Here’s something personal I’ll share about myself. Lately, I’ve been looking at Game of Thrones stories as attractive material for crafting blog posts not so much because they interest me or that I think they’ll interest you, but because I need a psychological break from writing about things of such import and gravity that there’s tremendous work required to not get basic things wrong.
You should try writing authoritatively on Syria or Ukraine, or explaining detailed Senate procedure in way that your audience is not getting from the papers and news programs. See if you can wade through the Russia scandal and sort it out enough to add something that isn’t just lazy speculation or half-witted conspiratorial musings. Try figuring out what House Republican factions will do or won’t do when put under pressure by their own president and leadership.
If you don’t like getting egg on your face, you won’t try these things at all, and it you’re willing to take the risk, you’ll need to work very hard to make sure you aren’t missing something that will be pointed out to you in two seconds on Twitter.
But the Game of Thrones articles? Anyone can have an opinion on that. And no one expects you to really know what’s going on in Trump’s boardroom. So, hey, you can say that Bannon needs to become a “team player” or he’ll soon be gone, and everyone will think it was a great read and you’re quite a clever fellow.
The risk/reward/effort ratios look very attractive to me.
Valar Morghulis
Use these five great tricks to tell who’s up and who’s down in Trump’s white house!
Do whatever you have to, to keep your sanity and strength, but know that the hard work you do to do the hard ones right is deeply appreciated.
Well, except among the reality deniers in the diaries on the right.
To them he is an establishment defending Putin hater.
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Pointing out that Russia is ruled by an authoritarian right-wing oligarch who seems to have multiple associations with the authoritarian right-wing oligarch President of the US is somehow “red”-baiting and McCarthyite.
Even though, like, Russia is not remotely “red”, and the closest thing we have to McCarthy is a direct link from Joe McCarthy -> Roy Cohn -> Donald Trump. And I mean, a direct linkage.
BothSidesDoItTM now, BothSidesDoItTM tomorrow, BothSidesDoItTM forever, and all that, I guess.
Sure is an interesting time to be alive and ostensibly on the left…depending on who you ask.
I don’t blame you for taking a break from the freak show for awhile. I’m watching “Face the Nation” on mute, while John McCain is being interviewed for the 1000th time. You still won’t be able to escape politics by writing about Games of Thrones; it’s the essence of human beings either in fiction or reality. Who’s to say I’m not engaging in fantasy this morning while I make my rounds on the Sunday talk shows?
Some years (likely several centuries) before circa 650 AD, a star was born. Some news travels very slowly.
Some news, even if delayed for centuries, is also irrelevant to ordinary life on planet earth.
Stars are made of poisonness gas….it’s a mystery of where the gas came from!
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This is a case of not following the link: Trump plans centrist push and Priebus is on board.
That’s the Game of Thrones I’m talking about, not the show.
That’s what I thought. I’d say anything that makes Mike Allen’s job easier than it already is is too easy for you. You’d hate yourself in the morning.
Why not just try upping your game in sports analogies (nobody ever uses soccer, so you could outclass the field instantly)?
I hate everyone else, so I can hardly afford to start hating myself.
oh. made that mistake too.
you’re right. the personalities and kremlinology, who’s up and who’s down, are much easier topics than analyzing policies and actions, let alone attempting to verify facts.
You’d get away with it too. We’d read that stuff and discuss it, and probably not remember which predictions turned out to be wrong.
That’s the road to success, BooMan. You just have to get over the desire to write about things that actually matter.
I read the link, but took your post too literally. LOL at me.
This is snark, right? Sardonically presented rage at the entire journalistic apparatus?
Well Bannon is sure that
winter is coming , so there may be less difference between game of thrones and the White House than we all thought.
Except the schemes and plots and ploys the GOT characters come up with are way too intelligent and shrewd for this White House.
Having a hard time thinking of any GOT characters dumb enough to work there.
“Having a hard time thinking of any GOT characters dumb enough to work there.”
Joffrey and Hodor, except Hodor is too good for this lot. Also, The Hound may be too smart, but he’d appreciate the cruelty.
House Martell could match up with House Trump, considering how Oberyn Martell died (i.e., worthy of a Darwin Award.)
