The public reads what appeals to them. A good writer is not a god, just a good writer, someone who can weave a story that hooks you. I just ordered Frey’s book
I remember reading the first ~70 pages of A Million Little Pieces standing in a Barnes and Nobles in total shock. It was definitely a story that hooked me.
I also remember that scene at the end where he has to break into a crack house to save his girlfriend from druggies. I had a thought at the time, something like, "Wow, this would be a really cliched, action-movie, impossibly morally clear ending if it was fictional! But it's not! It actually happened that way! Crazy!"
The whole point of deBoer's essay, it seems to me, is that Frey isn't a good enough writer to hook an audience, which is why he had to lie to to hook an audience, which makes him an immoral piece of shit.
I think I also glanced at it in a bookstore without buying it....is there scene where he visits a friend to apologize for being rude while drunk, and the friend says that Frey in fact had pulled a gun on him?
1. "Yes, James Frey, understandably-disgraced author of bullshit fabulist narrative A Million Little Pieces, who wrote an absurd and contrived story of addiction that contained many blatant falsehoods, was eventually found out, and experienced disgrace of a type I know something about.."
Pregunta Mas estupida, but why couldn't Frey just call it "fiction"? I remember reading J.T. LeRoy and about three pages in, thinking that this was the dumbest and fakest thing I ever read (I grew up in a barn so I knowsomething of that world), but if you looked at it as a crude form of magical realism you could at least get through it.
2. I suppose the reason that the NYT fellates Frey is the same reason overeducated europeans bought into J.T. LeEoy hook, line and sinker - both confirm their priors. See, e.g., "My Pafology", which is need to steal a copy of.
My memory of the scandal -- and I won't bother to look it up -- is that he DID shop it as fiction, no one cared, and then he pretended it was memoir and it got published
ETA: I looked it up and this is true, he admitted it on Oprah
That is funny. "Bamboozled" or "My Pafology" in real life. Thinking back, I recall trying to convince NYC residents that many flyover people in fact did have electricity.
But when I did my corniest "aw shucks red tractor" shtick, they ate that up because everyone knows, that's what it's like, once you cross the Hudson.
EDIT: it ain't just east coast liberals. In 2016, the german magazine "Bild", which prides itself on its fact-checking, published a breathless headline from Fergus Falls, Minnesota, aka Trump Country, USA. You willdoubtless be shocked to learn that, according to the article, the inhabitants were racist inbred semiliterates, with a big sign at the entrance of town warning Mexicans to stay out.
Needless to say, the author never came within 100 miles of Fergus, and invented the bumpkins he wrote so colorfully of. I've been to Fergus hundreds of times and when I read the article, I thought "WTAF!? I never saw a sign like that, was this an entrance into town I never took?"
Admittedly, this was before my time, but I know a human female who told NYC residents that Indian raids were still a problem in Nebraska. The New Yorkers apparently lapped it up.
Last time I visited Manhattan I put on my heaviest comedy accent and explained to people "when Ah tol' mah Mama where Ah wuz goin', she said boy I ain't never gonna see you agin!" I really thought at some point someone would notice I was making fun of them, which is how I ended up drunker on a Thursday night than I had ever been in my life, because they simply would not stop buying.
This was less than a decade ago. And they think everyone *else* is the rubes...
I just commented this on an earlier comment. I didn't realize that HE was the one who changed his mind about it, though. I remember him blaming it on the publisher who told him it would sell better that way. I didn't bother to look it up though.
It's not clear to me, you might be right. This is from a 2006 Today show article about the Oprah shaming:
(The book's) origins remain unclear. Frey has said the manuscript was offered to publishers as both a novel and as a memoir. His literary agent, Kassie Evashevski, has said there was only brief discussion of shopping the book as fiction, out of respect for his family’s privacy.
One explanation I heard back when this was happening was that Frey did initially try to sell his memoir as fiction, but the publishers, knowing it was "based" on his life, basically convinced him it would work better as memoir, so he went along with it.
