BREAKING: Amy Chozick keeps sliming "The Guys!"

TUESDAY, MAY 8, 2018

Once again, Chotiner objects:
Isaac Chotiner's aim was true when he interviewed Amy Chozick.

Chozick had written a ludicrous book about her years of covering Candidate Clinton, mainly for the New York Times. Quite accurately, Chotiner had this to say about one early part of her portrait:
CHOTINER (4/27/18): I thought this was an interesting way of introducing the politics editor of the most important newspaper on Earth as it covers one of the most important elections of our lifetime, because it fits with a lot of critiques of the Times coverage, especially around the Clintons—that it was too gossipy and not focused enough on policy. But I thought you meant it basically as a compliment. How do you respond to that?
Chotiner's aim was true. Indeed, you rarely see a professional journalist speaking as frankly about the Times as Chotiner does in his interview with Chozick.

That said, even Chotiner doesn't go far enough in his challenges to Chozick's unintentionally revealing book. We'd say that includes his remarks in another area where his aim was true—in his remarks about the way Chozick presents a group of aides to Candidate Clinton.

Throughout her book, Chozick describes these staffers simply as "The Guys." Alleged depredations are described. No names are ever given.

Chotiner asked three separate questions about this aspect of Chozick's book. Chozick's answers were so pointless that we'll skip them for now:
CHOTINER: Hillary was known for many years to have a close circle of women advisers, but many of the paramount characters in your book are who you call “The Guys.” Do you think her circle became increasingly male, and what effect do you think that had on the campaign?

[...]

CHOTINER: You portray “The Guys” as often rude and condescending, telling you about “a target on your back” and just generally being obnoxious and misogynistic. But you also grant them anonymity. They are given nicknames, even as the media has had a parlor game of trying to figure out who they are. What is the point of not naming them, especially when some of their comments seem pretty gross?

[...]

CHOTINER: You say in your author’s note that “having to remember the names of dozens of political operatives who all essentially perform the same purpose is boring.” But if there is a top aide to Hillary Clinton who makes a misogynistic comment to you, it seems newsworthy to say who these people are.
Indeed! If Clinton's staffers were so obnoxious, even misogynistic, it's hard to see why we aren't told who these people were.

(Chozick's answer: "I was thinking not of the reader in New York or Washington who knows who these people are, but of my mom’s book club in Texas." She didn't want to bore the ladies by making them keep track of the names!)

Once again, we think Chotiner's aim was basically true. That said, we were bothered by this literary device for a reason he doesn't mention—for its sheer inanity, a dominant trait of this book.

Chozick refers to the Clinton staffers as "The Guys." She also gives individual "Guys" their own individual monikers.

We meet Hired Gun Guy on page 9, Original Guy a few pages later. Eventually, we meet Outsider Guy and even Brown Loafers Guy.

Brown Loafers Guy is "a preppy brunet." We learn this on page 5, before he gets his own nickname.

Joined to these nicknames, we encounter long strings of snide remarks about these people, accompanied by claims about their obnoxious, unkind and offensive behavior.

If these people really did behave in these ways, it does seem that this would be a type of news. It's also news that a major reporter for "the most important newspaper on Earth" produces page after page of such childish, snide and insulting drivel, but this is the culture we live in.

Were "The Guys" really as bad as portrayed? Because Chozick uses no one's name, no one is likely to come forward to challenge her childish portraits.

That said, we can point to one place where, in the end, The Guys come off quite well. Here you see the actual prose surrounding Chozick's puzzling anecdote about Natalie Portman's pet dog:
CHOZICK (page 21-22): The Guys hated the kind of memorable details that Carolyn and I both gravitated to. They could forgive us for writing about potential conflicts of interest at the Clinton Foundation...

But they could never forgive me for the Yorkie.

I had a detail about the foundation purchasing a first-class ticket for Natalie Portman and her beloved dog to fly to one of the Clinton Global Initiative gatherings. Carolyn loved the Yorkie. She wanted to make it the lead.

