"[A]s the pages go by, and Totenberg and her friends become more powerful, the theme becomes increasingly uncomfortable — and increasingly revealing.... [S]he seems to accept and share her insider friends’ worldviews. In this universe, it seems, we’re all on the same team.
The jurists Totenberg spent her career covering, for instance, are invariably portrayed as thoughtful stewards of the Constitution, even when they err.... One theory about Ginsburg’s decision to stay on the court was that, sharp as she was, she lived in a bubble that left her unable to appreciate how mean and extreme politics had become. If so, the convivial vibe depicted by Totenberg didn’t do much to clear things up. In fact, Totenberg became part of the RBG hype machine. As the justice became an unlikely celebrity, she and Totenberg developed a sort of stage act, conducting public interviews before ticketed audiences. Totenberg would share questions in advance. The responses were more thoughtful that way, which it seems was really what the evenings were trying to show.
With its odd, priestly culture, the court is particularly susceptible to this sort of veneration."
Totenberg's book is called "Dinners With Ruth."
"Could you imagine a congressional reporter doing a book called Dinners With Harry Reid, tracing shopping excursions and intimate family moments with the late majority leader, who died the year after Ginsburg?"
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Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn.
I knew Totenberg was a fraud of a reporter years ago, and I wasn't even paying attention.
The Democrat Party world is FULL of these sorts of unethical relationships, but it should be pointed out that Nina Totenberg is NOT a journalist.
She is a government-paid propagandist with zero ethics. She works for the government and is paid by the government. She is in no way, shape or form a "journalist" in the traditional meaning of that word.
A free society has no need, of course, for government news agencies. We live in a fantasy world in the United States where we all just agree to say that we're free ... but we're not. If we were, we wouldn't stand for government news agencies.
You don't GET to Nina Totenberg's job until you are, or unless you are, completely in the pay of and in the service of the Democrat Party. 100%. Otherwise, you cannot get her job.
She's (Nina) always been a fraud and a shill for the left.
RBG too now that I think of it...
By all accounts, RBG was brilliant.
So I will never understand why she would tarnish her reputation by being such a rubber stamp for far-left causes.
It's a problem when a non-lawyer like me could determine with 100% accuracy how she would vote on every single case.
One theory about Ginsburg’s decision to stay on the court was that, sharp as she was, she lived in a bubble that left her unable to appreciate how mean and extreme politics had become.
Ginsburg may have lived in a bubble, and politics may be "mean and extreme" now, but when weren't Supreme Court confirmations controversial and divisive? Only since Kavanaugh? Does it go back to Bork and Thomas? Back to Carswell, Haynsworth, and Abe Fortas? I sense some "civility bullshit" and childishness in that sentence.
"Even if they’d all written over-the-top stories about it, she says, no amount of news-driven maneuvering could have dissuaded Mitch McConnell from getting a conservative replacement seated." Totenberg is absolutely right about this, and the author of the piece absolutely wrong. We all said this all the way through; it was only liberals who made the nonsensical guess that McConnell - who they despised - would turn out to be all principled.
The more you move through social structures you realize that society is just the competition between rising peer groups as they age.
Political theater defines modern journalism and progressive politics. Everything is about acquisition of power.
Michael Shaeffer writes: "There’s a chance that a blunt story about Ginsburg’s decline might have changed the trajectory that led to the end of Americans’ right to abortion."
These people are mentally ill. They see a "right" to abortion. It's presented as just a fact. An indisputable fact. They actually see it. With their eyes. It's right there in the room with them. They can point to it.
Ginsberg took the right away by not playing politics with the Supreme Court's "lifetime" appointments.
Where did this "right" to kill unborn children come from? Conveniently, that's never explained. It just is. It always was. And it always will be. In their minds.
They are mentally ill - very, very sick people. And we need to start treating these people's mental illnesses.
It is immoral to allow these people to walk the streets with the untreated mental sickness that they have. That's how it spreads.
Michael Shaeffer writes: "There’s a chance that a blunt story about Ginsburg’s decline might have changed the trajectory that led to the end of Americans’ right to abortion."
These people are mentally ill. They see a "right" to abortion. It's presented as just a fact. An indisputable fact. They actually see it. With their eyes. It's right there in the room with them. They can point to it.
Ginsberg took the right away by not playing politics with the Supreme Court's "lifetime" appointments.
Where did this "right" to kill unborn children come from? Conveniently, that's never explained. It just is. It always was. And it always will be. In their minds.
