and a lie, really,” she added. “I mean people get mad at me for saying that, but I can say this because I was one of the victims.”














My own most popular tweet from last night:



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Thursday, June 12, 2014

Virginia's Brat Stumbles On Day One

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Previous Related Posts:
Upset in Virgina as Cantor Loses to Libertarian Brat

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The main joke about the Brat Campaign on Day One was their name. I saw many variations on Twitter of "Brat Wurst/Worst" or "Worst Brat." Then there were the jokes about the literal meaning of "Brat" as a snotty-nosed kid, a description that might apply to his defeated opponent, the snarky Eric Cantor, as well as himself.









But it turns out, all silly jokes aside, the Beltway pundits were actually awestruck by Professor David Brat, the man who "Vanquished" Eric Cantor the same way Harry Potter vanquished the Dark Lord. He was some kind of superhero who had not only melted the wicked Republican warlock of Virginia but had come out of academia like Indiana Jones cracking the bullwhip.

David vs. Goliath times 1,000. ~ Chris Cuomo on CNN

But then he got his first big network interview, and this happened:



From Forbes
Chuck (Todd of MSNBC) began by tossing Professor Brat a softball, asking whether the candidate supported a federally mandated minimum wage.
Bear in mind that this is a candidate, an economics professor, who had spent the majority of the interview up the point of Todd’s question, extolling the virtues of a free market. Yet, when asked for his position on a federal minimum wage he struggled to avoid the question, obviously afraid of angering any voters who might be listening or create any news he felt could be harmful to his chances in November.
Smelling blood in Brat’s lack of a solid response, Todd pushed him for an answer, causing Mr. Brat to reply—

“I don’t have a well-crafted response to that one.”

. . . (Todd) “On a foreign policy issue, arming the Syrian rebels. Would you be in favor of that?”

. . . “Hey, Chuck, I thought we were just going to chat today about the celebratory aspects,” Brat said. “I’d love to go through all of this but my mind is just— I didn’t get much sleep last night. I love all the policy questions but I just wanted to talk about the victory ahead and I wanted to thank everybody that worked so hard on my campaign. I’m happy to take policy issues at any time, I just wanted to call out a thanks to everybody today.”

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So what we have with Brother Brat is another shining meteor like Rick Perry or Sarah Palin - flashy on the outside, but not all that deep on the inside. In fact, most voters will quickly figure out that his message is quite familiar, a carbon copy of Paul Ryan's rejected message from 2012: Money is truth and the greater good; the poor are moochers and immigrants are undesirables. Almost all government is BAD, even though he will be so proud to work in Washington and draw a paycheck and benefits for life.

And many have been quick to point out that the GOP has cast aside the only Jewish member of either the House or Senate, and a man who wasn't particularly religious, for someone who has some, uh, interesting Christian beliefs. Except I don't recall Jesus preaching much about Capitalism.

From Raw Story:
“Read Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s diagnosis of the weak modern Christian democratic man was spot on,” Brat wrote. “Jesus was a great man. Jesus said he was the Son of God. Jesus made things happen. Jesus had faith. Jesus actually made people better. Then came the Christians. What happened? What went wrong?”
“We appear to be a bit passive,” he continued. “Hitler came along, and he did not meet with unified resistance. I have the sinking feeling that it could all happen again, quite easily. The church should rise up higher than Nietzsche could see and prove him wrong.”
Brat encouraged Christians to harshly condemn their neighbors’ sins.
“We should love our neighbor so much that we actually believe in right and wrong, and do something about it,” he wrote. “If we all did the right thing and had the guts to spread the word, we would not need the government to backstop every action we take.”
. . . “I think the main point is that we need to synthesize Christianity and capitalism,” Brat concluded. “Augustine synthesized Plato and Christianity. Thomas Aquinas synthesized Aristotle and Christianity. Calvin synthesized all the rest, but capitalism was still coming. There is a book in here somewhere for the next Calvin. Go. God Bless.”