It’s not just the overtly dumb ones, it’s the ones who think they’re scheming and smart and planning (i.e. almost everyone) and then who get sideswiped when the universe has other plans. This cycle happens again and again to escalating degrees and nobody’s paying attention to the poor anemic early-warning system as they’re overwhelmed by ice zombies.
It really is a phenomenal series. The show isn’t bad (in fact I still really like it) but it hasn’t been able to do the story justice for a few seasons now.
I’m actually a fan of “The Fourth Turning,” so it distresses me that Bannon is both misusing the ideas in the book and ignoring the parts of the authors’ theory of cyclical history that he finds inconvenient for his purposes, like the importance of the Millennials in determining how the crisis will turn out. This Business Insider article does a good job of outlining both, while the following video from The Huffington Post concentrates more on the ends that Bannon wants more than the means of the book.
Trump’s top adviser thinks we’re in “the great Fourth Turning in American history.”
I’m going to have to write a diary about this topic later. Right now, I’ll satisfy myself with a first draft of adapting Kung Fu Monkey’s joke about “Atlas Shrugged” and “Lord of the Rings.”
There are two books that warn that “Winter is coming,” “A Game of Thrones” and “The Fourth Turning.” One will turn its readers into people who look forward to a crisis that will redeem the country after a decade or more of war, depression, and civil strife. The other one has White Walkers as villains.
I understand your point.
I guess that’s why over at Vox everyone insists on writing about pop culture as well as their main topic.
I hope you do a better job than them of picking subjects I want to read about.
With all the smart people here, I’m genuinely surprised how many of you thought he was referring to the fantasy TV show.
It’s not just not following the link — it’s all through the text of the post.
Except following the link does not preclude joking about the show.
Of course! I’m not talking about jokes — I’m talking about the one or two people who misunderstood BooMan’s post and thought he was actually proposing writing about the TV show.
I appreciate your writing on those Senate rules and other arcana. People who pile abuse on you because you’re not the Oracle of Delphi are being jerks.
Please keep up the insightful and honest commentary. We need you. I understand the need to avoid burnout. I keep up with everything, but right now, though I’m still aware of all that is happening, I have had to cut back a little. I’m reading excellent novels to escape a bit.
Martin, I’m coming here chiefly for your writing. It has value to me. Do what you need to do to sustain your spirit.
I had a decent time avoiding the Sunday shows today. Caught some of Reliable Sources, because I wanted to see if there would be a critical eye leveled toward the media’s performance in the wake of the Syria bombing. Not only did Stelter deliver a decent essay on the subject, he invited Jeremy Scahill on to discuss the issue. He attacked CNN and, in particular, Fareed Zakaria so harshly that, as angry as I was at the media’s response to the bombing, I became uncomfortable. In the end, with things being fucked up and bullshit and all, I figured out that it’s far past time for us to be made uncomfortable, so I’m glad they aired it. Stelter also said media figures needed to do a better job in ensuring that they put war skeptics and anti-war activists on the air more consistently.
I’ll second this. I look for Martin’s front page articles first and foremost. What little I have been able to follow of the news recently has been discouraging. Apparently our mass media love airstrikes. And they should be ripped a new one for doing so. There are plenty of war skeptics. I’m probably among them. I’m not even a doctrinaire pacifist. I was certainly critical of actions taken during the Obama years, and the Clinton years before, just as I was and am during the Bush and now tRump eras. Military actions happen when diplomacy has failed, and at that point the question that interests me is why the failure happened. In tRump’s case with the recent Syria airstrikes, I suspect we can figure out multiple causes (not the least a need to bump up the approval numbers).
I don’t know how you can crank out multiple posts a day on any topic let alone the hefty ones you take on. I wrote a weekly blog for 3 years and it damn near wrecked me.
It was a specialty topic and I wrote to educate myself. By the end of it I could hold my own with experts, but those first few months of reading, re-reading, then hitting “post” then reading and re-reading again to look for errors were nerve wracking. I don’t think most people understand what it’s like to put your thoughts out for the whole world to critique in real-time.
Thank you for your efforts.
Not only do all that, but do it with such skill and intelligence and mastery of the subjects tackled.
And then refrain from taking a flamethrower to all the commenters who miss or deride his points in their haste to gallop off on their own hobby horses, or otherwise stink up the joint.