I don't know if that's true, and even if it is, it's irrelevant. He could have said no, and if he really believed in his work, moved on. Nevertheless, I can imagine if you're a young, hungry writer getting this kind of offer, there would be all kinds of ways to internally spin that to yourself to make it true, especially if you have the backing of a major publishing house. Regardless, I agree about Frey's writing (I read the memoir when it came out, and his first follow-up novel), and the fact that he seems like a real performative piece of shit. Why is NYT trying to rehabilitate this guy? Who is asking for that?
So I can't find his specific claim about this, and this guy is not worth any more Googling to me. He may have made this claim.
But what all this Googling reminded me was that he was somewhat defensive even as he acted cowed back then -- he said things like "well, I couldn't remember if I had novicaine" or whatever. But no one bothered to keep digging after the Oprah shaming, because it was clear to everyone his lies were even more extensive than he was admitting and it wasn't worth documenting. No one took his defense at face value.
So he might have claimed someone else told him to make it a memoir. But I don't believe him because I don't believe anything he said.
I remember watching that episode of Oprah when it aired, because back then I cared about this shit, and I just remember the commiserate embarrassment I felt with him watching that. I still kind of think Oprah is a ghoul for that kind of performative public shaming too, but I also just think she's a ghoul anyway.
I find myself thinking that the NYT article is not so much about James Frey, but about his place in the publishing ecosystem, and that ecosystem's place within the larger circle of elite tastemakers. By rehabilitating Frey, or by standing up for him, they stand up for themselves. As is oh so frequent, this is the NYT telling its readers not that James Frey is a good person and artist, but that they are.
I love your “that is not morality” refrain. I loved this piece. I would take zero Matsses but my own sense of integrity any day. And I have been reading you for years and the way you own your responsibility remains (sadly) refreshing and rare.
Honestly your ability to convey how mundane mental illness is has always meant something to me. It isn't dramatic, or sexy, or rich, or meaningful. (often. or not for everybody, maybe. you know what I mean.) I would even go so far as to say it sucks. I totally get why you can't write the memoir, but if you had it'd be on my shelf and one I would frequently loan out.
"And I’m afraid I couldn’t bring myself to tell any dramatic lies. I wouldn’t make shit up because I won’t lie and call it the truth, not the “essential truth” or the “emotional truth” or the “artistic truth.” If I write a book and say that the events in it really happened, and they didn’t, that’s no kind of truth, it’s just a lie."
Oddly I accept such malarky from Werner Herzog, but it soured me on a lot of autobiographical comics writers. Maybe I accept film (even documentary) as a medium having a more... erm... //ambivalent// relationship with truth.
I have mixed feelings about this too, both in film and in writing. I think memoir writers and documentarians can convey *their* truth, even if it isn't the *entire* or *actual* truth. I don't think that's worthless, honestly, and I have more grace for it than Freddie does, though I totally understand his position and don't think it's wrong, either. But when I go into a memoir or a personal documentary, I'm honestly not expecting a complete or unvarnished truth. That would be impossible. But to me there is a difference in completely making up a scenario and finding a way to get to an emotional truth that might be embellished in some way. So I guess what I mean to say is that I take both memoirs and personal documentaries with a grain of salt already, and just evaluate them for what they are on an artistic level.
Maybe that makes me part of the problem, I don't know.
I think it makes you a willing sucker, and also maybe someone who hasn't had a lot of the kind of ill fortune that teaches a person how to distinguish someone who went through shit from someone who's pretending.
You should not want the second one to change. I would work on the first. Do you really respect yourself so little you can be made to swallow a lie and not resent it? I wouldn't want that to be a true account of myself.
Heh. I mean... it troubles me that charisma goes so far when it comes to selling lies through storytelling, but it can definitely make for more interesting and entertaining art. I agree with The Coxie that it is always worth taking both memoirs and personal documentaries with a grain a salt from the start.
