Culture Vultures: Scoopie Doo
Steyn, Mark
CULTURE VULTURES by Mark Steyn Scoopie Doo T hese are confusing times for casual readers of the American press. Pick up the New Republic and you find it's running what seems to be a regular...
...8. David Brock, reformed right-wing bastard of Esquire: Congenitally congenial...
...Clinton had just been subpoenaed, and Bruce Lindsey had lost on executive privilege, and Secret Service agents were talking to a grand jury...
...Mindy's really done a terrific job...
...We say a man who defined his job as 'telling the truth' slowly and helped maintain a stone wall against legitimate questions is not a model for other government employees...
...But what if you believe lying is morally indefensible...
...But the Pulitzer competition's pretty tough these days...
...If you're that punctilious about telling your readers that that one tiny word '[will]' didn't actually come from the vice president," I demanded forcefully, "why didn't you let us know that not one single word in that nerve gas story actually came from Arnett...
...Still, it is unfair to pick on the Times...
...Certainly that was correct...
...A foreign correspondent...
...Let me tell you," I said...
...McCurry's tenure...
...I mean, who cares...
...Naturally, my next call was to Walter Isaacson, managing editor of Time...
...Mindy...
...But she's just started here at The American Spectator...
...That's Time magazine style: Unless a word comes direct from the person quoted, it has to be put in square brackets, no matter how teensy-weensy it is—no [ifs], [buts], or [maybes...
...It reported his impend-ing departure at the top of page one under the headline "McCurry Exit: A White House Wit's End," and as examples of his wit cited "Memorable McCurryisms" in a box underneath the story...
...That's amazing," I said...
...This just in," says CNN anchor Bobbie Battista...
...Apologized formaking up some stories, but not as inventively as Stephen Glass...
...One example was "I'll refer you to my transcript yesterday, which referred to my transcript the day before," and another was "Two Huangs don't make a right" Ha ha ha...
...Sacked for not making up stories, or interesting headlines, or eye-catching covers (see lead story, January 1998 issue, the week Monicagate broke: "Interstate Rest Areas: Yes, They're Getting Better...
...It's not like Tina quitting the New Yorker, is it...
...Put a bag over your head, or eat a worm, and you're famous...
...The New Yorker was writing about that guy from the New Republic, which was writing about that guy from U.S...
...So I go, Thanks for watching...
...A white "media specialist at Cathedral High School, an inner-city Catholic school with a high minority population," insisted that the Smith columns "contained important truths that needed to be expressed"— if necessary, by complete falsehoods...
...Well, I was thinking after all that I might do a piece about all the things President Clinton's told lies about, failed to remember, evaded the truth on, completely invented...
...Peter," I said, as this usually coolest of correspondents restlessly paced the floor of his townhouse, "about this magazine article with your name on it...
...9. Nina Burleigh, former White House correspondent of Time: Genitally congenial...
...3. James Fallows, editor of U.S...
...News and World Report (no, honestly, look at the parking space I've got): Congenital husband...
...Geez, what's the big deal...
...he roared...
...Or as I said to my editor the other day: "Hey, you know that piece I did about Stephen Glass, 'To Tell the Truth...
...military dropped Stephen Glass columns on the North Vietnamese—lots of nerve and plenty of gas...
...Admittedly, not everyone is happy with this trend in American journalism...
...Peter Arnett, Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent of CNN: Congenital face...
...So he agreed to be interviewed by me on the subject...
...Didn't make up story so wasn't sacked for making out on story and offering to get in the sack...
...he scoffed...
...If nothing else, Brill's Content nicely defines the limits of ethical agonizing...
...On the other hand, Washington is a company town, and other than politics there's never much going on there...
...As far as investigators can determine, Steyn instead led the Gay Pride parade dressed as Ethel Merman and riding on the GLARE (Gay and Lesbian Appraisers of Real Estate) float...
...I felt sure I had Isaacson on this point...
...Furthermore, the quotation "Clinton...
...50 September 1998 • The American Spectator still curious to know why, if he had nothing to do with it, a long story about nerve gas appeared under his byline in Time...
...Here's the script.' And I said, 'Sarin gas...
...Not hired for not making up mind...
...I spoke to a distinguished journalism professor who asked to remain anonymous on the grounds that he's entirely fictitious...
...Great stuff," he said...
...Y1 you hold the magazine up to the light at the correct angle, look just like square brackets round the entire piece...
...Great piece, raised important issues...
...In addition, Steyn's claim to have led his Fourth of July parade dressed as Uncle Sam and riding on a fire truck has proved impossible to corroborate...
...The Verification Panel has also established that a recurring character "Irv," the crusty old general storekeeper dispensing his sixth-generation Yankee folk wisdom, is actually Jose, his sullen Filipino houseboy...