Brat is walking a tightrope like literary hypocrite Elmer Gantry - praising Jesus and Friedrich "God is Dead" Nietzsche at the same time, proving he is just another Tea Party schnook with cognitive dissonance, and probably not any nicer of a guy than Eric Cantor. And some of his campaign associates are worse, if that is possible (see quotes below). We know he is an anti-government Libertarian, but we don't know if Brat is a misogynist yet, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt (until he starts referencing rape and ladyparts). He ran against Immigration Reform, so he's obviously not too fond of the brown people. With his Biblical base he probably has a few cringeworthy things to say about The Gay.

So all we can do is watch and wait for the next shocking utterance as the new Tea Party "hero" in due time becomes the next Todd Akin or Ken Cuccinelli. Let's hope the Virginia Dems can get out the voters in November. I'm already planning a donation to Brat's opponent, Jack Trammell.



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. . . on the morning after, Brat is either the Tea Party's white knight or its motley fool – at center stage if also at the edge of the political spectrum.
But come the fall, Brat may be an historical footnote, having beaten the first sitting majority leader since the position was created in 1899, only to have gone on to lose the general election. (Which is unlikely when running against a Democratic slave-trade / disabilities / vampire scholar in one of Virginia's most conservative districts, but possible, especially given how wrong all the primary polling was, by a clean 34 points or so.) Or Brat will be one of dozens of incoming freshmen Congressmen … which is to say, an historical footnote in the making.
~ Ana Marie Cox in The Guardian



The media is making it seem like Brat was some sort of underdog, but in reality, he's strapped to the hilt with billionaire support and billionaire money.
. . . Like hundreds of other college professors across the country these days, David Brat is really just a  bought-and-paid-for shill of Charles and David Koch and their buddies.
But the connections between Brat and the dark money machine don't stop there. He was also the hand-picked candidate of the Koch-backed world of right-wing media..
Over the past few months, right-wing talkers like Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin have been pushing Brat and attacking Cantor non-stop on their radio shows. Ingraham even went so far as to say that she wished that President Obama traded Eric Cantor to the Taliban in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl.
~ Truthout and Thom Hartmann




This is being branded as a tea party victory. That's not quite accurate, and Brat addressed this last night. Not one major tea party organization came out and endorsed Brat. Supported Brat in any meaningful way. We had a difficult time getting the tea party groups and Brat connected. They bascially told him, 'you don't have a chance,' they wrote him off.
And there were a few people -- myself, Mark Levin, Ann Coulter, Mickey Kaus, Breitbart News, The Daily Caller -- they were pretty much the only people covering this race. I said this yesterday on Fox & Friends. We had 625 people hanging off the balcony of Eric Cantor's own country club last Tuesday night and there was no major media there except for Breitbart News and a little reporter from the local NBC. That's it.
~ Laura Ingraham, paid shill, on Fox News

I hope it will at least shut down any more happy talk about amnesty this year. I wish it would have the effect of Republicans waking up and seeing that this is a winning issue for the Republicans.
. . . Republicans have gotta put their foot down to the Chamber of Commerce and say, ‘Look, if we bring in 30 million, 40 million illegal aliens who are going to break for the Democrats, we’re not gonna be able to give you anything else. That’s it, because it’s gonna be the end of the Republican Party in this country.
~ Pundit Ann Coulter on Fox News, via Raw Story




Stop chasing ethnic groups, stop chasing genitalia. Talk to the American people. Talk about liberty, opportunity. Explain to them that Obama’s wrong, and that we need to unleash the American people and unleash the economy.
~ Conservative Radio Host Mark Levin discussing Brat's campaign strategy with Fox's Sean Hannity




And finally, Brat may want to get a new campaign manager. The one he has is only 23 years old and had to scrub his facebook account yesterday due to so many weird posts.

