If Fox News sometimes seems like a scene out of the movie Network -- with Bill O'Reilly filling in as the mad prophet of the airwaves -- then the Stephen Glass story is beginning to resemble Martin Scorsese's movie The King of Comedy, only without the comedy.
For those who don't follow the minutia of inside-the-beltway journalism, Stephen Glass was a writer for The New Republic who, over a period of several years, fabricated over two dozen major articles out of the whole cloth of his fertile imagination -- thus out-fictioning both the Washington Post's Janet Cook and the New York Times' Jayson Blair by quite a long shot.
Glass, who thrived during the editorial reign of the late Michael Kelly, was eventually exposed as a fraud by Kelly's successor, Charles Lane, who barely managed to beat a rival publication (Vanity Fair, as I recall) to the punch.
None of this would matter a single bean in a mountain of beans if not for the fact that Hollywood -- no doubt for tax purposes -- has decided to make a movie, Shattered Glass, out of the affair, thus raining a welcome shower of publicity on TNR and on Glass, who recently published a work of fiction (labeled as such, this time) about his experiences.
The movie, and the affair, are also the subject of a review cum article in today's New York Times, one which goes a long way towards revealing the cozy decadence of the mainstream "liberal" press.
We've come a long, long way since All the President's Men.
If you've never seen The King of Comedy, it's the story of Rupert Pupkin -- an aspiring but no-talent comedian from New Jersey (played against type by Robert De Niro) who comes up with the cockamamie idea of kidnapping the host of a popular TV talk show, then demanding as his ransom a chance to appear on said host's program.
The deal goes down -- sort of. Pupkin get his 15 minutes of fame (more like 5, actually) and goes off to prison. End of story. Or so we think. But then comes Scorsese's kicker. In a closing montage sequence, we see newspaper headlines announcing Pupkin's release from prison; copies of his bestselling biography stacked in a book store window and, finally, Pupkin being introduced to the adoring audience of his own TV show: The new king of comedy.
The moral, of course, is that in this modern world there really is no such thing as bad publicity, a point Stephen Glass, his publishers and the current editor of The New Republic clearly have taken to heart:
Peter Beinart, the magazine's editor, has not seen the movie, but he is optimistic that it will bring the publication new readers. "When they pick it up," he says, "they will find a magazine that's not only careful and scrupulous in its facts but interesting as well."
If Beinart's tone seems a little off, both morally and factually, listen to what Leon Wieseltier, TNR's literary editor, has to say about it. To him, the Glass affair not only was not an embarrassing display of journalistic deceit and editorial incompetence, it was a positive triumph:
Of course, it is good for The New Republic," he said. "We got stung, we figured out the sting and got it back together. Chuck Lane's handling of the Stephen Glass debacle brought nothing but glory to The New Republic."
Notice how Wieseltier managed to get the name of the product into that quote twice. Literary, schmiterary -- that man should be in advertising.
According to the Times, the movie essentially agrees, absolving everyone but Glass of any responsibility for his tall tales. And since Glass gets to be played by Hayden Christensen, the white bread future Darth Vader from the second Star Wars movie, he's hardly in a position to complain.
Even Michael Kelly, the editor who nutured Glass and protected him from scrutiny, emerges unscathed -- in fact Shattered Glass is dedicated to his memory, a nod to his untimely death in Iraq earlier this year. (Thus recalling what the mythical Hollywood agent supposedly said about Elvis's death: "Great career move.")
For the most part, the Times seems content to go along with the movie's judgment-free approach -- as an act of professional courtesy, I suppose. We are after all, dealing with the core of the "liberal" media establishment: Princeton writing about Harvard, or Brown about Yale, so to speak. And of course, the Times has its own, ah, sensitivities when it comes to journalistic fabrication.
At this point I could start pontificating about the sins of a self-appointed media elite -- incapable of even recognizing, much less reforming, its own incestuous incompetence. And it's true the Glass affair does illuminate much of what is decayed and disfunctional about the establishment left -- just as the Enron scandal cast a bright, if brief, light on the mindless criminality of the establishment right.
But this is just trivia. What I really want to know -- and I'm sure millions of Americans agree with me -- is: Who is Hayden Christensen dating? And: When will Stephen Glass get his own talk show?
It's been awhile since I saw the movie, but I absolutely didn't get the sense that the coda was another one of Pupkin's fantasies.
In the main part of the movie, there are plenty of tip offs that the fantasy segments are just that -- Rupert's lunch with Jerry Lewis gets interrupted by his mother yelling at him, etc. But those last montage sequences are played absolutely straight, and I think were intended as a commentary on the absolute amorality of modern fame.
But only Scorsese knows for sure, I suppose.
