defend the indefensible: glenn fucking greenwald

i guess threatening 'unpleasant' journalists with prison time has now become the preferred default position of smug nominally liberal 'centrists.'

hippie punching uber alles

https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2014/05/prioritizing-personalities-over-free-press

What explains the different reactions? Sure, some of it can be attributed to temperament. Gellman strikes me as having a knack for disarming people, a knack Greenwald has no apparent inclination to develop or deploy himself. But I think there’s something more fundamental at work here. Correctly or incorrectly, I think Gellman is widely perceived to be adversarial within the system, and this is something the system is willing to accept even if the reporter in question does the kind of superb journalism Gellman does. But Greenwald, again correctly or incorrectly, is widely perceived to be adversarial to that system. And for the system itself, that kind of adversity is an unpardonable sin.

Or you know, it might be that temperament thing. People tend not to like full-throated assholes.

This is OTMFM:

And the uncompromising work and aggressive deportment of someone like Greenwald acts as a kind of mirror in which these people are forced to view the most unflattering version of themselves. The admirable reaction would be to hold yourself to a higher standard and try to do better. The more common reaction is to hate the person who is causing your increased awareness of your own shortcomings.

You forgot the rest, Mordy:

So here’s the situation. A fellow journalist — in the newspaper that once published the Pentagon Papers — calls for the government to assume ultimate decision-making authority over what the media is allowed to publish, describes another journalist as a “go-between” and “perpetrator” for his reporting, and wonders aloud whether journalists who do such reporting ought to be “locked up”… and not one of these journalists finds any of it even worthy of mention. What they do find worthy of mention is that they think Greenwald is a jerk, or self-righteous, or a sourpuss, or whatever other appellation they use when they scrunch up their noses at someone who upsets them. Even the few who don't explicitly praise Kinsley’s piece for being a personal attack on Greenwald have no problem at all with Kinsley’s call for ultimate governmental publishing authority or any of his other attacks on journalism. Goldberg merely recommends another, similar screed by George Packer. Harwood calls the piece “valuable.” David Gregory, managing in typical fashion to be both banal and sycophantic, finds the most relevant aspect of Kinsley’s call for prior restraint is that it’s “an interesting addition to the debate."

i don't want to defend any of these assholes really. i just think it's more likely that they dislike greenwald for the same reason i do - bc he's such a smug shit. it's not like i'm a part of the threatened system. i'm just a reader who finds him intensely dislikable.

he's a guy marked by an air of superior piety or morality. it's not an attractive quality for anyone, even someone doing important work.

How does that make him different than 90% of anyone who gets written about in a newspaper?

idk piety is kinda out of step with the times don't u think? being a 'real person' is aspirational.

again, why this fascination with biography? You don't have to blow him or get a beer with him.

Being a 'real person' is just another form of moral superiority. Witness all the "Washington Outsiders" with decade-long careers writing about Washington.

ok adam that's a great point it's all a performance meant to self-aggrandize but some performances are particularly gauche + greenwald has one of the gauchest

Yeah but that's cos he probably didn't pay for the appropriate media training (in order to seem more real LOL). I find that refreshing and makes him more trustable. Rather have a truth-telling jerk than otherwise.

+ if he did a better job keeping his personality out of his journalism probably ppl would be less transfixed by its grotesqueries

haha yeah i'm sure that's why i dislike him, bc he didn't pay for the appropriate media training adam u crack me up bro keep it up man good posting

Sorry i didn't mean that as an attack on you, I meant in general, he gets crap from a lot of places. I just jumped in 10 minutes ago and to be honest I'm just gonna leave cos I didn't realize I was participating in an argument and I'd rather play video games.

i don't want to defend any of these assholes really. i just think it's more likely that they dislike greenwald for the same reason i do - bc he's such a smug shit.

i have a hard time believing that any of those guys would be bothered by greenwald's 'air of superior piety or morality' if he were just another pundit saying the same things as everyone else. is greenwald more of a jerk than thomas friedman?

no one likes thomas friedman

Barack Hussein Obama likes Thomas Friedman.

BHO also likes David Brooks. An NPR liberal, that Barry.

I'm no Greenwald fanboy but the way those establishment journos express such catty disdain as part of endorsing Kinsley's authoritarian position is embarrassing

as usual Lane is the worst and Gregory is mind-numbingly inane

yeah but he can move!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5RD9BhcCo

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/publiceditor/2014/05/27/kinsley-greenwald-and-government-secrets/?_php=true,true&_type=blogs,blogs&smid=tw-share&_r=1

NY Times Book review editor is a bit disengenuous here when confronted with criticism

Kinsley's arguably more smug than Greenwald, and a lesser journalist too

kinsley's the better journalist (or was rather) but is incredibly more smug. both suffer from a lack of a certain kind of seriousness but greenwald's cynicism is more honorable and possibly more productive than kinsley's ever was.

also margaret sullivan isn't the times book review editor

I've no problem with whom the NYT picked to review the book – in 1989 I would've assigned Hitchens to write a hatchet job. It's his goddamn opinions.

this quote is kind of apropos

After dinner, “Larry (Summers) leaned back in his chair and offered me some advice,” Ms. Warren writes. “I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.

would've assigned rahul sagar, in 89 maybe try to get moynihan, whose jock kinsley has been dreaming of carrying for over 30 years

also margaret sullivan isn't the times book review editor

― balls, Wednesday, May 28, 2014 4:44

I know, I was referring to her/the ombudswoman's views versus the editor's. The editor here is pretending not to know of Kinsley's record of expressing disdain for reporters.

calling ppl 'smug' on this board is fucking hilar

People tend not to like full-throated assholes.

much more the ones who are wrong, which is all that matters

(Kinsley hasn't been a liberal in maybe 35 years, unless you mean of the Chuck Schumer school, calling Israel "she" and shit)

if you had any curiosity about why ppl dislike you, you might find that criticisms of greenwald's odious personality work well for u as well

now now it's not like greenwald defends child molesters

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/the-establishment-critique-of-edward-snowden-and-glenn-greenwald/371678/

James Clapper and Keith Alexander don't exactly have wonderful personalities

Digby: "Glenn Greenwald may be the biggest asshole on the planet (he isn't, btw) but to even mention that, much less dwell on it when we are discussing something of such major importance betrays this pathetically provincial (and frankly somewhat adolescent) view of what matters in this world. If a critic cannot rise above his personal pique at an author's personality and see the work through a lens not colored by resentment and bitterness then it's probably best not to start an ilx thread about him"

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/06/06/encouraging-words-dean-baquet-weasel-words-james-clapper/

ugh, the worst, right

why the FUCK do i find out about this today? PR, people?

http://www.haymarketbooks.org/event/4116

That was announced months ago. He's also speaking in Chicago this weekend.

where was my alert, Tarfumes, lots of things happen months from now and that's a bleedin' decade for me

Get on the Haymarket mailing list! That's how I found out.

i used to work for H4ymark3t, so no thx

huh! didn't know this

lol http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/04/business/media/inside-glenn-greenwalds-mountaintop-home-office.html

some buddies of mine interviewed greenwald last week and got some interesting answers out of him on the decisions regarding what to publish/withhold

http://emoprog.libsyn.com/episode-20-glenn-greenwald-and-murtaza-hussain

never got around to posting about this:
my friend who has visited brazil a couple times in the last year said that there's a local news roundtable show that greenwald appears on, but he caters his commentary and a lot of it is him strongly implying the united states is very interested in brazil's going-ons and is probably heavily spying on them

lol

leave it to gg to give away the game

dogs and husbands -- that's all life is