Via Yahoo News
The campaign manager for the tea party-backed Republican who ousted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in one of the biggest upsets in congressional history is a 23-year-old class of 2013 Haverford College graduate who posted a slew of provocative opinions on a public Facebook page that was removed from view overnight following David Brat's victory.
. . . “Can someone who was outraged that George Zimmerman was found not guilty of ‘SOMETHING ANYTHING’ and who is simultaneously pro-choice explain the logical dissonance there? Ie. Why its not ok to kill someone who is banging your head into concrete but its ok to kill someone for simply existing who, through your conscious actions, you brought into the world?” Werrell had written in an Oct. 24, 2013, posting.
. . . On Oct. 29 of that year, it was a piece by Fred Reed from Lew Rockwell’s website on the wussification of boys that set him off. “There is a war on boys!” Werrell wrote. “Rough housing, playing soldier, etc, are all punished or medicated away. And we wonder why there is gender inequality in the classroom and in college/attendance/graduation rates.”
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Thursday, May 29, 2014

#Snowden Jumps the Shark With NBC Interview - Updated

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Brian Williams of NBC is the first major network news person to interview Edward Snowden in Moscow. Reviews are mixed so far, but I think it's safe to say that a wider audience isn't going to work out too well for the ultra-spy-in-exile. The more he talks the deeper the hole, so to speak. As this interview was obviously timed to coincide with the release of Glenn Greenwald's book about Snowden, it may not have the boost in sales that they were looking for.

Snowden seems to be jumping the shark, although I'm sure the Libertarian Wikileaks Anonymous crowd will swoon over his sexy snake-oil voice and geek-martyr persona.

Previous Related Posts:
Snowden Can Make Himself "Unrecognizable"
Critics Go To War Over Sourpuss Glenn Greenwald's Book
All Hail the Snowden Pulitzer
Crime or Punishment? Snowden Remains Stuck in Moscow Airport
Snowden: Messages from Moscow
Edward Snowden Releases NSA Secrets
Edward Snowden: Hero or Villain

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Selected Quotes from #InsideSnowden
. . . when they say I’m a low-level systems administrator, that I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’d say it’s somewhat misleading.
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I was trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word, in that I lived and worked undercover overseas, pretending to work in a job that I'm not, and even being assigned a name that was not mine.
But I am a technical specialist. I am a technical expert. I don't work with people. I don't recruit agents. What I do is I put systems to work for the United States. And I've done that at all levels from, from the bottom on the ground all the way to the top. Now, the government might deny these things, they might frame it in certain ways and say, "Oh well, you know, he's -- he's a low level analyst."
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I think it's important to remember that people don't set their lives on fire. They don't walk away from their extraordinarily, extraordinarily comfortable lives for no reason.
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I think the most important idea is to remember that there are times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break the law.
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I have no relationship with the Russian government at all. I've never met the Russian President. I'm not supported by the Russian government. I'm not taking money from the Russian government. I'm not a spy.
I personally am surprised that I ended up here. The reality is I never intended to end up in Russia. I had a flight booked to Cuba onwards to Latin America, and I was stopped because the United States government decided to revoke my passport and trap me in the Moscow airport.
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If I could go anywhere in the world, that place would be home.

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UPDATE: One part of the interview has been debunked today by the NSA:

From the Interview:
Snowden: I actually did go through channels, and that is documented. The NSA has records, they have copies of emails right now to their Office of General Counsel, to their oversight and compliance folks from me raising concerns about the NSA’s interpretations of it – legal authorities. I reported that there were real problems with the way the NSA was interpreting its legal authorities. And I went even further in this, to say that they could be unconstitutional, that they were sort of abrogating our model of government in a way that empowered presidents to override our statutory laws. And this was made very clear. And the response was, more or less, in bureaucratic language, was, ‘You should stop asking questions.’

