Althouse: "Every day, for six months, [Ezra Klein] ate the same thing and ran three miles. He dropped 50 of his 220-plus pounds..."

February 3, 2014

"Every day, for six months, [Ezra Klein] ate the same thing and ran three miles. He dropped 50 of his 220-plus pounds..."

"... and started to focus more on how he dressed. 'There was something that happened when he did lose that weight,”' Gideon Kracov, his half-brother, says. 'Something clicked with him.' Ezra was a voracious reader but a poor student, whiling away hours smoking pot and playing GoldenEye and Tony Hawk on his Nintendo 64. He says he graduated from high school with a 2.2 GPA and barely got into UC Santa Cruz."

From a New York Magazine article titled "Here, Let Ezra Explain/What is D.C.’s most famous young policy wonk doing leaving the Washington Post? Trying to start a news organization he thinks could one day eclipse it."

As long as it's a day to think about what it means to be an underdog.

28 comments:

Anonymous said...: He says he graduated from high school with a 2.2 GPA and barely got into UC Santa Cruz."

Having gone to grad school at UCLA and Irvine, while having a brother go to UCSC, I find it hard to believe:

1. Irvine's University HS gives a grade less than B-
2. Santa Cruz has sunk so low that they let folks with a 2.2 enroll
3. Perhaps with a Brazilian Ph.D. for a father, he snuck in under a Latino waiver, not being Latino of course :); 2/3/14, 12:46 PM
Anonymous said...: This is the background of the guy that did the 'elitist' and closed JournoList? Lol. Had no idea. Figures.; 2/3/14, 12:58 PM
Seeing Red said...: Professor Harold Hill.; 2/3/14, 1:03 PM
mccullough said...: Klein's problem is he latched his boat to Obama. Having to defend and explain Obama's policies is beyond mortals.; 2/3/14, 1:10 PM
Humperdink said...: Hugely disappointed it took nearly two full paragraphs for the word "hater" to appear. These young gummy bears need to polish up their act.; 2/3/14, 1:15 PM
lgv said...: whiling away hours smoking pot and playing GoldenEye and Tony Hawk on his Nintendo 64. He says he graduated from high school with a 2.2 GPA and barely got into UC Santa Cruz."

No wonder he thinks Obama is brilliant.

and here I thought he was a political hack that hadn't really accomplished anything of substance.; 2/3/14, 1:16 PM
Alex said...: Ezra would look fabulous in a pair of jammies. We could have hot cocoa and everything.; 2/3/14, 1:22 PM
Brennan said...: This article is quite odd. These journeyists look at Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, and Larry O'Donnell as successful, but none of them are paid by firms that turn a profit. MSNBC doesn't turn a profit for Comcast. Ezra is going to need to turn a profit even with Ohanion and his "get lucky" bucks behind the venture.

Hell, even Bezos, master of cash flow, growth, and little to no profit making, said no to Ezra.; 2/3/14, 1:43 PM
President-Mom-Jeans said...: Damn, he was as fat as Garage Mahal.

But he lost the weight, and went to/graduated college. And did not have a wife leave him and take his child.

Still a liberal retard, but a much more well compensated one than Althouse's own chubby uneducated clown.

Maybe Bitchtits should see if Klein is hiring an idiot to troll his new forums.; 2/3/14, 2:21 PM
Sam L. said...: What leaving WaPo shows is how high his self-esteem is. Overinflated, I'm sure.; 2/3/14, 2:30 PM
lemondog said...: I like his drive and that he and his wife have two rescue dogs named Patsy Klein and Calvin Klein.

Who the heck needs another political blog/online journalistic site/whatever. Too bad he doesn’t invent a new product or some tangible thing to manufacture.; 2/3/14, 2:37 PM
JoyD said...: I read this very interesting article and wondered why, out of all of that, you pulled a teaser about Ezra being fat as a young teen. I've noticed you like to put vaginas and eating babies in large type. Bullied for being fat works well too.
Only then did I read your last line about the underdog meme. Okay then.
One thing that got me into some trouble early in my student days was reading fast, getting the gist, and not paying close enough attention to the end. And I've wondered why I didn't choose law school? There's a clue.; 2/3/14, 2:58 PM
Scott said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/3/14, 3:25 PM
Scott said...: "Together with his co-founders, including Matt Yglesias..."

Can Oliver Willis be far behind?