They are mentally ill - very, very sick people. And we need to start treating these people's mental illnesses.
It is immoral to allow these people to walk the streets with the untreated mental sickness that they have. That's how it spreads.
Anyone who followed Totenberg knew she was a hardcore leftist who used her position to help steer the SCOTUS leftward. Her coverage of Republican nominees, Bork, Thomas, Alito, kavanaugh was so bad she should have worn a DNC pin.
She uncovered Ginsberg smoked weed in college and torpedoed his nomination. She tried to destroy Thomas too. But no matter what she did, the dopey Center-right kept beliving she was some sort of "Objective" journalist. I'm sure Kennedy, O'Connor, and Roberts loved her.
RGB is a superhero to professional women and Nina Hottentot is cashing in. Why do you people hate successful free market capitalists? Focus on Yourself.
"Shared questions beforehand" just like almost every journalist does with Democrats in every forum these days.
The late, great editor Abe Rosenthal used to tell his reporters "I don't care if you're fucking an elephant, as long as you don't cover the Circus!"
We need more like him.
Apparently NPR doesn't have anyone like him.
Nina is an exemplar of the insider class and the perfect icon for why conservatives don't trust "journalists" and "mainstream" media and especially government propaganda media like NPR. These guys (unisex meaning) always pretend to being objective, wink at each other knowing no one on the inside will blow their cover while they are still useful. But the second they retire (or what? what is Nina up to now?) they suddenly acknowledge their deep ties to and corruption by access to powerful people they had pretended to cover at arms length.
No apologies.
No admonishment to young journalists to avoid the ethical lapses they succumbed to.
No regrets, apparently.
So I don't mind being labelled anti-intellectual
Could you imagine a congressional reporter doing a book called Dinners With Harry Reid, tracing shopping excursions and intimate family moments with the late majority leader, who died the year after Ginsburg?
Time magazine White House reporter Hugh Sidey used to go skinny dipping with JFK in the White House pool.
The late, great editor Abe Rosenthal used to tell his reporters "I don't care if you're fucking an elephant, as long as you don't cover the Circus!"
Depending on how that works, the medical costs could be staggering.
So here we have a tale, of two women who were, presumably, "encouraged to pursue careers in traditionally male professions." Is that a good thing? For them? For us? Would two similarly placed men have allowed their personal and professional lives to become similarly entangled? Is that a peculiarly female thing to do, or is it more a question of their feeling, precisely, like two outsiders in a man's world?
If anyone publishes "Dinners with Harry Reid," I hope they tell us who beat him up and why. He did NOT get that shiner from his exercise bike.
Howard: "RGB is a superhero to professional women and Nina Hottentot is cashing in. Why do you people hate successful free market capitalists? Focus on Yourself."
As expected, we now have to add "free market capitalists" to the ever growing and already astonishingly long list of topics/concepts/definitions that Howard does not understand in the slightest.
It would take a full time intern to compile the complete list.
Nina Hottentot
Hilarious. You're going to one of the inner circles of Hell.
If NPR cared about ethics (haha, I know) they would fore her and take down all her writings. This is a massive breach of journalistic ethics. And it surprises absolutely no one.
Recently I've been noticing how badly women write compared to Vicki Hearne. Women have their own genre that stamps out anything interesting, putting perfectly good thoughts into the wrong places.
Write instead on something interesting to men but with feminine twists at points where the men are wrong. As it is, you get perfectly predictable soap opera and that's all.
Ginsburg cultivated a cult of personality ("Notorious RBG") that was completely inappropriate for a Supreme Court justice. It's hardly surprising that her reckless and selfish decision to never step down was in part inspired by her enjoyment of the adoration of her fans.
Howard- both RBG and Toten were both government employees. How does that equate with your statement that they were/are successful free market capitalists? Neither of them every started a business or, as far as I can tell, ever worked in the private sector.
Ruth's epiphany. Totenberg is only human. Schaffer's ideological conundrum.
Notorious RBG.
That says it all. Feminists wanted a heroine on SCOTUS, so that got a heroine. Nina was on the inside, so she gave us the scoop (and carried the water). In other places, this is called being a hack.
Notorious RBG was BAD!!!
By all accounts Ginsberg’s friendship with Scalia was far deeper than her friendship with Totenberg yet somehow they both managed to do their jobs.
"'A memoir on the power of friendships'... always comes back to friendships...."
IOW, political incest.
