Of Authors And Books
Newsweek’s Jon Meacham on John McCain:
John McCain is a man of accomplishment and curiosity, of wide and deep reading, travel and experience. He is smart without being a snob. He has authored legislation and books. He is a man of parts—the kind of figure whom one could effortlessly imagine being president.
Um . . . Mark Salter wrote those books. I wrote a book. Meacham’s written books. McCain, not so much. Barack Obama really wrote Dreams From My Father and Jim Webb’s written books, but other politicians’ sign their names to work done by professionals. I think that’s a sensible thing to do, but surely we don’t all need to go pretend that’s not what’s happening. Give McCain credit for the fact that every copy I’ve ever seen of one of “his” books features Salter’s name pretty prominently. There’s no big secret here.
27 Responses to “Of Authors And Books”
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October 6th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Meacham is one of the least impressive and intellectually dishonest people in journalism.
October 6th, 2008 at 9:52 am
I can “effortlessly” imagine McCain being president. There’s a whole genre devoted to imaginings like that: dystopias.
October 6th, 2008 at 9:54 am
If I recall correctly, there was an Easter-time issue of Newsweek a few years ago which had an all-black cover bearing only four words of copy: the word “JESUS” in big white type, and “by Jon Meacham” in slightly smaller type beneath it. Which pretty much sums the man up.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:02 am
You didn’t write your book… you typed it.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Steve Sailer has speculated about possible connections between Dreams from My father and the writings of University of Chicago professor/terrorist Bill Ayers.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Matt, you miss the point: McCain is important enough to have had books written FOR him; Barack Obama isn’t experienced enough to have had books written for him–he still has to do it himself. Maybe someday he’ll be as big a HERO as John McCain, and then he’ll have books written for him, I’m sure….
October 6th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Steve Sailer has speculated about possible connections between Dreams from My father and the writings of University of Chicago professor/terrorist Bill Ayers.
Powerful evidence that there is no connection.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:40 am
elle loco — ROTFLOL. That’s an absurd explanation. Anyone can pay a ghost writer this thing called money and then they will write a book about them.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:43 am
You’ve got a slight typo. “Barack Obama really wrote Dreams From My Father and Jim Webb’s written books” implies that Obama has written Jim Webb’s books. I think you mean, “Barack Obama really wrote Dreams From My Father and Jim Webb has written books.” Unless you do mean that Obama has written Webb’s books — is that true?
October 6th, 2008 at 10:57 am
There’s a word for people whose book deals include ghostwriters/co-writers. We call them celebrities.
October 6th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Elle loco, perhaps Barack Obama isn’t experienced enough to have had books written for him, but before this election is over every right-wing nutjob in the country will have written a book about him.
October 6th, 2008 at 11:06 am
It pains me to have to point this out, but elle loco is obviously joking.
October 6th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Meacham = Douchebag. I saw him and Rick Warren debating, um, nobody on “Meet the Press” about faith in America a while back. They’re basically the same person.
October 6th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Since Meacham became Newsweek’s editor the magazine has definitely headed right. I’m letting my subscription run out.
October 6th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
I don’t know - the more exposure John McCain gets, the more it is apparent that he is rather stupid, simpleminded and terribly incurious.
October 6th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
It’s probably also worth pointing out that most legislation that McCain has “authored” was written by him in the same way that he “authored” books, as in, he told a surrogate what he’d like it to say, and let them do the nasty work of writing it. He probably got pretty invested in signature pieces like McCain-Feingold, but that was probably an exception: legislators like McCain without legal training rarely get into the deep weeds of the laws they “write,” and sometimes don’t even read them. I’ll bet that Obama can more plausibly claim to have written more bills (that is, deliberated long and hard about the precise structure, language, and phrasing, if not done the staff grunt work) in his first Senate term than McCain did in his first two.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
“John McCain is a man of accomplishment and curiosity, of wide and deep reading, travel and experience. He is smart without being a snob.”
Let’s deconstruct that part of the quote, too. McCain has traveled a great deal largely because: a. he comes from a very high-ranking military family, which would afford anyone in that position a lot of travel opportunities (particularly over the last sixty years); b. he was a career military pilot in a period when those guys got to travel a lot; c. he’s married into a very wealthy family and d; his contributors (including Charles Keating) flew him around to various party locations overseas. There isn’t much evidence that McCain thinks deeply about the places he’s been in - for example: he had problems with understanding Spain is in Europe, even though he himself has piloted aircraft in Spain.
October 6th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
In what sense is it sensible for politicians to do that, Matt? Just that it’s prudent for them, since it makes them money, and we won’t call them on their bullshit? After all, it’s not as if those books do any good. They’re not going to give us serious insight into those politicians.
October 6th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I see Jon has hoisted himself up on to the ol’ tire swing.
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