Citizens of the Green Room - Profiles in Courage and Self-Delusion

Zusatztext 49443328 Informationen zum Autor Mark Leibovich Klappentext From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller This Town: a collection of award-winning and finely detailed profiles of today's most fascinating political! sports! and pop-culture figures. Mark Leibovich returns to puncture the inflated personas of the powerful and reveal the lives! stories! and peculiarities behind their public masks. On subjects including Hillary Clinton! Glenn Beck! John Kerry! Paul Ryan! Chris Christie! and John McCain! Leibovich maintains a refreshing conviviality even as he renders incisive and unflinching assessments. Confirming his reputation as "a master of the political profile" (The Washington Post)! Citizens of the Green Room will delight fans of This Town and the legions of political junkies who avidly read Leibovich's work in The New York Times Magazine. INTRODUCTION Public Actors: Hillary Drank Two Glasses of Red Wine Early in my ramble as a political reporter, I would come back to the office after a trip to, say, a presidential debate, or a convention, or a campaign event with candidate so-and-so. Steve Reiss, my sagacious editor at the Washington Post ’s Style section, would always begin his debriefing with the same question: “What was it like?” It struck me as a strange construction. He would not say, “How was your trip?” or “What’d you get?” or—in the case of an encounter with a profile subject—“What was he/she like?” He always said, “What was it like,” and after a while I took the “it” to incorporate the whole unnatural experience that these subjects endure on their daily high wires. In halting responses, I would share with Steve little stories and impressions and off-color details about my expeditions: how, say, John Edwards walked like a duck, or that Dick Cheney had no idea who John Travolta was, or that Nancy Pelosi had never heard of curly fries. Steve later observed that very little of what I shared with him in his office would ever wind up in my stories. Quite often there was good reason: ground rules (they were off the record), or good taste (former POW John McCain telling me a joke about prison rape), or the fact that Mike Huckabee’s scatological humor was ill-suited to a profile pegged to his new diet and nutrition book. But a lot of the good material also evaded print for bad reasons. It didn’t fit, in part because I was too attentive to the banal conventions of so much political reporting; I was too conscientious about including talking points, pro forma quotes from “experts” and the requisite “others disagree” paragraphs (on the one hand, on the other hand, etc.). Steve urged me to listen to the stories I was telling my friends, was telling him, and was myself chuckling at, and then to liberate them into print as often as I could. In the course of these conversations, I came to recognize that Steve was highlighting for me a basic dichotomy between what a reporter sees and what a reporter knows. The better the reporter becomes at integrating these, the more illuminating his material becomes. Whether he meant it or not, Steve was getting me to train my eyes and ears on the things that were revelatory rather than, say, dutiful (or merely quotable). I started listening differently to the people I was talking to, both in real time and on tape. Did Chris Matthews really just say that thing about Koreans? Did Haley Barbour just pat his wife on the ass as she walked by him? Did Teresa Heinz Kerry just snap at her husband again? I came to notice how nervous, glib, or confident they sounded; and I also learned how to interact with these people in a way that best elicited more authentic expressions. Over time, and this took years, I developed better senses to go to battle with. I also learned that a key to writing about people in public life is recognizing another core dichotomy: the one between what a subject want...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Mark Leibovich
• Editore: Penguin Books USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 30.11.2015
• EAN: 9780147516466
• ISBN: 978-0-14-751646-6
• Pagine: 304
• Dimensioni: 140 mm x 203 mm x 13 mm
• Categorie: Saggistica > Filosofia, religione > Biografie, autobiografie; Scienze umane, arte, musica > Storia