FAIL; 2/3/14, 3:27 PM
gadfly said...: Algore's GPA was about C-. Rick Perry had a 2.0 at Texas A&M, where he was a yell leader. George Bush 43 didn't score high and neither did John Kerry. Of couse, the lawyers have confiscated all of Obama's educational records, but I would bet that he didn't do well either, if for no other reason than he didn't and doesn't understand American customs.; 2/3/14, 3:54 PM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Fat, stoned, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.

Correcting 2 out of 3 ain't bad. ( That assumes he gave up the weed. ); 2/3/14, 3:57 PM
Wince said...: "While Klein is being circumspect about the operational details of Project X, he suggests that breaking-news squibs could be very short and attached to constantly updated background articles, a bit like Wikipedia entries written by professional journalists. Long features might be regularly freshened up."

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number
of 'The Times' had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters,
leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs--to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.; 2/3/14, 4:26 PM
B said...: What Klein is describing is nothing more than a Drudge type format where instead of linking independent articles the articles will be written by a stable of 'journalists' continually updating their 'explanatory' journalism articles in response to feedback. Read 'explanatory' journalism as spinning current events as hard as is necessary to promote progressive politics and demonize conservatism. He'll get his current followers back but those numbers saturated long ago.

BTW: A wonk is someone who is expert in a subject or a set of related subjects and can discuss them on their merits without introducing personal (or at least political) bias. Klein is no wonk and never has been. He is on the level of a KOS or HuffPo diarist who just conned a major media paper into giving him a home. He ended up an ethical embarrassment to WaPo with the journalista crap, wasn't going to admit to his overall limited appeal and wasn't going to adjust to either failing. So Bezos sent him on his way.; 2/3/14, 4:49 PM
Revenant said...: I don't think the person who wrote that title understands what the word "wonk" means.

A wonk is a policy nerd -- a person intimately familiar with the nitty-gritty details of some area of government policy. Ezra Klein is a pundit and opinion columnist, not a policy wonk. His analysis is no deeper or more detail-oriented than you'd expect for the average opinion page.; 2/3/14, 6:24 PM
Cliff said...: Good for him for taking responsibility for his health and livelyhood and seeking success in an entrepreneurial fashion.; 2/3/14, 7:44 PM
Blue@9 said...: No kidding, how did Ezra Klein get labeled a "wonk"?

What, exactly, is his area of expertise? What has he done or written that would qualify him as an expert at anything? It's just weird to me, because I've known from reading his stuff years ago that this guy has no real life experience.; 2/3/14, 8:04 PM
Jupiter said...: Blogger lemondog said...

I like his drive ...

Klein golfs?; 2/3/14, 8:04 PM
Michael K said...: I couldn't get through the comments. Who cares about this fool ?

I interviewed two recruits today who scored 98 on the military aptitude tests and who will accomplish more in life than that fool. They may not make more money but that is a weak indicator of value.; 2/3/14, 9:28 PM
Jason said...: Ezra's a mouthpiece, not a wonk. He just parrots whatever the last thing someone in his rolodex told him in exchange for "access."

There's a place for that in journalism, but you really need to have a culture of verification in place.

Ezra was never about that. His culture and the culture surrounding "JournoList was a culture of salesmanship, not verification.

That's why Ezra, thus far, is a shit.

I much prefer Megan McArdle. Not because she's further right, but because she has a very healthy bullshit detector and actually tries to use it. Sometimes she swings and misses, but Ezra's not even doing that.

He's a shill.; 2/3/14, 10:22 PM
Insufficiently Sensitive said...: Dang, Santa Cruz was a nifty little town until it began to harbor students of JournOList predilections.; 2/3/14, 11:02 PM
Anonymous said...: @gadfly

To be fair, grade inflation only began during Vietnam as profs attempted to save their underperforming students from the draft. Bush, Kerry, and Gore likely did not benefit. Obama and Ezra would have, as did I and anyone else in that age range.; 2/3/14, 11:14 PM
Anonymous said...: I look and feel good to generally be here.. Keep sharing good things with buddies..

las vegas immigration attorney; 2/4/14, 12:42 AM
Howard said...: Oh, No

ANother UCk SuCk Grad.

Locals don't let their kids go because it turns them into Prius driving patchouli oil smelly hair farming kooks.; 2/4/14, 7:35 AM