The U.S. Government Replied today by releasing one email exchange from Snowden, which they say is the only one received asking questions of the General Counsel to the NSA:
Read Snowden's Email and NSA Reply Here

From ABC News:
The NSA said in statement that Snowden’s email “did not raise allegations or concerns about wrongdoing or abuse, but posed a legal question that the Office of General Counsel addressed.”
“There was no additional follow-up noted,” the NSA said. “There are numerous avenues that Mr. Snowden could have used to raise other concerns or whistleblower allegations. We have searched for additional indications of outreach from him in those areas and to date have not discovered any engagements related to his claims.”
Snowden told NBC News that he also raised his concerns with his co-workers and superiors, many of whom he said were “shocked” at the programs he described. In December 2013, Snowden similarly told The Washington Post he brought his misgivings to four supervisors in two departments.
“I asked these people, ‘What do you think the public would do if this was on the front page?’” Snowden told the Post. “How is that not reporting it? How is that not raising it?”
In the Washington Post report, an NSA spokesperson said the agency had not found “any evidence” to support Snowden’s claims about raising concerns internally. Then, the NSA did not note the email it published online today.

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Responses to #InsideSnowden













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On Snowden's Persona







































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From Russia, With Love













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Snowden Has Fans - "He's a Patriot!"













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He's a Spy, Dammit!

























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What about Glenn Greenwald?





















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John Kerry's Opinion



















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What Does Snowden Watch on TV?
 











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Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Snowden Can Make Himself "Unrecognizable" According to Greenwald

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Previous Related Posts:
Critics Go to War over "Sourpuss" Greenwald's Book
All Hail the Snowden Pulitzer
Snowden Evolves into Max Headroom
Edward Snowden: Hero or Villain?

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According to the Greenwald-Poitras book about Snowden, the man can change his appearance like a chameleon. This has led to some levity on Twitter.

Book Quote Via Business Insider
While in Hong Kong, Edward Snowden claimed to be able to change his appearance such that he would be unrecognizable.
According to an excerpt Glenn Greenwald's new book, Snowden made the claim when discussing concern about leaving the Mira hotel without being noticed by reporters:
I conveyed these concerns to the lawyers. "Does he have any ideas how to prevent that?" one of them asked.
I passed the question on to Snowden.
"I'm in the process of taking steps to change my appearance," he said, clearly having thought about this previously. "I can make myself unrecognizable."











Via Instagram
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Critics Go to War Over "Sourpuss" Glenn Greenwald's Book

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Glenn Greenwald's book No Place to Hide was released this week. It's a regular cavalcade of details about the exiled spy - sorry, whistleblower - Edward Snowden, as well as the involvement of authors and Pulitzer winners Greenwald and Laura Poitras, plus the Wikileaks crowd. But Greenwald has run afoul of several book critics, for which he immediately lambasted them for the freedom of speech he says that Snowden is fighting for. Hypocrisy Much?

Critic Wars erupted, and as with all-things-Greenwald, people have to take sides.



Previous Related Posts:
All Hail the Snowden Pulitzer
Was David Miranda a Mule or a Journalist?
Greenwald Threatens to Spill UK Secrets
UK Detains Greenwald's Partner, Twitter Erupts
Define Spy For Us: Greenwald and Snowden
Greenwald Threatens America

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The Guardian, which shared a Pulitzer with Greenwald and Poitras, had a mostly glowing review of the book. But of course they wish he had mentioned their newspaper more in the text because they validated and helped Greenwald when no one else would.

Henry Porter in The Guardian UK
I think the book does a disservice to my colleagues at the Guardian, which after all is established media. The author tips his hat occasionally but does not really acknowledge the importance of the seasoned reporter Ewen MacAskill's work in Hong Kong, or the team that assembled to sift the documents, decode their inner secrets, prioritise information, gain reaction, shape the stories and provide analysis.
It was one of the most impressive journalistic operations I have ever seen and without it Glenn Greenwald would have floundered and, indeed, have been dismissed more easily as an activist journalist. He has done a great job of exposition and advocacy and for that he should be praised, but credit should be shared.

Two reviews in particular seemed problematic for Greenwald mainly because they were NOT glowing and they questioned his motives. Please don't ever do that, reviewers! Criticism should not be critical, but should be left up to experts like Greenwald.

