Disqus - Latest Comments for Mannion

Re: Your Liberal Media

Lance Mannion — Fri, 26 Sep 2014 07:07:09 -0000

One of these years we're going to have to arrange to be at a CGI together.

Re: Bill Clinton Is Right: Storyline Reporting Has Poisoned the Political Press

Lance Mannion — Fri, 26 Sep 2014 07:00:42 -0000

urban legend, I think you're exactly right about Cillizza. I'm not as sure about Chozik. Like I just wrote to gyrfalcon, I think she was trying to be amusing in her column. I just have fun when I go, wandering about to see what I can see, then coming back to the "cloister" to blog about whatever interested me. I think if you try to cover CGI as a political event you miss at least 3/4s of what's going on there. And of course the problem we're talking about here stems from the press corps' treating EVERYTHING as politics and the lowest, rawest, most obvious form of politics: who's winning vs who's losing.

Re: Bill Clinton Is Right: Storyline Reporting Has Poisoned the Political Press

Lance Mannion — Fri, 26 Sep 2014 06:44:29 -0000

Not suggesting that. I think your take is probably right, an overeager volunteer going above and beyond the call of duty. I'm just saying I've always had a good time at the meetings. But as an independent blogger I get to "cover" them differently than a NYT political reporter. The demands on me aren't the same, so my demands on the Clinton team aren't the same. Maybe I can shrug off or ignore what Chozik can't, and probably she wants things and tries to get things I don't and runs into more resistance just trying to do her job. Another importance difference between us, though, is that I don't spend my down time with other political reporters.

I also think Chozik was trying to be humorous in her column. Cillizza wasn't.

Re: Your Liberal Media

Lance Mannion — Thu, 25 Sep 2014 16:41:17 -0000

I'm mad. I was there this week and I didn't get my own bathroom monitor. Best I got were directions. "Oh, it's way down at the far end of the hall!" Maybe you have to be a reporter for the Times to get such special treatment.

Re: Bill Clinton Is Right: Storyline Reporting Has Poisoned the Political Press

Lance Mannion — Thu, 25 Sep 2014 16:28:53 -0000

gyrfalcon, honestly, all the volunteers I've dealt with were just real nice kids eager to like and be liked. And most of the journalists and bloggers and other media types I've met there have seemed to be having a good time.

Re: Bill Clinton Is Right: Storyline Reporting Has Poisoned the Political Press

Lance Mannion — Thu, 25 Sep 2014 15:17:32 -0000

Left pretty much the same comment at Brad De Long's place where he's linked to you post but I hope you don't mind if I repeat myself here:

I don't work for the Washington Post, just for me, but I was at CGI this week and I've been to three meetings there in the past and I was "cloistered" in the basement along with the rest of the reporters and bloggers from around the world covering CGI. I never felt "cloistered" though. I felt pretty free to come and go as I pleased and I felt well taken care of. The Wifi connection was good. The TV screens at the front of the room were big and bright. The sound worked. And the food was good with seconds and even thirds encouraged. I was never escorted to the rest room. Best I got was directions. "It's way down at the end of the hall." The only times I was escorted was into the crowded plenary sessions where the Presidents, Bill and Barack, were speaking and the volunteers were working to get as many of us seats as they could fit in before the sessions got underway. Otherwise I felt pretty free to leave the press room whenever I wanted to find my way to any events upstairs that were open to the press. Here and there some representative from security would stop me to check my press badge but that took a second. Now maybe I'm the one who got special treatment from the Clintons. Maybe Bill told his minions, "Keep close tabs on all the other members of the media, but leave Lance Mannion alone, he's good people." But I didn't hear that anyone got treated differently, let alone the way Chozik claims she was.

Cillizza says "the press strictures" at CGI "are the stuff of legend." Yep. Like the Loch Ness Monster. He's seen it with his own eyes! Seems to me that if anyone's paranoid it's the political press corps. And arrogant and vain. They can't abide the way the Clintons don't fawn over them.

