19 Comments

Have you considered the possibility that Mr. Carey used your quote as an opportunity to do what he wanted to do all along? Not a coincidence but causation? Dan Sachs. Use my name if you want.

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Cause if that's the case let me try: I've heard from a source close to the ex-president that he plans to plead guilty to all charges against him and drop out of the presidential race.

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😆😆😆😆

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Dan, your name shows on comments posted as replies, just not on comments posted using the Big Orange Button. Yes, I know, confusing.

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That would be embarrassing if I had said not to use my name.

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Agreed. Just an observation: In the past, such premature leaks result in the opposite: the executive CAN'T fire the person. Perfect example, LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover.

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I'm retired; nothing I can be fired from.

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Well then is it possible that your having made it up somehow allowed Carey to fire the guy whereas he might not have been able to had the quotation actually come from a verifiable source?

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This brought back some memories. In 1987, I worked about two doors down from where Gene was a decade before: I was in the Capitol Bureau of the co-owned, but fiercely competitive Albany Times Union. (I didn't last long - after pissing off three "State Editors" in a row, I was transferred for awhile to night GA.) The Knickerbocker News (The Knick) was a worthy competitor until Hearst closed it. My impression was that we were somewhere in the middle of the Capitol journalistic hierarchy, beneath Newsday, which spoke only to the New York Times, and the Times, which spoke only to God.

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Are you sure that fear of practical consequences of unethical behavior is really all that different from fear of shame following unethical behavior? I'm not convinced.

I mean, not that I've ever engaged in unethical behavior of any sort..

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As a cub reporter you were a very big fish?

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At my newspaper. Yes. A kid had gotten the top reporting job. In the world of big reporters for big papers, I was nothing.

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suggestions for a new fun game.

hack the RNC name game.

what's your first name ? you used to be able to get at least >100 letters.

last name, same.

hack the RNC "bank your vote"

https://bankyourvote.com/ they literally _never_ (up til now) vet anything and still have Rona's picture.

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Nobodywithanydecencyisstillamemberoftherepublicanparty Dousallafavorandcrawlbackunderyourrocks pledged to vote by mail.

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yours' is much less scatalogical than mine but very nice. I'm trying to start a movement of folks to"hack the RNC"

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Interesting. Happened to have had to check the Nieman Foundation site and decided to look up Your Eminence. Discovered you and your then-soon-to-be-Post-colleague, now assoc. ed. and columnist Eugene Robinson, were in the same class of '88. Btw --- what was your usually required project or study area ? Or was your time spent largely ruminating at the bar at Grendel's ?

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DoGG: why do you frequently (always?) insert a space before a question mark but not before a period?

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Does because I want to, work for you ?

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So, where would you put the manipulation of the truth (as you've fessed up to doing in an, as you put it, "...explicable, defensible, and trivial.." way in your former existence ) vs. lying, on the transgression scale ? Is the former merely a euphemism for the latter ? Or is it really a matter of "no harm, no foul" --- in your view --- so long as the point or story remains essentially valid ? The ancient Greeks were big on alternate versions of almost every myth. Dramatist Euripides, for example, has Oedipus continuing to live with his mother after the truth is revealed. In other words, is a valid appearance the same as reality or telling the absolute truth --- and does it (or should it) matter to the audience ? Moreover, does it matter what is being communicated and by whom ?

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