Oh, there is really such a thing as emotional truth. It's why we cry and laugh and get angry over and fall in love with fiction. It takes an especially pernicious kind of liar to understand that and pervert it anyway, the way Frey did, to try to sell a base and obvious lie to the innocent and unwary. It's the kind of thing a premeditated rapist would do; I wasn't joking at all about the drink.
It's rare, but it still happens. A friend of mine who is a published novelist (and very much not wealthy) told me about someone also represented by her agent that just sold 5 novels at like, $2 million a piece or something completely absurd. But that's generally genre stuff that also frequently has film rights already built in. Film rights are really where the money is at for novelists these days, I think.
I have been thinking of the word "beholden" a lot lately (in addition to "derivative") and have endeavored to find, follow, and support voices who are not beholden to any one or anything. You are one of those voices and I've been glad to support you.
One part of the article I liked was Frey's estimate that only 15% of the book was lies. It's like, yes, that was exactly the scandal. The few interesting parts of the book that got it noticed were lies.
I continue to believe that the US and the Western world started its decline in moral compass the day that Bill Clinton, in the role of the moral leader of the free world, stood up on national TV to tell the world a baldfaced lie that he "did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinski". Of course, the final truth came out a bit later and Billybob was guilty of being serviced by Ms. Lewinski IN THE FRIGGIN' OVAL OFFICE.
In that moment the world got a lesson in good being anything you can get away with.
Before that most people lived within a stronger moral code that would result in shame, disgrace and personal destruction if telling a big lie. See Richard Nixon for example.
Then Obama and now Trump.
Morality is nothing now. Get yours any way you can. And if you are on the right side of politics where the officials live, you will never be held accountable for your immoral acts as long as you demonstrate fealty to the cult.
A turning point? I'm skeptical. Nixon's lies (like Reagan's) were about far more important crimes, so he's not comparable. What the Lewinsky scandal proved is that the majority of the public no longer cared about where the presidential penis had been. I remember the froth & frenzy of media in the early moments of that episode, trying to persuade a lukewarm public that it should care more. If only adultery were the worst thing we could pin on Clinton...
You don't seem to get it. It wasn't the presidential penis. Democrats were always notorious for their lack of penile control in the White House. It was the baldfaced lie when caught and then the party circling of the wagon to prevent accountability for the lie. That was the milestone of crashed morality where lies by the elite professional managerial class no longer were held accountable.
I'm no Clinton fan by any means, but I'd say Whitewater and his Crime Bill were bigger "moral" failings than Lewinsky - mostly because those affected tons of other people, while his affair didn't.
But I'd also posit that Reagan's Iran/Contra scandal was a bigger "moral" failing than Lewinsky was for Clinton. I don't like either of them, but the former was way more egregious to me because of the scale of it and all of the people it affected.
Again, you miss the point or otherwise are so obsessed with winning an argument that you lack enough intellectual honesty to admit a point.
Watch the video and the conviction of Clinton to deny what are clearly the true. He did just deflect like most politicians do, he went full on 100% baldfaced lie. This isn't just a politician... this is the leader of the free world.
"No new taxes" is nothing compared to this. Just like Biden saying he was against gay marriage and then changing his mind.
I can actually kind of go along with this, although I think it's downstrea of the fact that L'Affair du Lewinski is the point where a critical mass of people of people who had read good old Fucko back in college were in power, so the implicit idea of "what is truth anyway, man" was familiar to them and acceptable enough to be useful as an excuse for him. Hypothetical President Clinton in the 1980s doesn't get that same opportunity because those people are still in their late 30s, mostly.
This is a fascinatingly childish and naive view of the world: that people were fundamentally honest, worldwide, until roughly 1998, and were earnestly looking to the White House for moral guidance. It must be nice to live in that simple little world you built for yourself.
Talk about childish and naive. Look in the mirror and also note that you are too chicken shit to post with your real name.
