Judy Belushi wants revenge. “Bob Woodward is getting it from all sides … After the ‘SNL’ player OD’d, Judy Belushi Pisano encouraged all of his pals to talk to Woodward, who, like John, had grown up in Wheaton, Ill. [Woodward then wrote ‘Wired,’ a negative bio of John Belushi.] She now tells us: ‘Woodward was the wrong guy [to write that book. I was foolish.’ …”
“It was my first experience of getting tricked by a journalist,” says Belushi’s “Continental Divide” co-star Blair Brown. “I really felt betrayed, and it made me question all of his other work.”
Have any of you ever been tricked or misquoted by a journalist? Should the WaPo fire Woodward’s ass? And, can any of the rest of you remember an excellent TV series that Blair Brown starred in? OPEN THREAD:
I loved that show–and it had a wonderful cast, including David Strathairn, who’s been a favorite of mine ever since.
Someone told me — who? — that it’s not out in DVD. Hope it is … so many women just loved that series.
(I’ve never seen either one, I was just being silly)
Featuring my fellow Stony Brook U alumnus William Converse-Roberts as Molly’s ex-hubby Fred Dodd. He was a year ahead of me, we had friends in common, but met only once in passing. Kind of strange to see someone you knew, however tangentially, on TV in a large part like that.
I remember the sh*t that occurred when Molly began to ‘date’ a black man. Apparently, that’s when to some viewers, it jumped the shark and climbed on board the whale.
Sheesh. I liked that show. And didn’t give a dang about who she slept with.
I also liked Tony Randall’s short-lived dramedy show about a closeted gay guy.
I have been misquoted by a reporter, not maliciously. It was about a copyright law issue, and she reversed what I said, making me sound like an idiot to my fellow IP attorneys (luckily most of them assumed I was misquoted, since what I was quoted as saying was just too dumb).
More to the point, every time I have read press coverage of an issue or occurance I knew a lot about, it has been wrong in major ways. Before blogs, the only way to correct the stories was via letters to the editor.
Once I wrote a LTE that somehow, when the paper was printed, they cut out several whole lines of what I wrote and spliced sentences together so that it looked like
(1) I was saying the complete opposite of what I was trying to say, and
(2) I had no idea how to form a coherent sentence.
And someone responded in another LTE calling me to task for this! Of course it was just a stupid college newspaper – but still.
A year or two later I went to work for them. And the idiot editor would edit spelling and grammatical errors into my articles. I couldn’t use them as writing samples because of her. She was a journalism major, too. I dearly hope she found another career.
Blair Brown was also in that silly show “Ed”.
In these days of pietistic “patriotism”, it’s refreshing to look back at a time when the the rough and ready common sense of democracy was not yet drowned in a sea of poll-whoring and fear of “offending”. I came across this from a 1918 Teddy Roosevelt speech. It gives a good measure of how far we’ve fallen into mealymouth idiocy (See Hillary’s latest Iraq statement, for example). I wish BT and its kin had a permanent “sig” for stuff like this that might help restore our ravaged cultural memory.
However, I have appeared in plays that were reviewed by critics who were too stupid to properly evaluate the work and performances, and gave the best notices to actors who actually were so out of it they’d constantly forget their lines, forcing others to make awkwared attempts to cover up for them. When someone misses an entrance in a Shakespeare play and you have to improvise something to cover for him, seeing him get the best ink isn’t a very pleasant experience.
Can anyone here provide me with a Canadian Blog that would be somewhat similar in design to Booman or DKos that I could go to and post diaries? Given the election is around the corner, I need to get a little more informed and involved in Canadian politics, for a change!
I’m far too obsessed with American politics, sad because I can’t even vote there!
Do you know Olivia here? She might know.
Her e-mail address is posted too:
oliviainottawa @ yahoo.ca
Not tricked, but I’ve seen reporters be stupidly wrong so many times.
Let me give just one example:
I was in Prague the day it was decided that the country would split in two. As I walked down Wencheslas Square, I listened to the BBC. The correspondent breathlessly reported (live) that a riot was happening just about where I was standing.
There were a couple of people handing out leaflets, another with a petition. But no riot.
Unless, maybe, someone (on looking at me) had commented, “What a riot.”
Well, I hung out in the Sneak Joint ( a private bar for Belushi) in CHicago with Belushi and the MGBlues Brothers.
It was very strange. He was regarded as a kind “magical being with great power” . He that aura of power that Big stars develop from the people around them. He did nothing to discourage it. He often sat alone..