...For example, on page 52 of the May 25th issue, Al Gore heralds something or other as "a turning point that [will] transform the shape of America...
...Exactly," said the professor...
...With so many journalists in the news, it's hard to keep track...
...At the time I was sharing a joke with Zsa Zsa Gabor, Colonel Qaddafi, and William Ginsburg, and it didn't seem important," he says...
...Eight paragraphs later the Times made the point again: "The departure of some of the President's most trusted lieutenants" seemed to be "a sign of growing stabilJOHN CORRY is The American Spectator's senior correspondent and regular Press-watch columnist...
...Hired to start new magazine dedicated entirely to making up stories (for films...
...What's the big deal...
...He gave a hollow laugh...
...That scumbag should rot in jail" should more accurately have read: "Sony, boss, I haven't really been following the story...
...I went straight for The American Spectator • September 1 99 8 51 this month's Playboy, but even they had a stunning pictorial, "The Boys and Girls of the New Yorker Editor Shortlist...
...Reasserted for once and for all our bedrock values...
...Made up story about sacking James Fallows...
...Happy to "give the President [oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal...
...So here's a handy guide: Stephen Glass, associate editor of the New Republic: Congenital liar...
...It seems that all Isaacson knew of the nerve gas story was when an aide passed him a memo at Time's 75th anniversary party...
...You don't say...
...A NOTE TO OUR READERS: Readers of Mark Steyn's column may have gained the impression that he lives in rural New Hampshire...
...And she's just filed her first piece—all about you...
...Its coverage is better than most, and, possibly embarrassed by the news story, it soon ran an editorial: "Some reporters have made fawning remarks about Mr...
...That was more like it, although the Times was hitting below the belt when it suggested McCurry was only another government employee...
...I asked...
...After a while, they all blur together anyway: I could have sworn I saw Arnett claiming the U.S...
...Well, for example, take Mindy...
...For every journalist, truth is sacred," says Arnett, "and the truth is I was in the green room listening to my secretary explain which book she'd picked out for me to choose for the Night-Table Reading' column in Vanity Fair and what it was about, and then they said, 'Hey, you're on the air in two minutes...
...Really nailed the key ethical questions...
...News and World Report, which was writing about that gal from the Boston Globe, which was writing about that guy from Slate, who was writing about why he wasn't now the guy from the New Yorker...
...Things were falling apart, but McCurry had turned everything inside out, and the New York Times had bought it...
...Ai P R ESSWATCH by John Corry Fawning All Over Themselves R eputation intact, and even enhanced, Michael McCurry will soon leave the White House...
...Everyone does it...
...Get real...
...Also, certain other characters seem to be completely fictitious ("Vice President Gore," "William H. Ginsburg...
...A schoolteacher from Dorchester, Massachusetts found Miss Smith's final column—"An Apology to My Readers"— so poignant and well-written that she demanded the Globe submit it for a Pulitzer...
...Anyone who knows me knows that throughout my career I've been willing to put my journalistic reputation on the line—look at the flared safari jacket I introduced on network TV in 1972...
...And you know the investigation I did into CNN, 'A Flight From Truth—The Shame That Tars Us All...
...Some kid from the office slides some paper under my nose and says she needs me to sign off on this...
...Meanwhile on an inside page there was another box, "McCurry's Many Faces," recalling some of the things that had made McCurry so special...
...Sacked for making up stories...
...7. Patricia Smith, Pulitzer Prize-nominated African-American female columnist of the Boston Globe: Congenital Pulitzer Prize-nominated African-American female columnist...
...The New York Times story about his impending departure began by calling it "a sign of growing confidence at the White House that it is weathering the Lewinsky investigation...
...Not sacked for making up stories about how other journalists make up stories...
...In the first issue of Brill's Content, dedicated to the ongoing Kenneth Starr investigation, it turns out that the story behind the story is that there is no story: In a searing 48,000-word exposé, Steven Brill reveals that he's actually pretty content with the Clinton administration...
...She'd be happy to "give the president [oral sex...
...In fact, following an internal investigation by TAS editors, it turns out he has a condo in Central Florida...
...Oh, Mindy knows that," he said...
...MARK STEYN is theater critic of the New Criterion and movie critic of the Spectator of London...
...But the real question isn't whether or not, as CNN's Jeff Greenfield put it, "the United States military used lethal nerve gas during the Vietnam war...
...But look at that quote from Nina Burleigh a few paragraphs back...
...ity" at the White House...
...What do you mean...
...Alas, a random in-house check disclosed the awkward fact that the girl, her mom, and the hair-braider did not actually exist, and so Miss Smith was asked to resign...
