Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Kelley's Kids: reflections on Shattered Glass

If the events of Shattered Glass were an isolated event, a single case of an entertaining sociopath betraying his friends and profession, it would just be the stuff of a darned good movie. Given all the plagiarism/fabulism/moral halitosis scandals that have percolated up in the years since Glass' exposure in 1998, the film has a cultural context that is worth poking through.

One line at the end of Shattered Glass packs massive dramatic irony in retrospect: a despondent TeNR secretary laments that pictures, which TNR doesn't do, would have saved the magazine its trouble; after all, Glass couldn't have provided piccies of his nonexistent people, could he?

Nice thought. Too bad that didn't stop Jack Kelley. Kelley, the disgraced USA Today writer, a five-time nominee for the Pulitzer Prize, used pix to his own advantage-- like the time he illustrated a woeful tale of a Cuban refugee who died fleeing for American shores with a portrait of a hotel worker, who later resurfaced very much alive. Sadly, Kelley didn't have to provide graphic images of the infamous Jerusaleum pizza-parlor bombing he claimed to have witnessed; his account of three victims' heads rolling down the street in unison was very much at odds with plausibility, not to mention the actual forensic evidence of the scene.

If Glass was clever enough to concoct a fake newsletter for his fake hacker society (a much better stunt that that legendary "Jukt Micronics" site of his, which is as lame as any site I could have made in '98 using Netscape Navigator), photos would have given him little problem. He may have been exposed sooner than he was, but if TNR had required pix, I'm sure little Steve would have provided 'em.

Glass is also worth examining in context because of the intense racially-slanted analysis of Jayson Blair's journalistic crime spree at the New York Times. I'm not saying race wasn't at all a factor in Blair's rapid advancement and coddling by management, but the rogue's gallery of misbehaving journalists from the past decade cuts across racial, social, religious, and political boundaries.

Stephen Glass: white, well-off (parents from tony Chicago suburb, brother at Stanford, alleged social pressure from parents to practice law like a good boy), Jewish, ideologically unconstrained. Glass wrote for the Kennedy-owned George, for TNR, for the Heritage Foundation... anyone, really.

Ruth Shalit (TNR's other dirty little rotter, aka "La Plagiarista" and "That Darn Ruth"): white, well-off, Jewish, very much on the right side of the political spectrum.

Jack Kelley: white, a publicly devout Christian, allegedly called upon by God to 'proclaim the truth,' and a peddler of vicious stereotypes. Also a generation older than Glass, Blair, or Shalit.

Christopher Newton: nada. I know nothing of this guy, who fabricated bland and useless quotes for the AP. I don't want to look into him, because I cherish the belief he was getting revenge on his bosses at AP for requiring such filler quotes in the first place.

Jayson Blair: Black. Like you had to even ask.

Mike "the Piper" Barnicle: White. Wanted to be for Boston what Mike Royko was to Chicago. Ripped off Royko, and George Carlin, and just plain made stuff up. Recently peddling his tripe on MSNBC. Friend and guest of Don Imus and Chris Matthews-- and friend of the Kennedys and Robert Redford. I dunno what exactly you'd call his politics, but I sure couldn't stand the guy.

Patricia Smith: Black, and Barnicle's fellow columnist at the Boston Glob(e). Invented at least four of the people she quoted and profiled. Passionate about women, blacks, and the poor; also writes poetry.

Jay Forman: tarted up several articles for Slate. Male. Info beyond that is sketchy.

Jeff Jacoby: yet another alum of the Glob. Conservative.

Judith Miller, aka "Miss Suspicious": The center of the whole NYT/WMD fiasco. Most recently seen as a First Amendment martyr, which doesn't exactly compensate for her "wretched reporting" on such a critical story.

And those are just the major cases. We have whites and blacks, Christians and Jews, men and women, and a assortment of political affiliations. ,We have pure fabulists (Glass, Smith, Newton) and a mess of plagiarist/fabulist repeat offenders (Shalit, Blair Barnicle), plus the Very Special case of Miller and her 'sources.'

What do these critters have in common? In the case of Glass, Shalit, Barnicle, and Blair, a common factor is being cosseted by editors in the face of repeated missteps. Shalit was sheltered by Andrew Sullivan, Blair thrived in the climate created by Gerald Boyd and Howell Raines, and Barnicle was kept on at the Globe despite years of accusations against him. Glass was mentored (and enabled) by Michael Kelly, who wasn't corrupt so much as he was too trusting in his wunderbrat staff; Kelly's successor Chuck Lane finally got rid of both The Fabulist and La Plagiarista. As for Jack Kelley, McPaper's internal investigation cited a 'climate of fear' that kept the star journo safe.

Here's the real kicker: Sullivan launched a scathing attack on Raines for not twigging to Blair earlier, despite having gone through the same routine himself with Shalit. And Raines cried foul when Matt Storin at the Globe gave Patricia Smith (far) fewer second chances than he allowed Barnicle. Funny stuff, eh?

Conclusions? It's not about race, that's for sure. A less knee-jerk reaction would be to examine the culture in the newsrooms that produced these blots. That's not consistent, either, though. Sociopathic scribblers have thrived in the bad vibes of Raines' NYT and the USA Today of Kelley's era, and at the cosy Kelly-run New Republic. And what the heck has been going on at the Boston Globe?

And finally, which is the worst of these? Blair's run of deceptions at the NYT caused by far the biggest ruckus, but for my money Jack Kelley and Miller did the worst damage. Miller's badly-sourced columns were influential into leading the US into a messy war (this just in: the WMD search is over ). As for Kelley... a wide audience, critical accolades, and incendiary "issue" stories make for one damaging combination. Remember the one about the Red Crescent ambulance used for a suicide bombing? Remember the one about the Islamist youth pointing to a pic of the Sears Tower and claiming that one was "his" for the targeting? I remember both of those getting wide circulation, and also remember being outraged by the vigilante settlers Kelley profiled. Kelley, it seems, made them all up. In a hysterical, divisive political climate, Kelley manufactured graphic stories that played up to people's worst fears and suspicions. Maybe he thought he was being "objective" because he inflamed people on both sides of the Israel/Palestine issue.

All of them are scum, really (though I have a soft spot for my interpretation of Newton's AP fabrications). But Jack Kelley is in a different class from the slimy little kiddies who got so much attention.

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