Prophets and Losses

How many posts have I done about Stephen Glass by this point? I've lost count. As I'm sure is apparent, he is very fascinating to me. I wonder if I could somehow make the subject matter of disgraced journalists to be relevant to something I could write for the student newspaper that I'm now editor in chief of (isn't that great?! And "does that mean I'm on the path to plagiarism and/or fabrication, and ultimately, journalistic disgrace??"). Or maybe I should just keep that kind of content to my blog here.

The title of this post comes from an article he wrote (and at least partially, if not entirely, made up) for Harper's Magazine. Until recently, when I realized that since I'm enrolled in college, I have access to research databases, I hadn't been able to read this article in full, which was a point of contention for me. Thankfully, that realization occurred to me and I set about to looking up this article, "Prophets and Losses", which I was able to find and read in full, finally.

The article is about Stephen Glass' purported experience being a phone psychic for a period of time. Incidentally, if you think about it, this kind of job would actually have been rather fitting for Stephen to have as his main job - he made stuff up as a journalist, and being a phone psychic would've allowed him to do a sort of similar thing - deceive people. In the interview linked later, Stephen gave this absolutely great quote (about being a phone psychic), especially in context of what he did as a journalist: "It's all based on deception, and the problem is that the other side doesn't really know they're being deceived." He also said that he thought non psychics were better at the job, but that people who thought they were actually psychic were more able to live with themselves for being a phone psychic. And he said that he hated himself for the time he claimed to have spent working as a phone psychic. He had/has an alright speaking voice; it's not bad. 

Like I believe I've mentioned/at least touched on (and if I haven't, then I've definitely thought about it) in previous posts, I think at least partly why he did all his lying and fabricating was that he didn't get enough approval/support from his parents, or at least he didn't think he did. This was mentioned a little in the 2014 article in The New Republic that I decided to reread to refresh my memory where he was interviewed by his former coworker about the most recent things he had said about his whole scandal and how his life was going as of 2014. But I guess another part of it could just be attributed to his particular specific personality, which is a psychological thing and I don't think anyone can really deeply know/understand about the intricacies of someone else's personality especially if you don't know said person personally. It raises questions for me (at least) about insecurity and that kind of thing, and I (rhetorically) thought about do I consider myself to be an insecure person, or a fairly confident person?  

He did an audio interview about the article "Prophets and Losses" which you can listen to here (part 1). 

Also, I had been thinking about the movie Shattered Glass, where Hayden Christensen (I had heard someone else's name that rhymed the other day, but it just didn't have the same ring to it that Hayden Christensen does - maybe it's the double rhyme? Hayden Christensen. It's sort of too bad that he didn't really go on to have much of an acting career; he could have theoretically been in some other good movies like Shattered Glass was) played Stephen Glass. I think that was a pretty good casting decision; although the actual Stephen has a bit more of a pudgy face than Hayden Christensen did in the role, I think Christensen conveyed the essence of Stephen Glass well. The movie people got the hairstyle and glasses right, for one thing. If you had only known about Stephen Glass and what he did and not what he looked like, I think you might think that Hayden Christensen is a good fit for that kind of a person. It's hard to imagine Stephen Glass looking like, say, a bodybuilder type of guy. 

As it stands, I think Experimenter and Shattered Glass are the most rewatchable performances of Peter Sarsgaard's. Boys Don't Cry and The Killing were certainly good, but they're fairly heavy in terms of subject matter. Plus, in the former ones, Peter's characters are sort of more likable/pleasant people. The latter ones have him playing murderers/criminals. I think Jarhead is somewhere in the middle; it's not quite as heavy as Boys Don't Cry and The Killing, but it's still about a war. In my experience, I wouldn't consider war movies to be the most rewatchable. Yet, on the other hand, for some reason I find Requiem for a Dream to be quite rewatchable. 

Also, I gained some perspective on the AP Stylebook the other day, which was interesting. It's actually fairly cool, I suppose, to be in the presence of and able to work with people who have formerly been journalists - I would assume there's some more insight I'll gain in the future from that.    

In other sort of journalism related news, Anderson has returned to wearing t shirts (as opposed to polo shirts he had been wearing earlier in the week) and now is wearing a North Face brand jacket; in the past he has worn Carrhart. Either way, both brands are expensive. Awhile back I read some long-ish article about Carrhart as a brand and how it's thought of by the people of so-called middle America, I think. Not that this kind of thing really matters to most people, but it's something I've noticed. It's kind of weird to think about that I have known about/paid attention to Anderson since I was in middle school. So he may be my longest running... person I've paid particular attention to? And I admire him for the job that he's done as a journalist. He is an heir (with a "fancy sounding name" to boot) so he doesn't really have to have a job, but he does. 

Anderson is in Florida as I type this, reporting on the hurricane they're having there. 12 years ago, Anderson got praised (and satirized on SNL by Seth Meyers [which is the only reason I had known about Seth Meyers in the past before he started hosting Late Night], I believe) for his coverage of hurricane Katrina, so maybe we'll get to see some top notch hurricane reporting from him again this time around. I read an article in the Washington Post earlier today about evacuating people from Florida where someone said that although not evacuating might be better in some ways, do they want Anderson Cooper showing up on their doorstep later because they didn't evacuate and people died? Something to that effect. 

In light of the hurricane occurring, I think I'll end this post with the following: Climate change is real, people. If there are some people in Florida who think it's not real and due to that, decided not to evacuate, and because they didn't evacuate, end up getting killed/injured, then maybe they deserved it. (yes, I know that's cold of me to say) And, regarding Stephen Glass, don't do what he did if you're a journalist. (this part should actually probably come after the following part, but it didn't, so just imagine that it does) 

If I somehow have reason in the future to give a speech and it's related to me theoretically becoming/being an at least semi-well known (well known enough to be giving speeches) journalist, I think I would have to thank the following people: Anderson (obviously), first and foremost, then probably my mother for being a Democrat and not a Republican, which I think possibly could be a thing that predisposes people to become journalists? Or rather, more in light of recent political events, if I had been (god forbid) raised as Republican and my family and I became Trump supporters, I doubt that I would value journalism as a career. Then I would probably thank Peter Sarsgaard for having been in a movie that led me to doing some really interesting reading up on an interesting journalism related scandal (and others like it), and by extension, Stephen Glass, for having been the center of an interesting (yet disgraceful, for him) journalism related scandal/event. If I were a different person and had been alive for Watergate, maybe I would also thank the Washington Post journalists who wrote about Watergate and were depicted in the movie All the President's Men. In place of that, I think would be Anderson like I mentioned before. Since this hasn't been something that's happened yet, I can't really say that I would thank this person/people, but if the current political events end in a Watergate-esque manner (journalists uncovering something that leads to impeachment), then I'd probably thank the journalist(s) who broke that story. Seems fair enough.