...he sighed, toying with his herbal tea as the dying sun caught the craggy features of his war-ravaged visage...
...The Post would have had a more interesting story if it had amplified on the reference in the Times ediNothing in McCurry's job became him like the leaving it...
...And you know the column I did about Patricia Smith, 'Truth —The Crisis in American Journalism...
...We did," he said...
...Wasn't sacked because he had nothing to do with the story...
...6. Michael Kinsley, almost editor of the New Yorker: Congenital e-mailer...
...I cried...
...The teacher of an undergraduate writing course at Boston University argued that "there is more truth in one chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses than in all the Boston Globes ever printed...
...Well," said the professor, "it's steady work, you being such a liar and all...
...He was right...
...2. Steven Brill, editor-in-chief of Brill's Content: Congenital lawyer...
...Pick up the New Republic and you find it's running what seems to be a regular column of interminable retractions: "In 'Peddling Poppy,' Glass's account of a Hofstra University conference on the Bush presidency, The First Church of George Herbert Walker Christ,' `Mary Ung' of the `Committee for the Former President's Integrity,' and 'a small skydiving industry newsletter' called Jump Now are invented...
...4. Harry Evans, senior executive vice-presidential Supremo of U.S...
...Didn't make any stories up, but felt more people would like him if he apologized anyway...
...5. Tina Brown, former editor of the New Yorker: Congenital schmoozer...
...I thought we were doing Saran Wrap.' And they said, 'No, that's tomorrow.' So this media 'feeding frenzy'—as we journalists say—trashing my name is outrageous...
...News and World Report: Congenital loser...
...Are you nuts...
...As soon as you leave the house, I snort coke and watch Leave It to Beaver reruns all day...
...And what it tells us is that there's never been a better time to be a journalist: You can spend your whole career writing more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger pieces about journalistic ethics in the wake of Peter Amett's fabricated nerve gas/Patricia Smith's fabricated African-American hairbraider/Stephen Glass's fabricated church of George Bush worshippers...
...But it's a tough old grind and, after you've been sacked, she's looking forward to graduating to star columnist and just cranking out a pack of lies herself...
...As Bill Clinton said, "Mike McCurry has set the standard by which future White House press secretaries will be judged" — he "redefined the job of press secretary in a new and more challenging era...
...No, the real question is what this tells us about American Journalism in the nineties...
...Talk about redefining...
...So he's told a few lies...
...If you examine carefully the Peter Arnett story, you'll see that we used pretty thick margins which, if44 He agreed, as is customary, to let his gardener answer a list of written questions...
...The last Patricia Smith column I saw was about a young black girl getting her hair braided—the sort of vernacular African-American rite-of-passage stuff we guilt-ridden middle-class whites can't get enough of...
...Best wishes, Peter Arnett,' and next thing I laiow it's the cover story in Time...
...Good grief...
...There was the time he began a press briefing with a paper bag over his head, and there was the time he jumped into a swimming pool with his clothes on, and then there was the time he had eaten an African worm...
...Journalism now offers an excellent career trajectory," he said...
...Well, then you become...
...Hair today, gone tomorrow...
...Full disclosure: Obviously, he's far too important to speak to me, but he agreed, as is customary, to let his gardener answer a list of written questions...
...The Washington Post knew better...
...She's got her eye on Stage Three—the real, Peter Arnett-sized big time, when you're so huge you've got an entire staff to make up your lies for you...
...You become one of those journalists who writes pieces about other journalists...
...52 September 1998 • The American Spectator...
...I strolled down to the newsstand and reeled...
...But luckily we're now blessed with a media watchdog dedicated to uncovering the story behind the story...
...Well, as one journalist to another, I was impressed by Amett's statement, but I was What a wonderful time to be a journalist...
...he was "just the face"—which, like the story, was made up...
...I suggested...
...Fantastic," he said...
...It's not easy shoveling the old banana oil up the garden path every month...
...In a statement written for him by his assistant producer, award-winning war correspondent Peter Arnett today denied that his journalistic integrity had been damaged by his refusal to resign over the discredited story on sarin gas...
...Our graduates usually land entry-level positions shadowing distinguished columnists and attempting to verify their lies...
...Or pick up the Boston Globe whose mailbag is groaning with letters from readers outraged that their favorite black columnist should have been axed just for making stuff up...
...Yeah, sure," he said...
...Mike, it seemed, was a really zany guy...
...McCurry was good at redefining...
...Full disclosure (as Steven Brill would say): Obviously, both Arnett and I are far too busy to conduct such an interview ourselves, so, as is customary, we agreed that my assistant would interview his assistant, and the two of us would pose for an accompanying photograph afterwards...
Vol. 31 • September 1998 • No. 9
