Presswatch: Hack Haven
Corry, John
PRESSWATCH by John Corry Hack Haven ees, along with pictures of naked women, The Stephen Glass affair shakes the New Republic. on its website. Desperate Jukt executives, Glass wrote, then...
...Shortly afterwards he fired Glass...
...Indeed very little in the story held up if you read it carefully, although it seemed the New Republic did not care...
...They were imaginative creations, like the UPS man in shorts...
...On the other hand, God forbid,he seems to have been giving the New Republic exactly what it wanted...
...The repellent scene" in the hotel room, "was only a little beyond the norm of the conference...
...Perhaps that was it all along...
...And then Pollitt, 2 hours 29 minutes later: "Well, Andrew—can it be...
...The New Republic people probably howled when they read it...
...Sullivan, who had hired Glass in the first place, questioned not himself but the "value of journalism," while Pollitt wished the young serial liar all the best, presumably because he was a good writer...
...The New Republic itself suggests (b) as the only possibility, but a more likely explanation for what happened is some combination of (a) and (c...
...Then he supposedly posted the salaries of all its employIan Restil, a is-year-old computer hacker who looks like an even more adolescent version of Bill Gates, is throwing a tantrum...
...Ergo he was writing fiction...
...The kicky lead began as follows: W hat did the New Republic know, and when did it know it...
...It all goes like clockwork...
...I expect to be asked that repeatedly...
...I have a friend in New York who used to send himself packages twice a day just to catch a sight of those brown shorts...
...When Sullivan got back to Pollitt almost four hours later he told her he agreed about "the atrocities in India," that he had contributed money to a group called Equality Now, and that "the religious right is very uncomfortable defending women's equality for obvious reasons...
...He is actually in the room when eight young conservatives, "in a haze of beer and pot, and in between rantings about feminists, gays and political correctness," think up a repulsive plan...
...On the day the Post broke the story about the New Republic's disgrace, there was a revealing exchange between Andrew Sullivan and Katha Pollitt...
...Then he also got around to Glass...
...Its members observed Kosher dietary laws, and though they divided over pork rinds, they all eschewed broccoli...
...For this long-time reader and frequent admirer of the New Republic, that happened first with a single sentence in "Spring Breakdown" (March 31, 1997): "Her lipstick has rubbed off on her wine glass, leaving only the cherry outline...
...When Glass was his assistant he was "the sweetest, brightest guy imaginable...
...he's still a terrific writer...
...C What mattered was not what Glass said, but how he said it...
...As a journalistic organization, however, the New Republic had suffered an institutional collapse...
...It was made up of middle-aged white guys, and Glass said he had attended one of its meetings...
...Tears, black from the mascara, stream down her face...
...The article that finally did in Glass, "Hack Heaven," appeared in the May 18 issue, although some of his readers, at least, were suspicious of him long before that...
...The fact that the New Republic did not catch up to Stephen Glass until it did means either (a) that its editors had not read his articles, or (b) they had read them, but saw nothing wrong with them, or (c) they knew very well there was something wrong, but decided that was irrelevant...
...The liberal dilettantes wanted to have their worldview confirmed, and at the same time be amused...
...Many readers probably stopped reading right there...
...So back now to "Hack Heaven," the article in which everything finally unraveled...
...Her lipstick has rubbed off on her wine glass, leaving only a cherry outline...
...Sullivan, a former editor of the New Republic, is now a senior editor...
...But the story reeks, and does not pass a smell test...
...The 25-year-old Glass often wrote about young masters of the universe, and "Hack Heaven" purported to be about a teenage computer whiz who had broken into the database of a software company called jukt Micronics...
...Then Pollitt talked about this and that, and then she got on to Glass: "The thing is, even if Stephen Glass made it all up (except about the UPS men, as you say, mine is also very cute, and a real union man too...
...Show me the money...
...Desperate Jukt executives, Glass wrote, then tried to hire him or buy him off...
...Pollitt is a columnist for the Nation...
...She still smiled, Pollitt wrote, when she remembered "his piece about Fed Ex and UPS—Sad to think that maybe it isn't true that women all over America have erotic fantasies about their UPS man, and that UPS uniforms are not one of the most popular costumes at costume parties...
...This is the face of young conservatism in 1997," he wrote, "dejected, depressed, drunk, and dumb...
...They were posting chatty notes to one another in the online Slate's "The Breakfast Table...
...To support his bogus article, he had created a fake website for Jukt and a phony voice mail on his brother's cell phone...
...Glass was some reporter...
...Two hearts that beat as one...
...In the wake of the Glass debacle the New Republic would say its fact-checking system had broken down, but that was a lame excuse...
...Liberal dilettantism also means never having to say you're sorry...
...The lipstick, wine glass, and cherry outline, for example, would not have passed it...
...He thought it a "brilliant exposition of how friendship really works and enriches our lives, and how it's possible to be happy, fulfilled, attractive and single...
...I've asked it of myself:" B ut the answer to the question, of course, was yes...
...C onsider "Spring Breakdown," Glass's fantasy about the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Omni Shoreham in Washington...
