MAIN STORY:
Most journalists are very good interviewers. People tell them things even when they don't mean to. And the key to good interviewing is careful listening.
Most of us would agree that Bob Woodward is a very good journalist. And if you listened to the tapes of his interviews early last year with Donald Trump, you know he urged the conversation forward by acknowledging Trump's answers, then using those answers to ask the next question.
It all flowed like a river; in this case, downhill for Trump. And the weird thing is that Trump, who is not an idiot, knew what was happening, but he couldn't help himself. Such is the fate of a narcissist in the grip of a good interviewer.
Note to young journalists everywhere: Just ask the question. People want to tell you the answer.
The late Larry King was a good interviewer, though I would not call him a great journalist. He didn't really ask the hard questions or attempt to hold his rich and powerful guests accountable, but he *did* know how to get them talking.
And he kept them talking. And many of them ended up loving him as a result.
DIGRESSION:
This is somewhat embarrassing. Recently, I met up with a journalist friend not for professional reasons but just to check in. We were sitting outside of a cafe in the bustling downtown area of a little community in the South Bay. It was a sunny afternoon and we were eating sandwiches and sipping coffee.
We were socially distanced and our masks were down.
She asked me a question I hadn't seen coming. "Have you ever fallen in love with a work colleague?"
I hesitated for a moment.
Then I told her a story, beginning to end in great detail, that I've never told anyone else. It just tumbled out of me.
"Okay, so..." she said slowly, with a steady gaze.
In that instant I realized hers had been a rhetorical question that I need not really have answered, certainly not in so much detail. Rather seamlessly (I hope) we pivoted to what she had been actually seeking, which was some collegial advice.
An hour or so later, as we were about to part, I hugged her and said, "Be good."
Then, as she stepped away I added. "On second thought, no. Be bad." She smiled and nodded and we went our separate ways.
MAIN STORY, CONTINUED:
Anyway, that's how it goes sometimes when someone asks you a question. Even if you try to be evasive, you may inadvertently tell them what they do or do not want to know.
Interviewing is an art, not a science. But sometimes when teaching journalism seminars near the end of a semester, I'd break the class into pairs and have everyone interview each other.
Now these seminars tended to be intensely personal experiences and we all came to know each other quite well over the course of 12 or 16 weeks. But every single time I ran that exercise, we all ended up finding out new things that none of us had ever known before.
My conclusion is a simple one. There's a universal human trait to want to confide our secrets in one another. The great Woody Allen film "Crimes and Misdemeanors" explores this topic through hypotheticals and perhaps also hints at the roots of most fiction.
I think about that film when I consider the sheer volume of secrets we need our journalists to root out and share publicly during this unsettled and unsettling time. After all, they are our best hope to document the current state of our human condition.
And oh yeah, a little digression now and then isn't always such a bad thing.
***
Talk about unsettling, as I observe the political theater of the Dems taking over D.C., I believe they are playing a cynical game. Polls indicate that maybe 5 percent of the Republican Party's members are leaving the GOP in the hangover of the January 6th riot.
The Democrats know that a 5 percent hemorrhage will doom the Republicans nationally for at least the next few election cycles, so the White House may be theirs for a while. On the other hand, as they learned in 2000 and 2016, winning the popular vote does not necessarily translate into victory in the Electoral College, so there's work to be done in that regard.
And even in defeat, and after all of the scandal and violence, Trump and the movement he leads remains a serious threat on many levels. And it appears utterly unlikely they will get him convicted in the Senate. So the beast will sit on the sidelines, wounded and thirsting for revenge.
Meanwhile the victors sit unsteadily atop the throne and their own base threatens to splinter on the left. Basically what I see in Washington D.C. is one big mess, and it's unclear who or what can possibly clean this all up when or even how.