"It's a fucking Yorkie, Amy!" Outsider Guy yelled as I stuttered trying to explain why this was a critical detail that showed the charity's glitzy overspending. "It weighs like four fucking ponds. It's not like it needed its own seat on the plane."

A year later a conservative super PAC sent around an anti-Hillary fundraising plea. "The Clinton Foundation—which pays to fly her around on private jets, flew Natalie Portman's Yorkie first class."

Carolyn emailed me, "I knew that Yorkie would be back."
As we noted yesterday, this story about the Yorkie doesn't make any real sense. There also seemed to be no reason for including the Yorkie in the Times' original news report.

Despite these problems, Chozick pictures her editor chuckling when a conservative super PAC creates an erroneous attack on the Clintons out of the Times' silly pseudo-reporting. If "Outsider Guy" actually did complain about this, he had an excellent point.

Chozick's book is full of snide descriptions of the unnamed "Guys." That said, it's also full of snide descriptions of all three of the Clintons—Chelsea, Hill and Bill.

Chozick tends to be snide pretty much all the way down. She's also bored by matters of substance. But this is how the game has played for many long years at the Times.

She didn't know Obama's name; she knew little else besides. She does know how to sling the snide. This is the way of the brain-dead Times in this, The Age of Trumpism.

Coming next: Snide remarks joined to cluelessness and indifference

21 comments:

  1. LORD.

    First Bob convincingly berates a book that, after all, he should complete before even talking about. Then he commits and embarrasing error equal to anything Chozick is likely to match in the remainder of her tome.
    Duh. the problem, BOB, you incredible nincompoop, was that Trump ADMITTED COHEN WAS HANDLING STORMY DANIELS FOR HIM, something he had previously denied. I know this subject makes Bob a little crazy, and Avenatti's seemingly effective on air pursuit of Trump has ruduced Bob to frazzled name calling, but this is just gross incometence on Bob's part. Glad he's big on attorney client privilege, which by the way, does not always protect illegal activity.

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    1. Why should Bob "complete [the book]before even talking about" it? That seems to me to be pretty stupid, which is not surprising coming from you.

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    2. I don't know if that hurts or helps but it certainly is the order of the day here. The tome must be completed for rational commentary to occur.

      I feel that I am right and I stand by what I have said. I am only going to say it once or I will report you. Prick.

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  2. If she accuses Clinton staff of being misogynistic, that is serious given Clinton's focus on women's issues. It portrays her as a major hypocrite or someone unable to maintain a respectful environment within her own campaign. I doubt either of those things is true. In fact, without names, it is impossible for Clinton and her staff to dispute anything, as Somerby notes. This is very dirty pool. It is also another swipe at Clinton and her organization.

    I have to ask why the war on Clinton continues after she lost the election and has stated she has no intention of running for anything again. Why is Chozick still carrying water for the Trumpies by rallying their base around Clinton-hatred?

    Both Somerby and Chotiner should be questioning her motives, not simplying criticizing her focus on inane stuff. This is serious and dismissing it as trivial is a crucial mistake, now as it was during the campaign.

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    1. Clinton must be assigned 100% of the blame for the election, or people might start looking at the media's role in it, and that cannot be allowed.

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  3. Did no women ever object to Chozick's coverage?

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    1. The notion of the NYT as a "liberal" organ is so deeply ingrained that liberals didn't tend to challenge it until after the election. So basically people like Chozik were given carte blanche to trash, trash, trash without any check. That's changing somewhat now, as the outraged squeals of rage from reporters is attesting. It needs to change faster.

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  4. "and not focused enough on policy"

    Seriously, Bob, what 'policy'? Serving supranational capital is not a policy. It could be, I suppose, a calling, a mission, but not a policy...

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    1. WTF are you babbling about? You just got through telling us that Trump handing the economy and Treasury to the same elites whose fraud crashed the world's economy in 2008, was the best thing to happen to the citizens of the USA.