"[A]s the pages go by, and Totenberg and her friends become more powerful, the theme becomes increasingly uncomfortable — and increasingly revealing"
Uncomfortable because it is revealing of the actual prog circle jerk?
"In fact, Totenberg became part of the RBG hype machine."
Which prog "reporter" is not part of a hype machine? Anyone?
"With its odd, priestly culture, the court is particularly susceptible to this sort of veneration."
King Obama's court got the same treatment. The anointed have their lackeys.
"and awful about insider culture"
Awful why? Because it gives the prog game away? As if we deplorables didn't know already. Kudos to Totenberg for displaying prog culture as it is.
Slightly off topic, but I saw a story today about a SCOTUS order pertaining to JOHN Q. HAMM, COMMISSIONER, ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, ET AL. v. MATTHEW REEVES. The vote was 5-4 with ALL of the female members of the court dissenting.
Am I the only one who thinks that's weird?
Reminder that Arthur Ashe, against his will, had to out himself as being sick with AIDS to preempt a "friend" of his, some "journalist," from reporting it on the ground that it was "important."
Corollary of Janet Malcolm's quote about journalists always selling someone out: Don't be friends with a journalist. Either that or tell him/her upfront that always and forever what you do is off the record to them.
Veneration is the key word in this article and in friendship relationships among the liberal elite, particularly among females and beta males, imo. There is an inability or unwillingness to address contradictory ideas with objectivity or challenges to the beliefs held by the powerful. You are either on the team or an enemy. Any dissent is viewed as bad manners or a mortal threat and the consequence is rejection. (AKA the cancel culture) We see this over and over with the "extreme Left's" defensive reactions and accusations rather than rational responses. I noticed this happening in academia during the time when "post modern" based professors joined forces to take over departments -- it was a feminist power struggle to advance their ideology and their careers. So of course friendships would be crucial because there was no theoretical superiority in their position which could be defended.
Reagan and Tip O'Neill socialized together. Then they would publicly argue during the daylight hours. Which was the basis of their relationship? I think it was the power both held, which brought them together to both argue and share a dinner.
Totenburg still doesn't realize that she is and was a parasite of the Supreme Court, sucking a living from them, by delivering to the public what her "friends" there told her to publicize.
The Totenberg Ginstome is offered to the public on the open marketplace of ideas and stories. Pays your money and take your chances. That's a free market success story. Nina worked hard for decades cultivating relationships with powerful people. Now she's cashing in like the good capitalist she has become. Maybe one day you people will get to burn her book. You know you want to.
"Women have their own genre that stamps out anything interesting, putting perfectly good thoughts into the wrong places."
Well!
:D
Who still has faith in journalism as it is usually currently practiced?
You reminded me that Harry Reid is dead. Day, brightened.
Faith is the human failing that allows marks to be controlled by con men and preachers. Popular Journalism has always been corrupt. Unpopular journalism is not bad. It's time to think like a responsible adult and don't believe what you hear and only half of what you see. Then figure out what is really going on using the applied scientific tool of multiple working hypothesis and multiple lines of evidence.
It's always been this way. To think we live in a special time is foolish folly brought on by guilt. Another tool of preachers and snake oil salesmen.
Only one side of politics is mean and extreme
Those who attack democracy to overturn the 2020 election
And those who ignored the Russian conspiracy in the illigitimate 2016 election
Good people became ungovernable for 2016 and lockdowners for 2020 but zero tolerance for right wing terrorists in 2022
Liberal tongue baths are part of the show.
I wouldn't venerate Abe Rosenthal. He was a liar who, for decades, presided over the cover-up -- no, justification -- of the vast crime wave and destruction of NYC. He was so pro-criminal, he urged the release of cannibal murderers, rapists, cop-killers, child molesters and terrorist bombers. See also, Fox Butterfield.
Obviously, Totenberg is an entitled pig who made millions at the taxpayer's "nonprofit" flagship trough, but it is shocking she is so blind she imagines she is doing credit to her profession and the Supreme Court by revealing the depths of her and their corruption.
That's not a bubble. It's a calcified mafia, and reporters are the consiglieres.
Maybe her book editors secretly hate her.
In the 80s I dated or lived with an NPR program director and Nina, and Cokie, and Mara became favorites of mine. That is until I came to know their broadcasting better. Mara remains a favorite. I quit listening to NPR at the start of the second Bush administration.
Anyway, whatever reservations I had about Nina I accorded her respect and listened thoughtfully. Then she went on TV and demonstrated that she could not think on her feet nor swerve a degree from a biased left rendition of reality.
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