From George Packer in The Prospect
. . . It’s the only account we have by one of the main characters, an ex-litigator for whom prose narrative is another form of political combat.
. . . But the book’s greatest interest lies in what it reveals about dissent and the dissenter in an age when democratic institutions are in disarray. Greenwald and Poitras have a clear political agenda, which is why Snowden, with his deep distrust of the institutional press, chose them.
Greenwald has no use for the norms of journalism. He rejects objectivity, as a reality and an ideal. “‘Objectivity’ means nothing more than reflecting the biases and serving the interests of entrenched Washington,” he writes. “All journalism serves one faction’s interest or another’s.” This is hardly a new notion, but it’s also a destructive one.
. . . Greenwald and Poitras “vowed to each other repeatedly and to Snowden” that their actions would honour Snowden’s choice. So Poitras is outraged when the Guardian violates Snowden’s wishes by sharing his files with the New York Times, as if the Guardian were a vehicle for Snowden’s purposes. And Greenwald attacks the New York Times, which had received thousands of documents from Wikileaks, for highlighting Julian Assange’s troubling behaviour, as if the paper owed its source the benefit of clergy rather than its readers a full picture. Greenwald treats his source as inviolate.
. . . The sense of oppression among Greenwald, Poitras, and other American dissenters is only possible to those who have lived their entire lives under the rule of law and have come to take it for granted.








Excerpts from Now-Infamous and Scathing New York Times Book Review by Michael Kinsley
. . . Greenwald? In his mind, he is not a reformer but a ruthless revolutionary — Robespierre, or Trotsky. The ancien régime is corrupt through and through, and he is the man who will topple it.
. . . Greenwald doesn’t seem to realize that every piece of evidence he musters demonstrating that people agree with him undermines his own argument that “the authorities” brook no dissent. No one is stopping people from criticizing the government or supporting Greenwald in any way.
. . . What kind of poor excuse for an authoritarian society are we building in which a Glenn Greenwald, proud enemy of conformity and government oppression, can freely promote this book in all media and sell thousands of copies at airport bookstores surrounded by Homeland Security officers?
. . . private companies that own newspapers, and their employees, should not have the final say over the release of government secrets, and a free pass to make them public with no legal consequences. In a democracy (which, pace Greenwald, we still are), that decision must ultimately be made by the government.
. . . Someone gets to decide, and that someone cannot be Glenn Greenwald.
. . . So what do we do about leaks of government information? Lock up the perpetrators or give them the Pulitzer Prize? (The Pulitzer people chose the second option.) This is not a straightforward or easy question. But I can’t see how we can have a policy that authorizes newspapers and reporters to chase down and publish any national security leaks they can find. This isn’t Easter and these are not eggs.









Greenwald took umbrage with both Packer and Kinsley and wrote a scathing rebuttal - how can these reviewers be against him? How? They must be political tools for Obama:

Glenn Greenwald in The Intercept
. . . in a totally unpredictable development, Kinsley then used the opportunity to announce his contempt for me, for the NSA reporting I’ve done, and, in passing, for the book he was ostensibly reviewing.
. . . Kinsley dutifully tells Times readers that I “come across as so unpleasant” and that I’m a “self-righteous sourpuss” (yes, he actually wrote that). I also describe in the book how jingoistic media courtiers attack anyone who voices any fundamental critiques of American political culture; Kinsley spends much of his review deriding the notion that there could possibly be anything anti-democratic or oppressive about the United States of America.
. . . Reviews of No Place to Hide internationally (the book has been published in more than two dozen countries, in nine languages) have, almost unanimously, been extremely positive. By stark contrast, reviews from American writers have been quite mixed, with some recent ones, including from George Packer and now Kinsley, attempting to savage both the book and me personally.
. . . Do I need to continue to participate in the debate over whether many U.S. journalists are pitifully obeisant to the U.S. government? Did they not just resolve that debate for me?