I can't wait to see who's cast to play Gregg Easterbrook in the sequel.
On The King of the Comedy: I lean towards the "fantasy" interpretation, because Scorsese did a similar thing in Taxi Driver. In the coda of that film, Travis, rather miraculously healed from multiple mortal injuries, picks up Betsy in his cab and converses with her. Betsy shows no sign of the revulsion she showed towards Travis earlier and at the end of the conversation suggests to him that perhaps they could go out. Real or fantasy? Watch the scene and you'll see that, until the very last shot, you never actually see Betsy, only the reflection of her eyes in the rearview mirror. Considering that Travis had a previous conversation with an imaginary person in a mirror, I think it's pretty clear that Travis is fantasizing the whole thing.
So Scorsese did it once before, circumstantial evidence, perhaps, that he would do it again. Also, as I remember, the last shot of Rupert in that final sequence of The King of Comedy shows Rupert standing rather stiffly on stage, not saying anything or doing anything really, while the audience laughs and laughs and laughs. The slightly nightmarish quality of that shot mirrors an earlier scene in the film where you see Rupert from behind delivering his routine to an imaginary audience (a poster or a cardboard cutout or something like that.) The camera backs away from him and meanwhile you hear laughter (is it canned laughter that Rupert is playing, or is it in his mind?) echoing off the walls, laughter that goes on and on and doesn't seem to match anything that Rupert is actually saying. I take this as evidence--very slight evidence to be sure--that the final sequence is going on in Rupert's head.
Dr. Strangelove is often accounted as the darkest of dark comedies, but The King of Comedy is even blacker. Even more than in Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy is painful to watch. It's painful to see Rupert screw up deeper and deeper, to become more and more a pest and eventually a stalker, and finally to deliver his pathetic routine. Like Taxi Driver (and another Paul Schrader-penned movie, Affliction) it's the story of a man going insane before your very eyes; like Taxi Driver it is brilliantly done; and like Taxi Driver I'm not sure that I've the courage to watch it again.
Close that italics.
I agree Billmon. Reading the piece in the NYTimes Magazine on Haley Barbour's run for the Gov. of MS. and dealing with infuriating AOL customer reps(it's a long story) who shaft you with lies ("We don't ahve a corporate number.")I am beginning to think that we have lost all sense of reality. It is enough to make one question his and the worlds sanity.
Please close the italics . Great post otherwise.
This great post (and comments) make me think about a whole range of things that, well, come to mind but are hard to put into words.
Doesn't it seem that US culture in general has just gotten very insipid and shallow in the past couple decades? It's usually moral scolds like Bill Bennett or Easterbrook that bring this up, but isn't there some objective truth to it? Though US culture is more influential than ever before, it also seems more, well, just plain crappy. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie with the depth of Ghostbusters, let alone King of Comedy or Taxi Driver. From what little I've heard, contemporary pop music seems worse than ever. And what ever happened to modern art and litterature? Does everyone outside a small set of pros. just assume it's all crap now, and not pay any attention?
The whole issue of responsibility and integrity vs. success-at-any-price seems to have followed a similar path. While there have always been journalistic and corporate scandals, those of recent years look like they're in a whole other league. I don't know. It's hard to put these kind of impressions into words, let alone find out if they're true. Maybe I'm just remembering the past through rose-tinted glasses.
But I don't remember things being this bad, ever.
Anekin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader? No!
a some what loosely related comment . only in america new republic will be called LEFT . it is at the best of time a right wing social democratic . this alice in wonderland language where real left disapears, left wing social democrats are flaming radicals , right wing social dems and almost centrist liberals are LEFT and fringe extreme right is moderate right or right ( some time ) . only in america !
I was glad to see that mention of Michael Kelly here. I found the gushing about him at the news of his death to be unsettling and irrational.
TAPPED acted like the dude was saint or something. There was some kind of gleeful dramatization to it all--a guy dies, saint him, ain't cool to spit on a dead guy. I dunno.
Only Bob Somerby told the truth. I don't care if the son of a bitch is dead or not, he was an evil disaster for american journalism. I'd just wanted to see the truth and it never appeared.
If you would all like to see a movie that really gets to the heart of what the American Media has ALWAYS been about since the beginning, then I would recommend an old, low-budget little flick called Citizen Kane. The Glass affair is not the sign of some recent degeneration--good reporters and analysts have always been the exception to the rule in journalism (just as Billmon and a few others are the rare exceptions among bloggers). But hey, color me cynical: I used to work as an investigative journalist in the States, and that experience is one of the main reasons that I'm writing these lines in the south of France, where I now live.
