1. “…the only guilded butler in North America…” “In Canada, graduating butlers fresh from school can expect annual wages in the $50,000 to $60,000 range, climbing to $75,000 within five years. After 10 years, according to Mr. MacPherson, butlers can look forward to six-figure salaries.” Finally: ““If you think you love people, but you’re not sure you love people, it’s not the profession for you.””
2. WTF?
3. A good review of Carol. And Valentina’s in Austin is an A+, get the brisket taco, smoked corn, and beans.
4. What makes an academic paper useful for health care policy?
5. Sidney Mintz has passed away. Ellsworth Kelly and Meadowlark Lemon, too. The latter two are NYT links.
6. Seymour Hersh’s speculative piece on Syria, Turkey, Russia, etc. Not a pretty picture.
#6. You can dispute parts of this or even the whole thing but the typical article in US papers is not at this level of quality. We seem to just read press releases.
I’d like to hope that the typical article making claims of this consequence is based on more than a single anonymous source.
Anonymous sources (fictional or not) are Hersh’s stock in trade. Without them, he’d never write anything. He’s an ‘investigative journalist’. If you’ve got no scandal, you’ve got no book, and you took an advance. Somehow the credibility of ‘investigative journalists’ is never injured by this structural factor (maybe because the people who write the reviews are generally other journalists). Hersh is unusual in that fellow reporters stopped taking him seriously.
Thomas Friedman has made his entire career out of interviewing anonymous taxi drivers. I hope not on the way to or from the airport.
If you start criticizing people for things like that how many journalists would be left?
Or at least that is what thirty seven journalists I interviews for this reply said. I could tell you their names, and trust me, they all work for Top Papers, but unfortunately I have a moral obligation to protect my sources. It is in the Constitution there somewhere.
And as for #3, all I can say is that A. Wyatt Mann was right.
Seymour Hersh spent more than a decade claiming a US sneak attack and invasion of Iran was imminent. He has lost all credibility.
So he couldn’t predict the future, as if you can. The article didn’t predict anything, it described a muddled and unfocused US foreign policy that’s led by people with no concept of how the world actually works.
The article is based on anonymous sources. Hersh’s prior reporting suggests that his anonymous sources are not reliable and therefore he is not reliable. Without full attribution of his sources an article from Hersh isn’t worth the electrons it is transmitted with. Maybe not even then.
I wonder what anonymous source taught you how to spell “collateral”.
You win five internet points. Don’t spend them all in one place.
In fact, many of his sources weren’t anonymous.
Hersh’s prior reporting suggests that his anonymous sources are not reliabl –
Presuming, of course, that the sources have any existence outside the space between Hersh’s ears.
Just about everything in the article is apparent to anyone who has been paying attention over the last several years. He’s actually not saying anything new. He’s just reporting people saying things openly now that have previously been inferred.
It was always obvious the U.S. would never invade Iran. And I linked to Hersh’s recent piece first. And, yes, people can predict the future.
Good. Let’s go to the horse races.
I predict Iran will not be attacked by any formally Western forces and will not develop a nuclear weapon by January 1, 2035.
Who is going to win the Kentucky Derby this May?
He also once claimed to have interviewed 1,000 people over a period of 4 years in composing a book, or about 5 people per week. Martin Peretz’ take on it: “Hersh is known for the harsh, hectoring phone call…”
#1 – On another site I saw a list of things from 1915. One item stated that 18% of US households had a full-time domestic worker.
What would you trade for the ability to have a full-time domestic worker?
-Modern medical care?
-The ability to travel more than 250 miles from home?
-TV, smartphone, home computer, car radios, etc.?
I’d trade my NY home (and old wife) and move to a place like the Philippines and live like a king with a pet girl friend or two.
What do you mean by your questions? I think that medical care, transportation, post-modern toys don’t bear on the fact that nearly one-in-five, 1915 US homes had domestics. I don’t want the average life expectancy to decline to 47 years, either.
I don’t want the average life expectancy to decline to 47 years, either.
That’s Philadelphia ca. 1750, not New York ca. 1915. At the latter point, the life expectancy would have been about 60. Yes, you could travel more than 250 miles from your home in 1915, you just could not do it by automobile or by aeroplane. Not much medical care in 1915; there was nursing care and there was surgery. Housework was much more labor intensive in 1915 (especially laundry), hence the utility of domestic workers. Nowadays, domestic work is socialized over several households and performed by companies – e.g. the operators of retirement communities.