...Glass could not have been outside the room looking at the woman, and inside the room listening to the young men at the same time...
...And so on...
...But Adam Penenberg, an editor at the online Forbes Digital Tool, kept going, and as he did he grew suspicious...
...So none of it really mattered, and no one was really to blame...
...Then, when he tried to verify the article, he found that nothing in it was real—not Ian Restil, not Jukt, nothing at all, in fact, right down to the ifs, ands, buts, and howevers...
...T-shirt, is shouting his demands...
...Penenberg told the New Republic about his findings, and, according to the Washington Post, Charles Lane, the editor of the New Republic, then undertook his own investigation...
...It proved there was "no popular tide of social conservatism—family values, back-tobasics, rural-nostalgia, recycle-your-virginity, all that...
...Pollitt replied forty-three minutes later...
...Show me the money...
...the magazine should have detected the problems, and fired Glass some twenty or thir50 Ju y r 9 9 8 • The American Spectator ty articles earlier...
...This is "one of those moments," Sullivan wrote, "when you question everything, especially about the value of journalism...
...Beware when an opinion magazine falls in love with its own voice and high morality, and forgets about truth in reporting...
...Sullivan went first that day, with a note just before noon...
...I want more money...
...He wanted to know if Pollitt agreed, or whether her "anti-bourgeois knees go atwitch at its self-absorption...
...In "Plotters" (February 23,1998) Glass wrote about the Commission to Restore the Presidency to Greatness...
...Three of them will drive to a local bar, and "choose the ugliest and loneliest woman they can find," and one of them will lure her back to the hotel room...
...It had a JOHN CORRY is The American Spectator's senior correspondent...
...Even if Glass had made up the facts, he apparently had captured the essence...
...Shortly afterwards she is in the hotel room, and half an hour later she begins screaming...
...I too contribute to Equality Now...
...When a writer's observations and other embroideries consistently fail a smell test—as Glass's would have failed time and again, if some adult at the New Republic had bothered to run the test—it means the writer must be watched...
...Asked if the magazine should have detected problems in Glass's work earlier," the Post reported, "Lane said: 'It's a perfectly fair question...
...She is holding her shoes and gripping her blouse to her chest...
...The venerable (est.194) magazine of commentary and opinion says it had no idea one of its writers was making things up until an alert reader proved it, but that's an excuse and not an explanation...
...In "Peddling Poppy" (June 9, 1997) he discovered The First Church of George Herbert Walker Christ...
...She thought "Seinfeld" fascinating...
...I want a trip to Disney World...
...You had to notice one of them sooner or later...
...Over and over again, the boy, who is wearing a frayed Cal Ripken Jr...
...In "Holy Trinity" (January 27, 1997), for example, he wrote about an 8o-year-old widow who worshipped at the shrine of Paul Tsongas...
...Meanwhile, "inside the room, Charlie gives Seth a high-five," and Seth "promises to get the photo developed and duplicated in the morning...
...Who cares what the brat wants, and what's a Miata...
...Then she went on to the day's "interesting news," particularly the piece in the New York Times about child marriages in India...
...PRESSWATCH by John Corry Hack Haven ees, along with pictures of naked women, The Stephen Glass affair shakes the New Republic...
...Then he will undress her, and after he does five of the young conservatives will spring out from underneath the beds, and shout and take her picture...
...He also found that Glass had worked hard at his lying...
...The three go to a bar, and soon spot their victim...
...The young serial liar, however, had discredited the 84-year-old magazine even more thoroughly than had the old lefties who once used its pages to defend Stalin's show trials...
...What mattered was not what Glass said, but how he said it...
...Glass's forty-one articles were always well written and often entertaining, but usually decorated with red flags...
...Pollitt concluded: "I wish young Stephen all the best...
...I want X-man comic (book) number one...
...They were too perfect to be true...
...77 Sullivan said he was "in a state of shock...
...Good people may have been coming and going, but liberal dilettantism had taken over...
...Sullivan said he was going "through one of those Kubler Ross passages, as is everyone else at TNR," but then he concluded with something cheery: "By the way, I can't imagine he made up the stuff about straight women/gay men having fantasies about UPS men...
...It was a small detail perfectly observed, and it made for a very nice sentence, although it was unlikely Glass had ever observed it...
...he thought she was Hillary's lesbian lover...
...Many supposed facts defy checking, and must be submitted instead to a smell test...
...also, journalists have more important things to do than to assemble dreary facts...
...Their world view is what counts, and a show of sangfroid helps...
...I want a Miata...
...The American Spectator • July 1998 51...
...The old lefties had principles, even if twisted, but Glass appears to have had none...
...Word about the Glass scandal was all over Washington by then, but Sullivan was concerned with "Seinfeld...
...Vice President for Vince Foster's Death Affairs," and a Senior Deputy who insisted Bill Clinton was really a woman...
...I want a lifetime subscription to Playboy, and throw in Penthouse...
...Then: "The door flies open, and she runs out...
...When she eventually got around to Glass it was only to recall him as "a very amusing writer...
...Goodness knows what he might do next...
Vol. 31 • July 1998 • No. 7
