Eugene David
...The One-Minute Pundit

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THE NEWS HACK'S CREED:
I know more than you.
I make lots more money than you.
I'm smarter than you.
I'm sexier than you.
I appear on TV all the time.
I work ten minutes a day.
I rule the universe.
I'm going to live forever.
You are an idiot.

THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 2:
A lie isn't a lie when it tells THE TRUTH.

THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 3:
I've come to realize that the looseness of the journalistic life, the seeming laxity of the newsroom, is an illusion. Yes, there's informality and there's humor, but beneath the surface lies something deadly serious. It is a code. Sometimes the code is not even written down, but it is deeply believed in. And, when violated, it is enforced with tribal ferocity.
--JOHN "OMERTA" CARROLL.

THE NEWS HACK'S CREED, No. 4:
News isn't news when we don't report it.

PERMALINKS:

THE NEWS HACKS' DICTIONARY

THE EUGENE DAVID GLOSSARY

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Friday, February 20, 2009

Posted 7:11 PM by Gene

Mr. Douthat points to this TNR blog entry in which the author confesses to his "glibness". If we're going to condemn "glibness" let's go back to the inventor of glib: James Boswell. Boswell worshiped Dr. Johnson as a great intellectual; but ultimately he turned his biography into a collection of his quips; he had to simply because Boswell was such a sharp-eared journalist and Dr. Johnson was such an overwhelming wit. Of course the quips helped firm the Dr. in the public mind for all time. Perhaps glibness has a bad rep as it's so intertwined with cheap partisanship. Very understandable. But as I say too often I'd rather hear an amusing sound-bite than a deadly diatribe. The Volokhheads' success points to the excruciating appeal of longwindedness, because to some longwindedness is thought. It might merely be an expulsion of air. I'll take glib any day if it gets to the heart of the matter.

To be sure, however, shortwindedness is not a virtue when Twittering is merely longwindedness in fast-forward.

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