My world of morality isn't influenced by politicians since it is based on strong Christian principles of morality. It is you and your cohort that has been corrupted by a system of lies and greed and a media that supports it all.
Haha yea man, you're right after all. The entire Western world's honesty did hinge on that moment. No one realized they could get away with lying prior to that moment.
And yes, you're right: If it hadn't been for Bill Clinton, James Frey would have never even considered lying for money, because he wouldn't have realized it was even a possibility.
Great to get a taste of FdB leading the charge on the kickoff team to pin Frey back inside the 5 yard line. But maybe that lying b*stard is actually a cyborg who is simply playing his scripted part in an ongoing effort to expand the thematic content of a LLM owned by the NYT. We really can’t count that possibility out, since contrived and dishonest writing marketed to semi-conscious readers whose moral compass fell overboard yesterday is clearly the next frontier, the next iteration of the Western Cannon.
The public reads what appeals to them. A good writer is not a god, just a good writer, someone who can weave a story that hooks you. I just ordered Frey’s book
I remember reading the first ~70 pages of A Million Little Pieces standing in a Barnes and Nobles in total shock. It was definitely a story that hooked me.
I also remember that scene at the end where he has to break into a crack house to save his girlfriend from druggies. I had a thought at the time, something like, "Wow, this would be a really cliched, action-movie, impossibly morally clear ending if it was fictional! But it's not! It actually happened that way! Crazy!"
The whole point of deBoer's essay, it seems to me, is that Frey isn't a good enough writer to hook an audience, which is why he had to lie to to hook an audience, which makes him an immoral piece of shit.
I read AMLP long after the controversy broke, so I can say that reading it knowing it's all lies makes it an extremely unpalatable book.
I think I also glanced at it in a bookstore without buying it....is there scene where he visits a friend to apologize for being rude while drunk, and the friend says that Frey in fact had pulled a gun on him?
Imagine being proud to be this kind of sucker.
Not like most people even understand how Drugs work.
❤️❤️❤️
1. "Yes, James Frey, understandably-disgraced author of bullshit fabulist narrative A Million Little Pieces, who wrote an absurd and contrived story of addiction that contained many blatant falsehoods, was eventually found out, and experienced disgrace of a type I know something about.."
Pregunta Mas estupida, but why couldn't Frey just call it "fiction"? I remember reading J.T. LeRoy and about three pages in, thinking that this was the dumbest and fakest thing I ever read (I grew up in a barn so I knowsomething of that world), but if you looked at it as a crude form of magical realism you could at least get through it.
2. I suppose the reason that the NYT fellates Frey is the same reason overeducated europeans bought into J.T. LeEoy hook, line and sinker - both confirm their priors. See, e.g., "My Pafology", which is need to steal a copy of.
Because it would have gotten neither the advance it got nor the press it got if it had been sold as a novel, is the depressing answer.
Don't hate the player, hate the game?
I can hate both perfectly well, I think.
My memory of the scandal -- and I won't bother to look it up -- is that he DID shop it as fiction, no one cared, and then he pretended it was memoir and it got published
ETA: I looked it up and this is true, he admitted it on Oprah
That is funny. "Bamboozled" or "My Pafology" in real life. Thinking back, I recall trying to convince NYC residents that many flyover people in fact did have electricity.
But when I did my corniest "aw shucks red tractor" shtick, they ate that up because everyone knows, that's what it's like, once you cross the Hudson.
EDIT: it ain't just east coast liberals. In 2016, the german magazine "Bild", which prides itself on its fact-checking, published a breathless headline from Fergus Falls, Minnesota, aka Trump Country, USA. You willdoubtless be shocked to learn that, according to the article, the inhabitants were racist inbred semiliterates, with a big sign at the entrance of town warning Mexicans to stay out.
Needless to say, the author never came within 100 miles of Fergus, and invented the bumpkins he wrote so colorfully of. I've been to Fergus hundreds of times and when I read the article, I thought "WTAF!? I never saw a sign like that, was this an entrance into town I never took?"