***
The headlines:
* Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said during an Instagram Live broadcast Monday night that she is a survivor of sexual assault. Ocasio-Cortez made the statement, which appeared to be one of the first times she has spoken in public about being a survivor, in contextualizing her trauma in the wake of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last month. The New York Democrat went through a detailed account of her day on January 6, recounting her experience during the riot. She said those in Congress who are telling her "to move on," or even apologize, following the violent insurrection at the Capitol in January were using "the same tactics of abusers. The reason I say this and the reason I'm getting emotional in this moment is because these folks who tell us to move on, that it's not a big deal, that we should forget what's happened, or even telling us to apologize. These are the same tactics of abusers. And, um, I'm a survivor of sexual assault...(and) when we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other. And so, whether you had a negligent or a neglectful parent, and -- or whether you had someone who was verbally abusive to you, whether you are a survivor of abuse, whether you experience any sort of trauma in your life, small to large -- these episodes can compound on one another." (CNN)
* Spurred By The Capitol Riot, Thousands Of Republicans Flee The Party (NPR)
* Dozens of former Bush officials leave Republican Party, calling it 'Trump cult' (Reuters)
* New diabetes cases linked to covid-19 -- Researchers don’t understand exactly how the disease might trigger diabetes, or whether the cases are temporary or permanent. (WashPo)
* Myanmar’s Leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Is Detained Amid Coup -- Communications were suspended and flights disrupted as the military took power from an elected government and declared a one-year state of emergency. (NYT)
* Essential workers get lost in the vaccine scrum as states prioritize the elderly (WashPo)
* Ford to Use Google's Android in Most Cars -- The auto maker plans to introduce the operating system in all of its models outside of China in 2023. (WSJ)
* Trump has left the White House, but the party he hijacked is still under his spell and that of the QAnon cult that worships him. As Republicans regroup after losing the White House and both chambers of Congress, they must face the fact that a significant percentage of their base remains more loyal to Trump than to the party as a whole. [HuffPost]
* Mask Fights and a ‘Mob Mentality’: What Flight Attendants Faced Over the Last Year -- Furloughs, passengers who won’t wear masks and tense political confrontations contributed to a year of perpetual chaos for flight attendants. “It’s insane,” one veteran attendant said. (NYT)
* Wisconsin pharmacist who destroyed more than 500 vaccine doses believes Earth is flat, FBI says (WashPo)
* Once united in support of Biden, environmentalists and unions clash over pipelines -- Environmentalists and labor unions that threw their support behind U.S. President Joseph Biden now find themselves on the opposite sides of a battle over the construction of big pipeline projects between Canada and the United States. (Reuters)
* Trump left U.S. democracy in shambles. Biden has to build it back. (WashPo)
* GOP's Mitch McConnell Slams Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Conspiracies As 'Loony Lies' (NPR)
* Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) suggested Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) should lose her committee assignment over her disturbing social media activity in which she appeared to endorse violence against Democrats and express support for beliefs that mass shootings had been staged. [HuffPost]
* House Democrats are moving expeditiously to remove GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments, a decisive step that comes as they pressure Republicans to rebuke the Georgia congresswoman over recently unearthed incendiary past statements. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is planning to deliver an ultimatum to House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy on Greene this week. Hoyer is expected to tell McCarthy that Republicans have 72 hours to strip Greene of her committee assignments, or Democrats will bring the issue to the House floor. (CNN)
* As Virus Variants Spread, ‘No One Is Safe Until Everyone Is Safe’ -- Rich countries are buying up coronavirus vaccines, leaving poorer regions vulnerable — and as potential breeding grounds for variants, like one found in South Africa, that could make vaccines less effective. (NYT)
* Unemployment rate won’t return to pre-pandemic level for decade, CBO says (WashPo)
* WHO team in Wuhan visits disease control centers (AP)
* GameStop signals a new, destabilizing collision between social media and the real world (WashPo)
* Russia Protesters Defy Vast Police Operation as Signs of Kremlin Anxiety Mount -- Tens of thousands took to the streets across Russia to show support for the jailed opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny. The police were out in force and reports of brutality flared. (NYT)
* SpaceX announces first-ever all-civilian space flight crew (CNN)
* A fast, at-home virus test will be available to Americans this year (WashPo)
* Jack Palladino, the flamboyant private investigator whose clients ranged from presidents and corporate whistleblowers to scandal-plagued celebrities, Hollywood moguls and sometimes suspected drug traffickers, died Monday at age 76. Palladino suffered a devastating brain injury Thursday after a pair of would-be robbers tried to grab his camera outside his home in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. He held on to the camera but fell and struck his head, and the photos he took before his attackers fled were used by police to track down two suspects. They were charged with assault with a deadly weapon and other crimes. “He would have loved knowing that,” his wife, Sandra Sutherland, told The Associated Press on Monday. She added that she had told her husband while he lay unconscious in the hospital: “Guess what, Jack, they got the bastards, and it was all your doing.” (AP)
* Insurrectionist Truther Doesn’t Believe He Was At Capitol (The Onion)
***
Your secret's safe with me
(Your secret's safe with me)
Waiting for someone
Whose eyes will tell you it's real
-- Songwriter: Michael P. Franks
(image: woodyallenpages.com)
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