Comments on: The Podcast Times

By: Michael Bérubé

Michael Bérubé — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 18:14:52 +0000

Oops! I meant “read” in the past tense, as in “it was really nasty of Gitlin to suggest that you had read his book.” Damn this ambiguous language! Give me Latin, where the pluperfect is easy to spot, even in blogs.

By: Scott McLemee

Scott McLemee — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:47:28 +0000

Actually, Gitlin didn’t recommend that. It’s my own damned fault. At one news organization, the tendency to read earlier books by an author I was profiling—and then, what was much worse, to discuss them in the piece—was regarded as peculiar and something to be discouraged. It wasn’t forbidden, of course, but there were strong hints that it really was not necessary.

Steven Wasserman’s long article in the latest issue of Columbia Journalism Review suggests this was not an unusual situation.

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 06:50:40 +0000

Moira Gunn (of TechNation) reads pretty much all of the books for the people she interviews; it doesn’t seem to have done her much harm.

By: Michael Bérubé

Michael Bérubé — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 05:10:32 +0000

That was really nasty of Gitlin to suggest you’d read his book. I mean, c’mon—he knows his way around American journamalism, he knows the drill—he knew perfectly well that this would be your death knell for Chris Matthews’ party circuit.

All the same, your ante-antepenultimate paragraph is a marvelous thing:

Ten years ago, state recognition of civil unions (let alone marriage) between same-sex couples was not really part of the public debate. Today, however, it is. The Republican party has to spend a considerable part of its energy defending the principle that the right to get drunk in Vegas and have a wedding must be restricted to a specific configuration of participants. This makes them look kind of silly to a lot of people, including some Republicans.

To get the full effect of this little graf, I think, you have to read it aloud—the first two and a half sentences in the voice of the late Richard Rorty, the rest (beginning with “the right to get drunk”) in the voice of Lewis Black. A cross between Richard Rorty and Lewis Black: I have no higher praise in my lexicon.