Rhodes (center) and Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, listening as President Obama spoke to reporters during an off-the-record discussion. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
New York Times: The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign-Policy Guru
How Ben Rhodes rewrote the rules of diplomacy for the digital age.
Picture him as a young man, standing on the waterfront in North Williamsburg, at a polling site, on Sept. 11, 2001, which was Election Day in New York City. He saw the planes hit the towers, an unforgettable moment of sheer disbelief followed by panic and shock and lasting horror, a scene that eerily reminded him, in the aftermath, of the cover of the Don DeLillo novel “Underworld.”
Everything changed that day. But the way it changed Ben Rhodes’s life is still unique, and perhaps not strictly believable, even as fiction. He was in the second year of the M.F.A. program at N.Y.U., writing short stories about losers in garden apartments and imagining that soon he would be published in literary magazines, acquire an agent and produce a novel by the time he turned 26. He saw the first tower go down, and after that he walked around for a while, until he ran into someone he knew, and they went back to her shared Williamsburg apartment and tried to find a television that worked, and when he came back outside, everyone was taking pictures of the towers in flames. He saw an Arab guy sobbing on the subway. “That image has always stayed with me,” he says. “Because I think he knew more than we did about what was going to happen.” Writing Frederick Barthelme knockoffs suddenly seemed like a waste of time.
Read more ....
Update #1: Obama's Foreign Policy Guru Boasts of How the Administration Lied to Sell the Iran Deal (Lee Smith, Weekly Standard)
Update #2: Seven Takeaways from the NY Times Profile of Failed Novelist Ben Rhodes (David Rutz, Washington Free Beacon)
WNU Editor: This is sweet ....
.... He had also developed a healthy contempt for the American foreign-policy establishment, including editors and reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker and elsewhere, who at first applauded the Iraq war and then sought to pin all the blame on Bush and his merry band of neocons when it quickly turned sour. If anything, that anger has grown fiercer during Rhodes’s time in the White House. He referred to the American foreign-policy establishment as the Blob. According to Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.
To say that I am surprised that the New York Times is posting a story on how the White House crafts its media message on foreign policy .... and none of it is "pretty" or "flattering" .... is an understatement. We all know instinctively that governments lie, but it is rare when we are served the details on how they do it. And as for Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes .... a man who apparently cultivates anonymity .... I suspect that he is probably in shock right now with this expose .... or he does not give a shit. Either way .... this New York Times post is a must read.
1 comment:
The NYT's pivot is understandable.
They are pivoting from Obama to the next Democrat contender for president.
Why take hits for a lame duck.
They can say he was a bright star with the right policies and then lost his way. That way they can still laud him as a great statesman emeritus, absolve Leftist policies, and start supporting the next Democrat without taking losses to their cause.
The NYT is still all in. They are shifting colors from one flag ship to the next or from one figurehead to the next.
Frelling Leftists Losers.
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