Wednesday, March 07, 2018
A lot of hear-say that flatters anti-Trump plotters
MICHAEL WOLFF – FIRE AND FURY, INSIDE THE TRUMP WHITE HOUSE – 2018
The book was made a success as soon as the White House and Trump’s lawyers tried to prevent its publication. But was it worth it? Is it worth all the interest it got for a couple of weeks, maybe a month?
The journalism practiced in this book is first of all a lot too long. What could be said in twenty pages is diluted into one hundred? That makes some pages, many pages so boringly detailed with semantically repetitive elements that it could have been stripped down to one and only one expression.
The second irritating element is that it is some kind of pseudo-fictionalized reporting based on a few facts, a few rumors and a few cogitations from the author but all in all little real serious factual objective reporting. Many of the elements put forward are hear-say and nothing but hear-say. It might be true the author was told this or that by someone who was a first tier or second tier witness of something. But it is unreceivable in court. It is hear-say.
Then do we have to believe it? Of course not. But for some time these at times hardly believable pages become the latest gospel against Trump. But this gospel contains little. It is even less acceptable than the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus because Nicodemus was for most of the things he speaks of an attested witness or even actor of the events he reports. Michael Wolff is none of that.
It is true it will satisfy the anti-Trump cohorts and it will thrill the pro-plotting-theory bigots since it will go their way. Trump is so limited at all levels that he must be the puppet of some manipulating Deus ex Machina that is of course not identified. So every version of the basic plotting theory that says everything that happens is the result of the decisions of a group of half a dozen obscure shadowy and shady people, will be nourished and nurtured with new allegations, hear-say assertions, and rumors.
In one word this book should never have gotten the attention, care and promotion it got from the White House, except if Trump knows the basic fact that there is no bad critique or review, there is only high-sounding and noisy review or critique. This book is helping Trump occupy the front of the stage in the limelight for a few weeks and then he will have to find something else like tariffs on steel and aluminum. Make waves and it will leave an imprint in the sand of the beach all the bigger if your waves are really big.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 4:00 AM 