6. Speculative? Hardly. Who supported the 9/11 terrorists? Who supported the insurgents who killed and maimed thousands of U.S, soldiers in Iraq? Who supports ISIS in Iraq and Syria? Yet, the U.S. continues the fiction that Saudi Arabia is our ally. U.S policy is captive to the Sunni Arab Muslims. Why? Oil, for sure. And Israel (which inexplicably has chosen Saudi Arabia as an “ally”). And the memory of the Iranian (Shiite) humiliation in the late 1970s. But the largesse that flows from Saudi Arabia to the U.S. intelligence community (including think tanks) cannot be overstated. Markets in everything.
Bingo. Also, don’t forget Turkey. Iran also did the first two, IIRC.
There are elements in the Saudi government that are very friendly to US interests. There are other elements that actively support terrorists.
Imagine if Saudi Arabia fell into civil war and chaos like the kind we’re seeing in Syria or Libya. A chaotic Saudi Arabia would be a disaster for US interests so we’re stuck siding with a theocratic dictatorship.
Sometimes sticking with the devil you know is the best option.
There is no ‘dictatorship’. It’s a traditional monarchy characterized by esoteric factional politics within the House of Saud. Unlike other authoritarian regimes, it’s an organic product of the rough and tumble of tribal politics on the Arabian peninsula. It’s also very circumscribed in its political aims and not revanchist at all.
As with most countries, the easiest mistake to make is that the country, or even its leadership at very high levels, are monolithic or act in non-contradictory ways.
The only fictions are those you’re peddling.
. Seymour Hersh’s speculative piece on Syria, Turkey, Russia, etc.
Seymour Hersh was, ca. 1983, regarded either as a disreputable character or as rather outre. He was so regarded by every component of magazine journalism other than red haze characters like Alexander Cockburn and Victor Navasky. Why are the moderators commending him?
Thanks for your daily dose of bitter old man perspective.
“Bitter old man” perspective would evidently be that which holds it is passing strange to trust an ‘investigative reporter’ long since abandoned by everyone this side of Noam Chomsky, and to commend his work to the rest of us. But then the moderators fancy an academic nothingburger like Corey Robin is the student of American politics most worth reading.
Bitter old man is fighting old battles. Like the people that post rants about Reagan or Carter. No one cares what the people of 1983 thought of Seymour Hersh or “red haze” or whatever other bee you’ve been keeping in your bonnet for three decades.
I’m not fighting any old battles. I’m pointing out you’re relying on someone who is disreputable, and has been known and understood as disreputable for a generation. This isn’t rocket science.
While I’ve found Hersh’s latest pieces to be somewhat questionable and to be taken with many grains of salt, its pretty absurd to try to re-write history and ignore his important writings on topics like the My Lai massacre and torture in Abu Ghraib.
What’s ‘important’ about his ‘writings’ about Abu Gharaib? Abu Gharaib is not important in and of itself and Hersh uncovered nothing about it of any consequence.
For #5, see In Memoriam, Sidney Mintz, 1922-2015.
The only work by Mintz I’ve read is “Sweetness and Power.” I’d recommend it to anyone on this blog. He ties many fields together in smart, interesting ways.
Regarding Hersh’s article, it is clearly highly tilted. What is it? Clearly it is a channeling of the fired Flynn, former director of the DIA. The real story here is that there has been a major conflict between the DIA and CIA over Syrian policy, with Obama largely siding with the CIA. Most of his discussion of the roles of other parties involved there looks pretty accurate. In short, the article looks overdone, in particular in claiming that so much of the military agrees with the DIA rather than the CIA position (even though DIA is DOD and CIA is not), but most of it is pretty accurate.
Curious why Art Deco has gone bananas on this thread. Sure, A.D., Hersh has made some bad calls, but the most important of his sources are not anonymous, in particular Flynn, who is arguing his case through Hersh, who channels him fairly uncritically. On that Hersh may be criticized, but you are once again making a fool of yourself Art Deco. You think we should be focusing on toppling Assad? Really? Have you been sticking your head you know where again?
Tyler wrote:
“Just an observation. I can think of one or maybe two exceptions in the comments section on this site, namely people who are exceptionally bright and also talented assemblers of information. But for most of you, if you are leaving more than two or three comments on a blog post — you probably don’t have that much to say.”
Guess who is the most prolific commentator.
Ed,
That sometimes applies to me. On some threads I get going and post a lot, especially when I am arguing with some folks. I have not kept track, but I think that there are one or two (or maybe even three) people who comment here more frequently than Art Deco, but he is up there and on this thread he clearly has lost it. In honor of Tyler’s comment I am not going to post on this thread further,even if Art comes in and criticizes my wife or the administration of JMU for keeping me on as an obviously incompetent faculty member, as he has done in the past. I am going under the knife a week from tomorrow for open heart surgery, so I am in a bit of a feisty mood, but I have a lot to do before that happens that is more important than duking it out with the lower loser scheisskopfs who shoot off their mouths here so outlandishly (and anonymously).