He had drug guards in the bar who were paid to keep him from using drugs. Everytime someone went to the bathroom they would go in and inspect to make sure no one had left anything for him.
Some of the people I know, one in particular, has nothing but the greatest things to say about John, how he helped them in their career. Showed them the ropes.
He and his brother Jim are from Wheaton, but the family was originally from Chicago. Both of them are totally “street”.
Woodward has a reputation on the other hand of only wanting to talk to the “elites” . High profile people, unlike Seymour Hersh who is really interested in everybody and really interested in seems in the truth.
I have always hated woodward.
Wish I could say that, too–that I’ve always hated Woodward.
I was always a little suspicious of him, however. I worked at the NYTimes during Watergate as a copyboy; a friend had a similar position at WaPo (it was a college thing, getting us such jobs for a semester or a summer). We would call each other on the WATS lines and compare notes. Long before the stories had been verified enough to be published, everyone in both newsrooms knew almost everything that was going on. The problem was verification, not information. But I admired that W&B did manage to get the verification–but I never did feel that they had done any great investigating. There were people all over DC just dying to get info to the press; the problem was getting them to reveal their names (even if not for publication).
WATS lines! Gawd, it’s been a while since I heard that one!
You were a copy boy at the NYT. Wow. I’m envious.
saw Ehrlichman on a street corner. My office was one block from the Nixon White House. When you could drive down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Glory days,
glory daaaaayyyyyysssss…
Met a guy who the word “bombastic” was created to describe. It was just before Thanksgiving, so I couldn’t help thinking, “Thank God this dude’s not my brother-in-law.” I could picture myself, forcing a smile while “STFU already!” pounded inside my brain.
I started to make a mental list of people who I’d least want to spend a holiday meal with. Woodward was on it. Not only for his ego, or his bullshit “reporting”, but because of his dreadful midwest accent (hey, I’m from the midwest and I can’t stand it), slow speech, but his cadence. “Prince Baaaan-daaaar….” “pass the tuuuur-keeeey…”
One of our very own Tribbers is going to be on Jeopardy! tonight. In some markets it may air tomorrow. He is a big time lurker, probably has only made one or two comments ever. I can’t even remember his handle and don’t want to blow his cover anyway. But if you see Josh Danson on TV tonight, make sure to root for him. I have no idea how he did.
Ain’t falling for it this time.
What intrigues me most about Woodward is his time as a communications officer on the USS Wright, an aircraft carrier outfitted to serve as an alternate center of governmentin the event of a calamity. I hadn’t heard of it until recently, although the facts were published in Silent Coup; it belongs to an archepelago of secret hideouts for the survivors of Armageddon, and it was commanded by Adm. Welander, who confessed to managing an extensive intramural spying operation within the executive branch.
Admiral Moorer.
“In 1970, Admiral Thomas Moorer, newly-appointed Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, was frustrated by the JCS being cut out of the loop on important international negotiations by Nixon and Kissinger. To obtain information critical to the security of the country, Moorer decided to set up an espionage ring whose immediate target was the National Security Council — the vehicle being used by Nixon and Kissinger to circumvent the usual ways of communicating with foreign powers. Prior to this time, Woodward — then a lieutenant — was a briefer for Moorer — someone who monitored an important secret communication channel, briefed top brass, and was sent to the White House to repeat such briefings. During 1969-1970, Moorer sent Woodward to the White House to brief Colonel Alexander Haig, Kissinger’s assistant on the NSC. Moorer confirms Woodward’s role as a White House briefer!”
http://www.watergate.com/
The ship itself seems a nursery for dreams of toppled government and heroic restoration of order.
I was interviewing some cast members of a Broadway show once. They decided to go to dinner together afterwards and invited me along. On the walk to the restaurant I was chatting with one of them about the show and she was being much more circumspect than in the interview. I suddenly realized why and came out and asked her, if she’d been burned by a journalist. She had.
I know other such stories. Some of them reveal misunderstanding of how journalism works or what the role of the journalist is, or a critic, but a lot are justified. For some journalists, “the story” and their careers justify most any sort of trickery and deceit. They’re like some salespeople or advertisers that way.
It’s not something I could do. I innocently embarrassed an interview subject once by repeating in print something he said from the stage to thousands of people at a concert, but that was as close as I got. I had my own standards of integrity that I tried to apply to everyone, and I was proud to have never had anyone claim to be misquoted or misused. But then, I also didn’t make much of a career for myself either.
Here’s what Al Franken did:
from the same article