And speaking of the cheese-eating mascot nation to the axis of evil.... For anyone who might be interested, there is an excellent little piece by the great French journalist Ignatio Ramonet (editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, and founder of ATTAC, the organization that launched the alternative globalization summits at Porto Allegre) about how the mass media have gone from being a counterweight to the other main branches of power to being the propaganda agents of that power. The article is translated into English on ZNet at
linked text
(This is my first ever link, so cross your fingers.)
Right, well, that didn't work out at all, did it. I'll try it one more time, from Le Monde Diplomatique's site this time:
linked text
If it doesn't work, go to ZNet and scroll down to the bottom of the home page--the Ramonet link is there on the right.
Well done Quinn, le Monde Diplomatique is an island of sanity in this mad world. I really recommend reading this to keep a grip on the real world. Awe-inspiring rational discourse... especially this month's article on Iraq (http://mondediplo.com/2003/10/02arabworld).
You want fawning over Michael Kelly? Right after Kelly died, The New York Observer gave us group fawning. Read it, if you can stand to -- it's nauseating.
And as the Observer notes this week, sometime in the next few months Penguin Press is going to publish " Colored Lights, the collected articles and columns of the late, beloved journalist Michael Kelly." So we're going to have yet another round of circle-jerk fawning soon.
I took the ending of The King of Comedy to suggest that we can no longer tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Over the course of the movie, the fantasy scenes get more difficult to tell from the real ones (as with the trip with his would-be girlfriend to Jerry's place, which at first looks like a fantasy but then turns out to be reality). The final scene merges the two, to say that in our world of constant entertainment, there is no difference.
If you would all like to see a movie that really gets to the heart of what the American Media has ALWAYS been about since the beginning, then I would recommend an old, low-budget little flick called Citizen Kane.
Well said! The scene from Kane where Charles Foster is working on his first paper is brilliantly cynical: he admits that the primary job of the Inquirer under his direction will be to report "the gossip of housewives", states the the news value of a story is determined by the size of its headline, and concocts a story about a murdered wife, directing that lies and threats be used ("...send your best man to see Mr. Silverstone....[tell him] the Inquirer will have him arrested...and have him tell Mr. Silverstone he's a detective...from the 'Central Office', heh.") To pile irony upon irony, in the very next scene Kane formulates his "Declaration of Principles" in which he promises the people of New York to tell the news honestly.
Citizen Kane is too often praised in a mealy-mouthed sort of way, mostly for Gregg Toland's photography and often in a it-wasn't-dated-at-the-time tone, while the complexity of its story is comparatively ignored. It's not just about journalism, but politics, the nature of fame, a failed marriage, so many other things, told concisely but astutely. The five-minute montage of Kane's rise to political prominence says more about American elections than a lot of full-length features do.
"You want fawning over Michael Kelly? Right after Kelly died, The New York Observer gave us group fawning. Read it, if you can stand to -- it's nauseating.
I still don't get this. It's fairly unusual to have the behavior of humans to leave me completely baffled, but I sure am with this one.
Kelly was an abusive asshole and who damaged their profession a great deal. Okay, he left 2 boys behind. That didn't justify in the least this incredible love-fest at his death.
There's a psychologicial trigger here for this behavior that I have never seen before. It wasn't an anamoly--all the freaking journalism shops did it.
Somehow I remember that Stephen Glass was exposed as a fraud by an online off-shoot of Forbes Magazine.
Bill O'Reilly as Howard Beale?
Sorry, billmon, but that just won't fly! Howard was nutty as a filbert factory, true, but the things he said in Network had a lot of truth to them.
O'Reilly is just crazy mean. He wouldn't know truth if it bit him in his spotty white ass.
But the Fox/Network comparison does work. Robert Duval's character described UBS as a "whorehouse network", and that description seems especially apt for today's Fox, as well as the rest of the corporate-controlled media.
I guess the deal with Michael Kelly and the left is, most deaths are sad things, but Kelly's was not unjust. He wanted this war, and he got it. He knew people would die. Turned out one of them was him.
The press is a big social club, so of course all the usual suspects line up and make the news into an Irish wake. It's like newscasters resigning: five minutes of national airtime dedicated to what a great dude this guy was for ten years or so. Long-retired editors get on-air obituaries longer than world leaders.
Bill, serious question about "The King of Comedy". The movie is filled with fantasy sequences from Rupert's mind- he's going to dinner with Jerry Lewis, he's being asked to take over the show- and I interpreted the ending as another fantasy. I sort of expected Scorsese to pull back into Rupert's cell and reveal it, which, of course, he didn't. But I still left feeling ambiguous about the reality of the coda, and the sheer unreality of it made me think fantasy. Did you have any doubt?