Thursday, January 04, 2018

Wolff

I met Michael Wolff once. We were on a college-sponsored panel together! Then we went out to dinner. His daughter came along. She was a teen then, must be 25ish now. She seemed nice. Hope she is doing well! It was awhile ago. I don't get invited to such things much anymore (not complaining, just laughing). He's charming and engaging and a quality suck up. He practically convinced me he really wanted me to look him up next time I was in New York (he did not convince me and I am sure he forgot my name the next day). He's also a storyteller, which doesn't quite mean the same thing as bullshitter, but, well, you know.

He did spend the last year disparaging other journalists for being mean to Trump. I guess it was all part of his performance art for access. I suppose you can respect that. Or not. There are aspects of access journalism that really are just corrupt and while maybe that kind of corruption is necessary, it's also dishonest. Journalism is complicated I guess.

Are all the excerpts from his book (I will not read the book) true? I have no idea. And "fake, but accurate" is not good enough, really. Still lots of other journalists have spent time with Trump and they should know if this is fake, fake but accurate, or accurate.

There was more: Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he'd repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes. Indeed, many of his tweets were the product of his repetitions — he just couldn't stop saying something.

...

Donald Trump's small staff of factotums, advisors and family began, on Jan. 20, 2017, an experience that none of them, by any right or logic, thought they would — or, in many cases, should — have, being part of a Trump presidency. Hoping for the best, with their personal futures as well as the country's future depending on it, my indelible impression of talking to them and observing them through much of the first year of his presidency, is that they all — 100 percent — came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job.

At Mar-a-Lago, just before the new year, a heavily made-up Trump failed to recognize a succession of old friends.

Happy first anniversary of the Trump administration.