Turns out, there was no sign.
"...when I did my corniest "aw shucks red tractor" shtick, they ate that up..."
Oh, they always do. And think they're so clever, while they're buying the drinks.
Admittedly, this was before my time, but I know a human female who told NYC residents that Indian raids were still a problem in Nebraska. The New Yorkers apparently lapped it up.
Last time I visited Manhattan I put on my heaviest comedy accent and explained to people "when Ah tol' mah Mama where Ah wuz goin', she said boy I ain't never gonna see you agin!" I really thought at some point someone would notice I was making fun of them, which is how I ended up drunker on a Thursday night than I had ever been in my life, because they simply would not stop buying.
This was less than a decade ago. And they think everyone *else* is the rubes...
I just commented this on an earlier comment. I didn't realize that HE was the one who changed his mind about it, though. I remember him blaming it on the publisher who told him it would sell better that way. I didn't bother to look it up though.
It's not clear to me, you might be right. This is from a 2006 Today show article about the Oprah shaming:
(The book's) origins remain unclear. Frey has said the manuscript was offered to publishers as both a novel and as a memoir. His literary agent, Kassie Evashevski, has said there was only brief discussion of shopping the book as fiction, out of respect for his family’s privacy.
One explanation I heard back when this was happening was that Frey did initially try to sell his memoir as fiction, but the publishers, knowing it was "based" on his life, basically convinced him it would work better as memoir, so he went along with it.
I don't know if that's true, and even if it is, it's irrelevant. He could have said no, and if he really believed in his work, moved on. Nevertheless, I can imagine if you're a young, hungry writer getting this kind of offer, there would be all kinds of ways to internally spin that to yourself to make it true, especially if you have the backing of a major publishing house. Regardless, I agree about Frey's writing (I read the memoir when it came out, and his first follow-up novel), and the fact that he seems like a real performative piece of shit. Why is NYT trying to rehabilitate this guy? Who is asking for that?
So I can't find his specific claim about this, and this guy is not worth any more Googling to me. He may have made this claim.
But what all this Googling reminded me was that he was somewhat defensive even as he acted cowed back then -- he said things like "well, I couldn't remember if I had novicaine" or whatever. But no one bothered to keep digging after the Oprah shaming, because it was clear to everyone his lies were even more extensive than he was admitting and it wasn't worth documenting. No one took his defense at face value.
So he might have claimed someone else told him to make it a memoir. But I don't believe him because I don't believe anything he said.
I remember watching that episode of Oprah when it aired, because back then I cared about this shit, and I just remember the commiserate embarrassment I felt with him watching that. I still kind of think Oprah is a ghoul for that kind of performative public shaming too, but I also just think she's a ghoul anyway.
Interesting -- why were you upset with Oprah? I thought the guy deserved what he got.
"I just remember the commiserate embarrassment I felt with him watching that."
Congrats on playing along. And on answering your own question: you are who this is for.
Ha ha ha! That is perfect! Now to go and not read the NYT piece...
I looked for your novel on kobo.com but it doesn't seem to be available there. That's where I prefer to buy ebooks (Amazon -> Kobo reader is a PITA).
It should be coming closer to publication date
I find myself thinking that the NYT article is not so much about James Frey, but about his place in the publishing ecosystem, and that ecosystem's place within the larger circle of elite tastemakers. By rehabilitating Frey, or by standing up for him, they stand up for themselves. As is oh so frequent, this is the NYT telling its readers not that James Frey is a good person and artist, but that they are.
I love your “that is not morality” refrain. I loved this piece. I would take zero Matsses but my own sense of integrity any day. And I have been reading you for years and the way you own your responsibility remains (sadly) refreshing and rare.