Kevin's right, it would be good if some of them would acknowledge their pathologies, but that would mean acknowledging they aren't really more important than former Presidents and Secretaries of State.

Re: With Thanks to Al Gore for Inventing the Internetz

Lance Mannion — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 07:33:19 -0000

My fault. I knew it was going to go well. But if I'd known it was going
to go *so* well I'd have arranged for a transcription and a video. As it
was, I was just relieved Skype worked. Melissa wowed them, folks, but
you knew she would!

Re: Happy Birthday, Iain!!!

Lance Mannion — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 17:04:06 -0000

Happy Birthday, Mel!

Re: The Jon Swift Memorial Roundup 2010

Lance Mannion — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:42:36 -0000

I don't know if it's the best post you wrote all year, Wev. You write so many good ones it's hard to keep up. But it's an awfully darn good one!

Re: Daddy-Daughter Dance

Lance Mannion — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:25:28 -0000

Why a dance? Why not a father-daughter picnic? Or game night? Or movie night? And if you have to have a dance, why have one that mimics a prom, the dance after which most these fathers must know quite a few of those girls are going to lose their virginity?

Re: Daddy-Daughter Dance

Lance Mannion — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:23:41 -0000

Why a dance? Why not a father-daughter picnic? Or game night? Or movie night? And if you have to have a dance, why have one that mimics a prom, the dance after which most of these fathers must know quite a few of those girls are going to lose their virginity?

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:44:36 -0000

11:40 and things have quieted down. Rick Perlstein's probably up on stage at that bar doing more of his Goldwater jokes. It was great of him to stop by. Read Nixonland, folks. Heckuva book. As is Mark Harris' Pictures at a Revolution. This has been fun, not just tonight, but all five threads. If you're arriving late, remember these threads never shut down. Lots we didn't get to talk about.

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:34:39 -0000

Sorry to hear that. I've been planning to watch American Gangster. I thought we'd gotten beyond the My Darling Clementine and They Died With Their Boots On approach to history in the movies.

Have you seen The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, though?

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:29:32 -0000

Cagney sort of does a version of that in Ragtime, come to think of it.

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:23:44 -0000

I hadn't thought of the Gus Van Sant connection. But I wonder if Van Sant was aware of this: Clyde wasn't impotent in the original script, he was bisexual.

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:16:46 -0000

Interesting. Which is she? Did she go the Jerry Rubin route or did she stay true to her ideals?

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:12:20 -0000

Probably not a relation to William F.

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:10:55 -0000

Oh, and one for the Siren, about the music:

C, I never would have thought of you as a Flatt and Scruggs kind of Southern gal.

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:04:42 -0000

klg19, I was the same way when I saw it the first time. I was probably about the same age. I didn't have a single political thought about the film. I just was ready to go anywhere for a girl in a beret.

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:03:02 -0000

I hate to say it, Rick, but there were times when I was reading your book when I wondered if I would have voted for Nixon! Reading that quote was one of those times.

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:59:57 -0000

"We are Bonnie and Clydes." I wonder who wrote that and where they are now.

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:54:11 -0000

Your students are shocked? I'm shocked! But I'm glad. It's nice to know. Means they are really watching the movie.

What do they make of Eva Marie Saint's tiny razor?

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:51:20 -0000

AKA "Deadly Is the Female"? Not me. But C. must have.

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:50:32 -0000

Not to mention fitting the actual history.

Re: They rob banks

Lance Mannion — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:45:14 -0000

Here's one for you, Rick. One of the points you make in that passage about Bonnie and Clyde is that people on the left also identified with Bonnie and Clyde as actual criminals, as opposed to free spirits or avengers of the little people. Their violence was attractive. That's a theme that comes up at a number of points in Nixonland---that people on the Left could be as bloody minded as anyone on the Right. Violence was kind of infection of the times. Bonnie and Clyde must have scared as many people as it excited.