Important tweet from @jaketapper. One amendment: mainstream media will try to change the subject too. It's not a new criticism, the deferential spirit among the political press corps has been noted since Didion wrote about it in the 1990s.

"Those who talk to Mr. Woodward, in other words, can be confident that he will be civil (“I too was growing tired, and it seemed time to stand up and thank him”), that he will not feel impelled to make connections between..." 1/ https://t.co/tnb2lbKpMZ
"what he is told and what is already known that he will treat even the most patently self-serving account as if untainted by hindsight..." 2/
"In this business of running the story, in fact in the business of news itself, certain conventions are seen as beyond debate. “Opinion” will be so labeled, and confined to the op-ed page or the Sunday-morning shows." 3/
"'News analysis' will be so labeled, and will appear in a subordinate position to the 'news' story it accompanies. In the rest of the paper as on the evening news, the story will be reported “'impartially,' the story will be 'even-handed,' the story will be 'fair.'” 4/
"The genuflection toward 'fairness' is a familiar newsroom piety, the excuse in practice for a good deal of autopilot reporting and lazy thinking but a benign ideal." 5/
"In Washington, however, a community in which the management of news has become the single overriding preoccupation of the core industry..." 6/
"...what 'fairness' has too often come to mean is a scrupulous passivity, an agreement to cover the story not as it is occurring but as it is presented, which is to say as it is manufactured." 7/
"Washington, as rendered by Mr. Woodward, is by definition basically solid, a diorama of decent intentions in which wise if misunderstood and occasionally misled stewards will reliably prevail." 8/
The takedown by Didion is epic, but it resonates still. There is an enormous pull towards making the terrible things out to be an exception, a departure from the usual, calling out anyone who says otherwise as being "unfair." It's already happening as @jaketapper suggests. end/

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And this pathetic move by @JDVance1 isn't what is so odious about him. He's just a phony, all ambition, no real interest in public service. He made a big show out of moving back to #Ohio to start a group to work on the #opioid epidemic. 1/


I work on the opioids, on research on the epidemic, its relationship with HIV/HCV, overdose. I work with data from Ohio, so care deeply about what is going on there. I was excited. Until I started digging. There's no there there. 2/

More here. 3/

You can even read their IRS-990-N filing. Sure looks like @JDVance1 tried real hard on combatting the opioid epidemic in his state. Um. Not. 4/

Now he's moved on to venture capital. Money is more interesting than the suffering of the people of #Ohio I guess. 5/

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I’ve always felt that the luckiest people I know had a talent for recognizing circumstances, not of their own making, that were conducive to a favorable outcome and their ability to quickly take advantage of them.

In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.

So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.

Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.