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    2. "Serving supranational capital is not a policy"

      Tell it to Novartis and AT&T.

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  5. Just Another Block-Quoting BlockheadMay 8, 2018 at 5:21 PM

    "Chotiner asked three separate questions about this aspect of Chozick's book. Chozick's answers were so pointless that we'll skip them for now:"

    Here they are:

    ...?
    No, I think the women, her close coterie of her girlfriends they called Hillaryland in the White House, was with her throughout the campaign. The final day of the election, I saw Cheryl Mills, Maggie Williams, and Huma [Abedin], and these women who had been with her for years. So they were always there. I think the people who protected Hillary—I called it her court of flattering men, the people who interfaced with us, the reporters—were largely male, and a lot of that was before she became a candidate, after the State Department [when she] had some very protective aides controlling her coverage, or trying to.

    ...?
    The idea of calling them “The Guys” wasn’t really a journalistic one. It was more of a literary one. I was thinking about these characters and they all sort of looked the same: white men, clean-cut. And they all performed the same job, which was to control Hillary’s image and the campaign’s press coverage. I was thinking not of the reader in New York or Washington who knows who these people are, but of my mom’s book club in Texas. Do they need to have eight different characters who are all very similar and perform the same duties, or can I create this? What I wanted to create was this sort of tragicomic Greek chorus of this kind of multiheaded monster of The Guys, which I thought would resonate more.

    ...?
    Yeah and I think my literary device is not about protecting anonymity. It’s not about granting anonymity. It’s pretty easy to guess if you know these characters. It wasn’t done to protect sources. It was done to create an image in people’s minds and keep these characters straight.

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  6. Unless it’s been hacked in some weird way, It would seem Bob is messing with the comments section and I just hope he is not drinking. Gaaaak.

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    1. That seems to me to be pretty stupid, which is not surprising coming from you.

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  7. Bob doesn't hugely have his eye on the ball, but whatever. Some of us will always remember the import work The Daily Howler once did.

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  8. While Bob is looking for subtle ways in which the Times treated Hillary badly, the Times treated her far better than they treated Trump. The Times didn't report the continued groping and sexual harassment by Hillary staffers during the campaign. That's a big help to Hillary. If Trump staffers had misbehaved that way, it would have been front page news.

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    1. This is so untrue. We have no way of knowing any groping took place in the Hillary campaign -- an unsubstantiated accusation. We do know Trump was accused of assault by women willing to put their names on the record and even file lawsuits against him. If the NY Times didn't print such accusations, it is because they have no one willing to go on record and couldn't print them. So instead, David slimes Hillary along with Chozick with references to people who are unnamed and thus cannot claim to have been libeled. It would be nice is a campaign could file suit as an entity, because this is libelous against all of the hard working staffers who worked on Clinton's campaign.

      And David, you are a huge sleaze too.

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    2. "If Trump staffers had misbehaved that way, it would have been front page news."

      Poor widdle Davsey-Wavsey. That big ol' meanie New York Times might have done something bad to sweet lil PUSSYGRABBING Donnie.

      Be sure and keep the AC on high, so you don't melt, you ridiculous snowflake.

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    3. It would have helped if the Clinton campaign had copped to being sexual predators, like Trump did.

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    4. The thing about sexual predators and other wrongdoers is that they think everyone else does what they do. They don't.

      Why would Hillary Clinton hire or tolerate sexual predators? She wouldn't.

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    5. looking for subtle ways

      Classic, David. That's just so you. Subtle? You mean like the New York Times dropping a house on her just as she announced her candidacy by signing on with Breitbart chairman Steve Bannon and Peter Schweizer?

      Dishonest to the core, David. YOu are simply dishonest to the core.

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  9. There are many people today who see that Bob is heading toward disaster in one form or another, and who moreover recognize the important work The Daily Howler once did as the common thread linking the principal dangers that hang over us.

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