Honestly your ability to convey how mundane mental illness is has always meant something to me. It isn't dramatic, or sexy, or rich, or meaningful. (often. or not for everybody, maybe. you know what I mean.) I would even go so far as to say it sucks. I totally get why you can't write the memoir, but if you had it'd be on my shelf and one I would frequently loan out.
"And I’m afraid I couldn’t bring myself to tell any dramatic lies. I wouldn’t make shit up because I won’t lie and call it the truth, not the “essential truth” or the “emotional truth” or the “artistic truth.” If I write a book and say that the events in it really happened, and they didn’t, that’s no kind of truth, it’s just a lie."
Oddly I accept such malarky from Werner Herzog, but it soured me on a lot of autobiographical comics writers. Maybe I accept film (even documentary) as a medium having a more... erm... //ambivalent// relationship with truth.
I have mixed feelings about this too, both in film and in writing. I think memoir writers and documentarians can convey *their* truth, even if it isn't the *entire* or *actual* truth. I don't think that's worthless, honestly, and I have more grace for it than Freddie does, though I totally understand his position and don't think it's wrong, either. But when I go into a memoir or a personal documentary, I'm honestly not expecting a complete or unvarnished truth. That would be impossible. But to me there is a difference in completely making up a scenario and finding a way to get to an emotional truth that might be embellished in some way. So I guess what I mean to say is that I take both memoirs and personal documentaries with a grain of salt already, and just evaluate them for what they are on an artistic level.
Maybe that makes me part of the problem, I don't know.
I think it makes you a willing sucker, and also maybe someone who hasn't had a lot of the kind of ill fortune that teaches a person how to distinguish someone who went through shit from someone who's pretending.
You should not want the second one to change. I would work on the first. Do you really respect yourself so little you can be made to swallow a lie and not resent it? I wouldn't want that to be a true account of myself.
Anyone who tries to sell a lie as "emotional truth," don't let him hand you a drink.
Heh. I mean... it troubles me that charisma goes so far when it comes to selling lies through storytelling, but it can definitely make for more interesting and entertaining art. I agree with The Coxie that it is always worth taking both memoirs and personal documentaries with a grain a salt from the start.
Oh, there is really such a thing as emotional truth. It's why we cry and laugh and get angry over and fall in love with fiction. It takes an especially pernicious kind of liar to understand that and pervert it anyway, the way Frey did, to try to sell a base and obvious lie to the innocent and unwary. It's the kind of thing a premeditated rapist would do; I wasn't joking at all about the drink.
I had no idea that a novelist could earn enough money these days to create a New Canaan/custom-Eames-chair/Picasso-Matisse lifestyle.
It's rare, but it still happens. A friend of mine who is a published novelist (and very much not wealthy) told me about someone also represented by her agent that just sold 5 novels at like, $2 million a piece or something completely absurd. But that's generally genre stuff that also frequently has film rights already built in. Film rights are really where the money is at for novelists these days, I think.
I have been thinking of the word "beholden" a lot lately (in addition to "derivative") and have endeavored to find, follow, and support voices who are not beholden to any one or anything. You are one of those voices and I've been glad to support you.
One part of the article I liked was Frey's estimate that only 15% of the book was lies. It's like, yes, that was exactly the scandal. The few interesting parts of the book that got it noticed were lies.
As measured by the area where the ink was, only 10% of my loan application was lies.
Total sidebar - are there plans for a Kindle edition of your novel?
I continue to believe that the US and the Western world started its decline in moral compass the day that Bill Clinton, in the role of the moral leader of the free world, stood up on national TV to tell the world a baldfaced lie that he "did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinski". Of course, the final truth came out a bit later and Billybob was guilty of being serviced by Ms. Lewinski IN THE FRIGGIN' OVAL OFFICE.
In that moment the world got a lesson in good being anything you can get away with.
Before that most people lived within a stronger moral code that would result in shame, disgrace and personal destruction if telling a big lie. See Richard Nixon for example.
Then Obama and now Trump.