Instead, let me make substantive remarks about Hersh and this article. He has had some major hits and scores in the past. Iit is completely correct that he has had a lot of misses recently, but even his most misguided articles are thoroughly researched, if sometimes taking some unreliable sources too seriously (in this regard I grant AD some of his points). However, even in his more misguided articles he usually makes reasonable and interesting points.
So, let me note about this article about the supposedly secret plan to attack Iran. AD is thoroughly full of himself that this article is just awful, proof positive of what a loser Hersh is whom nobody takes seriously. Look, there is a plan to attack Iran and this fact is not a secret. What is secret are the details of how it would be done and what are the conditions to trigger such an attack. Some of that stuff Hersh got wrong, but a lot of that article was correct. That the attack has not happened does not discredit his article that much. It simply shows that Iran has figured out what the red lines are and has not crossed them.
AD’s sneering that nobody takes Hersh seriously is just plain wrong. I know a lot of people in Washington, serious people there. They take Hersh seriously. He is often wrong about major stuff, now, more so than in the distant past, but his articles always reveal serious things that are not widely known, and in the case of this article the story is how serious this conflict between the DIA and the CIA has been. I did not know it was that bad, and it has been a long time since we have seen such a serious conflict within the US intel establishment. This is the big story, and it is real news.
B.R. – I mostly agree with your assessment of Hersh – above and beyond whether or not current denizens in Washington find him sometimes reliable, there is strong evidence that people almost exactly like him have existed on the fringes of nearly every non-totalitarian imperial capital throughout recorded history. I mostly disagree with your criticism of people for posting pseudonymously if they wish to. More importantly, I wish you a speedy and complete recovery, for your sake I am happy that open-heart surgery has gotten so much easier on the patient than it was a decade or more ago, I hope that pattern applies in your case. That being said, unless specifically asked not to, I will pray for a super-quick recovery for you and continued good health. Also, as a long time reader of the posts on this blog, and as a sometimes reader of long comment threads, I believe it is very unlikely that T.C. meant to include you in the referenced tirade from a few days ago where he (very mildly) inveighed against over-posters.
I think it’s fairly widely accepted that there is a fairly significant group of hawks in the US who have been dreaming of attacking Iran for some decades now. However, they lack a) quite a good enough excuse to do so and b) enough support from others in the establishment.
I never heard of Hersh until today, but I don’t think it’s very disputable that some highly positioned people in the USA really really really want to attack Iran.
I noticed that some of our more energetic typists cooled it for a day or two after that observation.
6) The only thing I’m really skeptical about is that Erdogan seriously wasn’t to reinstate the Ottoman Empire. He surely wants Turkey to take more of a leadership role, in particular in the Muslim world, and no doubt there are some folks in Turkish security agencies who use their positions to the benefit of ISIS, but to think that Erdogan actually believes that there is a single Muslim political entity outside of Turkey that would accept rule from Ankara seems in the range of about 0%.
Are there really any other points in the article that seem easy to disregard? While I think its sensible to hold healthy skepticism in the face of undisclosed sources, In my opinion it’s among the best analyses I’ve read yet, and not much at all about it seems particularly odd, unexplainable or unlikely.
Indeed, pretty much everything about it has been reported in one way or another before.
1. There is no real moderate Syrian opposition, or what’s left of it is too weak to fight the Islamic State. (This has been clear for at least two years).
2. Obama’s insistence that Assad must go has been a failure, and is now standing in the way of positive cooperation with the Russians. (apparent to anyone paying attention)
3. Turkey has been quietly helping the Islamic state (also old news to anyone paying attention).
4. Weapons provided to the “moderate” opposition quickly end up in the hands of the Islamic state (also widely reported).
Hersh isn’t reporting anything new here, he’s just putting two and two together and saying what many people in the media haven’t wanted to say out loud: Obama’s Syria policy was and is an utter disaster.
Also, give some credit to Europeans. The “Assad must go”meme seems to come from France.
The entire Arab Spring has been an utter disaster.
The paleocon types who said (15 years ago) that the Arabs couldn’t handle democracy and needed authoritarian leadership or they would turn into Islamist theorcracies have been thoroughly vindicated. By both Iraq and Syria.
We tried replacing dictatorships by force, and we tried to work with spontaneous democractic revolutions, and we got the same result both times.
In light of Obama’s early efforts towards a complete nuclear disarmament, I wonder if some of his animosity towards Putin is because Putin rudely rebuffed his efforts (privately, in some way). Back in 2009, Obama had the idea that we were going to get Russia (not to mention the US congress) to agree to ZERO nuclear arms stockpiles (LOL). I always wondered why Obama thought that was such a high priority, personally. Seems like a hippie pipe dream. Maybe he was trying to do something to earn his Peace Prize.
WTF is giving up their greatest asset.