{"id":302,"date":"2007-04-05T11:13:31","date_gmt":"2007-04-05T16:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/index.php\/2007\/04\/05\/all-their-fits-are-news\/"},"modified":"2009-07-07T21:49:54","modified_gmt":"2009-07-08T02:49:54","slug":"all-their-fits-are-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/04\/all-their-fits-are-news\/","title":{"rendered":"All Their Fits Are News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New Republic<\/em> (subscription-only) reports that humorist, memoirist, monologist David Sedaris embellishes. A number of otherwise sensible commentators, like Slate’s Jack Shafer<\/a>, jump on the fellow. Their point: If you laugh, it’s not journalism. If it has a coherent beginning, middle and end, it’s too good to be true.<\/p>\n

[Casablanca<\/em>: Captain Renault: “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” as a croupier hands Renault a pile of money (from imdb.com<\/a>)]<\/small><\/p>\n

These people have forgotten their local library’s Dewey classification system. Fiction is sorted by author’s last name. Non-fiction, numbered 0 to 1000, includes science but also poetry and essays and oversized art books. And religion, history and other books of faith.<\/p>\n

This manufactured controversy finally moved a columnist to say, “Geez, guys, lighten up.” It’s a favorite dude, Jon Carroll<\/a> of San Francisco. As he writes this morning,<\/p>\n

Next you’ll be telling me that the bed never really did fall on James Thurber’s father. …”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If ol’ Jim was alive today, picture all the dysfunctions he’d be accused of making light of.<\/p>\n

But whatever makes it the better story, eh? -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New Republic (subscription-only) reports that humorist, memoirist, monologist David Sedaris embellishes. A number of otherwise sensible commentators, like Slate’s Jack Shafer, jump on the fellow. Their point: If you laugh, it’s not journalism. If it has a coherent beginning, middle and end, it’s too good to be true. [Casablanca: Captain Renault: “I’m shocked, shocked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-course-of-words","tag-columnist"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":415,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/03\/famous-columnist-school\/","url_meta":{"origin":302,"position":0},"title":"Famous Columnist School","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 14, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Book report: The Art of Column Writing: Insider Secrets from Art Buchwald, Dave Barry Arianna Huffington, Pete Hamill and Other Great Columnists, by Suzette Martinez Standring The reviewing trade has a law that a critic doesn't write up works created by friends. It's a group of laws, actually. When a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mr. Boo Klist"","block_context":{"text":"Mr. Boo Klist","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/mr-boo-klist\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":140,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/05\/koran-in-a-barrel\/","url_meta":{"origin":302,"position":1},"title":"Koran in a barrel","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"May 22, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Sunday, May 22, 2005. So ... if the International Red Cross says some Americans in some way desecrated the Koran in front of Iraqis, Afghans or other Muslims (with comparable incidents already reported months ago as part of the Abu Ghraib initial and follow-up reports\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":258,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/01\/carve-buchwald-on-rushmore\/","url_meta":{"origin":302,"position":2},"title":"Carve Buchwald on Rushmore","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 21, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"A great columnist passes. It's Art Buchwald, about whom I wrote nearly a year ago, when he'd been in hospice just a few weeks and well before he recovered enough to get thrown out. Actually he was a part of my master's thesis of spring 2003, which researched the apparent\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News, Spin"","block_context":{"text":"News, Spin","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/news-spin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":152,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2005\/05\/the-60-second-blogger\/","url_meta":{"origin":302,"position":3},"title":"The 60-second blogger","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"May 1, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock Sunday, May 1, 2005. Can there be a 60-second blogger or columnist or essayist, in the manner of Dan Hurley's \"60-Second Novelist\"? Yes. Why else pose the question? I just reviewed Hurley's Web site, including listening to a seven-minute NPR interview -- serious for public\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technical Difficulties"","block_context":{"text":"Technical Difficulties","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/briefs\/technical-difficulties\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":297,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/03\/lasso-round-up\/","url_meta":{"origin":302,"position":4},"title":"Lasso Round-up","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Will Rogers Writers' Workshop, OKLAHOMA CITY -- Susan Driscoll, CEO of iUniverse, spoke first, following a hot breakfast buffet to which the self-publishing firm treated us. I see why friends have published books, several of whom have gone the print-on-demand route, yet it's not for me. No books. I'm more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"Never met a blog I didn't like\""","block_context":{"text":"\"Never met a blog I didn't like\"","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/nsnc\/oklahoma-city-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1794,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2010\/02\/columnist-sympathizer\/","url_meta":{"origin":302,"position":5},"title":"Columnist Sympathizer","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A nice thing just happened. On Jan. 31, I was elected vice president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. I've been a card-carrying columnist since 1991, joining during the run of my column Mirthology, in the old Arkansas Democrat. The post is interim, to cover after a resignation, until\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Card-Carrying Columnist Card","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/NSNC_card-300x180.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1496,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/1496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}