Margaret Sullivan, Public Editor for the New York Times, agreed with Greenwald and published a rebuttal of Kinsley
. . . Here’s my take: Book reviews are opinion pieces and — thanks to the principles of the First Amendment — Mr. Kinsley is certainly entitled to freely air his views. But there’s a lot about this piece that is unworthy of the Book Review’s high standards, the sneering tone about Mr. Greenwald, for example; he is called a “go-between” instead of a journalist and is described as a “self-righteous sourpuss.” (I’ve never met Mr. Greenwald, though I’ve written about his work, as Mr. Kinsley notes.)
But worse, Mr. Kinsley’s central argument ignores important tenets of American governance. There clearly is a special role for the press in America’s democracy; the Founders explicitly intended the press to be a crucial check on the power of the federal government, and the United States courts have consistently backed up that role. It’s wrong to deny that role, and editors should not have allowed such a denial to stand. Mr. Kinsley’s argument is particularly strange to see advanced in the paper that heroically published the Pentagon Papers, and many of the Snowden revelations as well. What if his views were taken to their logical conclusion?











After her own motives (and sympathies for Greenwald/Snowden) were questioned on Twitter and in the NYT comment section, Ms. Sullivan rolled back her criticism of the critic somewhat.
I think there is no reason in this case to distrust Mr. Kinsley or to suspect that he did not read the book, digest its material and write a review based on his own judgment. As part of our editorial process, we made sure that Mr. Kinsley’s characterization of the work was backed up by material in the book itself. By that standard, the review was certainly fair and accurate.
To take on but one specific criticism of the review: At no point did Mr. Kinsley call Mr. Greenwald a sourpuss. The actual text reads as follows: “Maybe he’s charming and generous in real life. But in ‘No Place to Hide,’ Greenwald seems like a self-righteous sourpuss, convinced that every issue is ‘straightforward,’ and if you don’t agree with him, you’re part of something he calls ‘the authorities,’ who control everything for their own nefarious but never explained purposes.” For a reviewer to address how a writer comes across, particularly in a memoir or first-hand account, is entirely fair game for a book review, and by no means an ad hominem attack.

More critiquing the critics and their critics:

The Tone and Thought Police at the New York Times
Kinsley, truth to tell, is unkind to Snowden, and that is where the trouble begins. Sullivan thinks Kinsley’s “sneering tone” is “unworthy of the Book Review’s high standards.” Kinsley says, among other things, that Greenwald, whatever he may really be like, comes across as a “self-righteous sourpuss” in the book. Never mind that the New York Times would not have an op-ed section if sneering were ruled out of bounds. Although Kinsley gives us Greenwald’s own words to back up his assertion, it is too much for Sullivan, who apparently thinks that Kinsley should have found a way to indicate that Greenwald’s authorial voice is that of a self-aggrandizing blowhard without being insulting.
. . . Here, then, are the standards the public editor of the New York Times applies in investigating “matters of journalistic integrity” in the book review section.
. . . Reviewers who express views that, however plausible, are considered out of bounds by Times staff should be compelled to recant if they wish to get published.
~ Jonathan Marks in Commentary

Greenwald's haters, exposed
. . . both Kinsley and Packer at least give lip service to the idea that what Greenwald and Snowden have revealed is valuable and troubling. But in their predictable desire to distance themselves from the kind of fundamental and, yes, radical attack put forward by the NSA leakers, Kinsley and Packer are defending the national security state as flawed rather than corrupt, in need of reform rather than reconstruction. And if you think that sounds crazy, maybe you’re another Robespierre or Trotsky, too.
~ Elias Isquith on Salon

I predict that Packer's attitude toward Snowden will one day seem as absurd as someone insisting that MLK would be worthy of condemnation if he hadn't gone to jail, or that the activists who stole FBI files proving improper spying ultimately harmed the rule of law by never turning themselves in.
Like Michael Kinsley, another moderate liberal journalist who made dubious claims in a review of Greenwald's book, something about Packer's relationship to the establishment causes him to understate the radicalism of the international security state and to overstate the radicalism of its critics.
~ Conor Friedersdorf on The Atlantic
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