CSotD: A Tale Full of Fire and Fury
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The book drops today, and if you love me you'll order it here but that's not what I wanted to say about it.
Jack Ohman comes close to what I wanted to say about it, because it's a portrait of chaos and paranoia that would be funny if it weren't actually happening in our actual government.
I've read the excerpts and they confirm that Trump and his gang were not expecting to win, which explains the utterly disorganized transition.
Wolff also confirms one of my long-time suspicions by reporting that Melania burst into tears at the news that he'd won, "and not of joy."
I'd be more comfortable with the revelations if I thought they'd make a difference, but we're so divided that there may not be a revelation that would change anyone's standing.
James Fallows has a piece at the Atlantic which makes a devastating point: He compares what people in Hollywood all knew about Harvey Weinstein with what everyone in the Republican Party has known about Donald Trump.
Fallows condemns the organizations that paid people off to cover for Weinstein and for Bill O'Reilly instead of doing something, and the people who gossiped behind their backs and warned each other to keep a distance but did nothing to bring them to account or to protect newcomers.
Then he compares that to those who have always known that Donald Trump was, at best, incompetent and temperamental and, as the portrait emerges, semi-literate and possibly paranoid.
He hurls his "J'accuse" at the get-along gang, the Republicans who not only knew and tolerated what was going on, but actively voted against any attempt to deal with the crisis.
And he's right: At least, once the facts about Weinstein and O'Reilly emerged, their protectors turned on them. Perhaps too little, too late, but it was something.
As Fallows suggests, if "independent" Republicans like Collins and Murkowski, and those with nothing to lose like Flake and Hatch, won't break out of lockstep loyalty to the party, what hope is there that any Republicans will, whether they move towards impeachment, at least speak honestly about what the hell is going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
Clay Bennett depicts the state of the president's mind with only, I'm afraid, a bit of exaggeration.
And speaking of exaggeration, I wish the book had been written in a less "new journalism" fashion, because Wolff leaves himself open to those who question his veracity by following the lead of Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote and inventing scenarios based — we assume — on what he was told, but in detail that he could not possibly have witnessed and certainly that nobody furnished.
For instance:
“Does he get it?” asked Ailes suddenly, looking intently at Bannon. Did Trump get where history had put him?
Bannon took a sip of water. “He gets it,” he said, after hesitating for perhaps a beat too long. “Or he gets what he gets.”
Honestly, do you think either man, even if they provided the exact quotes, mentioned where Ailes was looking or Bannon's drink of water or how long he hesitated?
It's a nice scene, perhaps similar to how it happened, but here's the problem:
It's bullshit.
(Update: I stand corrected. Wolff actually was present for that exchange.)
And once you find a clump of bullshit, you have to question everything. ( Point remains that this type of writing is generally spiked with "re-creations" of reality. I wish I'd chosen a valid example. Thanks to the reader who set me straight.)
Wolff reportedly has tapes, but I'll bet he doesn't have tapes of everything and I'm sure he doesn't have Bannon's sip of water on tape because he wasn't in the room.
I want to believe the big pieces, and they jibe with other reports we've heard.
But I wish Wolff had written like a journalist and not a storyteller, because Trump's supporters are going to have a field day nitpicking the silly, irrelevant things he invented.
Juxtaposition of the Day 
There's a lot out there about Bannon's betrayal, and these cracked me up, but, while Bannon has been a thorn in Trump's side since his firing, I'm not sure he isn't more of a distraction than a relevant factor at this point.
I've already seen one rightwing cartoon that joyfully depicts how Trump has utterly defeated Bannon, by which I assume he refers to that staff-written statement issued under Trump's name that called Bannon names and said he'd never eat lunch in this town again.
To which I ask, "So what?"
Bannon may have furnished a lot of the hot gossip, but he didn't write the book and I highly suspect the book would have happened without his cooperation.
But even if his revelations were the lynchpin of the entire thing, attacking the witness is simply a sign that you can't refute the testimony.
I never liked the sonofabitch to begin with, so don't waste my time on that.
Show me the proof that he lied.
And that, without his lies, Wolff had no other interesting information.
In other news
I saw both these items flash across Twitter and Facebook, but Mike Lynch packaged them best and you should go to his blog for more details.
First, longtime collaborator Wayno is taking over the Mon-Sat duties on Bizarro, leaving Dan Piraro to focus on the Sundays and do other projects.
This should be a relatively smooth transition, since the two have worked together regularly and openly: Piraro is one of the few cartoonists who gives on-page credit to his ghosts.
Wayno is dropping his own strip, Waynovision, which shared the Bizarro vision but not its circulation. Seems like a win/win.
The other, potentially more momentous, news is that Guy Gilchrist is stepping down from Nancy, which he has penned for a little over 20 years, and it's bigger news because the syndicate has not announced a replacement or even if the strip will continue.
Jerry Scott — he of Zits and Baby Blues — took over the strip briefly before Gilchrist, and sought to modernize it with updated art and more inventive gags, and the result was huge reader pushback because they didn't want updated art or inventive gags.
They wanted Nancy.
Gilchrist restored the art, polished it a bit and managed to make the strip his own without significantly disrupting the original concept.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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