Morality is nothing now. Get yours any way you can. And if you are on the right side of politics where the officials live, you will never be held accountable for your immoral acts as long as you demonstrate fealty to the cult.
A turning point? I'm skeptical. Nixon's lies (like Reagan's) were about far more important crimes, so he's not comparable. What the Lewinsky scandal proved is that the majority of the public no longer cared about where the presidential penis had been. I remember the froth & frenzy of media in the early moments of that episode, trying to persuade a lukewarm public that it should care more. If only adultery were the worst thing we could pin on Clinton...
You don't seem to get it. It wasn't the presidential penis. Democrats were always notorious for their lack of penile control in the White House. It was the baldfaced lie when caught and then the party circling of the wagon to prevent accountability for the lie. That was the milestone of crashed morality where lies by the elite professional managerial class no longer were held accountable.
I'm no Clinton fan by any means, but I'd say Whitewater and his Crime Bill were bigger "moral" failings than Lewinsky - mostly because those affected tons of other people, while his affair didn't.
But I'd also posit that Reagan's Iran/Contra scandal was a bigger "moral" failing than Lewinsky was for Clinton. I don't like either of them, but the former was way more egregious to me because of the scale of it and all of the people it affected.
Again... you just ignore the point. It was the baldfaced lie. Watch it... watch him say it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aGbdni7QNs
It's perfectly your right to argue that what they were lying about doesn't matter because liars are liars. Lots of people think that it did.
You think he's the only Prez to speak a bald-faced lie?? All politicians do this, they just don't all get the media hype like Bill did.
Here's a notorious zinger: "Read...my...lips. No...new...taxes!"
Or how about the WMD's in Iraq??
Again, you miss the point or otherwise are so obsessed with winning an argument that you lack enough intellectual honesty to admit a point.
Watch the video and the conviction of Clinton to deny what are clearly the true. He did just deflect like most politicians do, he went full on 100% baldfaced lie. This isn't just a politician... this is the leader of the free world.
"No new taxes" is nothing compared to this. Just like Biden saying he was against gay marriage and then changing his mind.
I can actually kind of go along with this, although I think it's downstrea of the fact that L'Affair du Lewinski is the point where a critical mass of people of people who had read good old Fucko back in college were in power, so the implicit idea of "what is truth anyway, man" was familiar to them and acceptable enough to be useful as an excuse for him. Hypothetical President Clinton in the 1980s doesn't get that same opportunity because those people are still in their late 30s, mostly.
This is a fascinatingly childish and naive view of the world: that people were fundamentally honest, worldwide, until roughly 1998, and were earnestly looking to the White House for moral guidance. It must be nice to live in that simple little world you built for yourself.
Talk about childish and naive. Look in the mirror and also note that you are too chicken shit to post with your real name.
My world of morality isn't influenced by politicians since it is based on strong Christian principles of morality. It is you and your cohort that has been corrupted by a system of lies and greed and a media that supports it all.
Haha yea man, you're right after all. The entire Western world's honesty did hinge on that moment. No one realized they could get away with lying prior to that moment.
And yes, you're right: If it hadn't been for Bill Clinton, James Frey would have never even considered lying for money, because he wouldn't have realized it was even a possibility.
Great to get a taste of FdB leading the charge on the kickoff team to pin Frey back inside the 5 yard line. But maybe that lying b*stard is actually a cyborg who is simply playing his scripted part in an ongoing effort to expand the thematic content of a LLM owned by the NYT. We really can’t count that possibility out, since contrived and dishonest writing marketed to semi-conscious readers whose moral compass fell overboard yesterday is clearly the next frontier, the next iteration of the Western Cannon.
There are no repercussions for things that aren't true. Its not just publishing. https://thelivingfossils.substack.com/p/its-all-academic
maria garcés has this great passage about how opinions are by their very nature equal and their deployment precludes any deeper inquiry
`My guess is that the new University of Austin is the way.'
That didn't age well. Rob is possibly good at diagnosis but not prognosis.