Post by Optimus on Oct 29, 2020 11:44:01 GMT -5
So, the "leaker" who didn't actually ever leak anything, who the NYT propped up as some sort of "high level administration insider," who made a crap ton of cash off of his book which was apparently the equivalent of middle school gossip, who lied to Anderson Cooper on CNN about being "Anonymous," finally revealed himself as...
...a complete nobody with no real access and whose low position in government made it incredibly unlikely he actually knew WTF he was talking about.
¡Quelle surprise!
Good article in the Atlantic about it today (Graeme Wood): www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/anonymous-was-just-little-gremlin/616903/
...a complete nobody with no real access and whose low position in government made it incredibly unlikely he actually knew WTF he was talking about.
¡Quelle surprise!
Good article in the Atlantic about it today (Graeme Wood): www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/anonymous-was-just-little-gremlin/616903/
Yesterday afternoon, the “senior administration official” who wrote a prominent anti-Trump New York Times op-ed and book named himself, ripping off his mask to reveal … a face so forgettable, so forgotten, that it was unclear whether the mask had been ripped off at all, or whether he was like the Robert Stack character in Airplane!, dramatically removing his sunglasses to reveal an identical pair of sunglasses underneath. Anonymous is Miles Taylor, a Republican operative who started as chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security in February 2019, five months after publishing his op-ed. He left that position in June 2019 and is now campaigning for Joe Biden. At the time of the op-ed’s publication, Taylor was the DHS deputy chief of staff, and his name did not appear on the DHS leadership page at all. Most people thought the author was more famous, not an unknown appointee but a real grand fromage, perhaps at the level of a Cabinet secretary.
....
The New York Times should never have run the op-ed in that form, and since it no longer has to protect its source’s identity, it should explain its reasoning for the obfuscation in the first place. If the author were very senior, the granting of anonymity might have been defensible: that would have been the only way to convey to readers that (say) the attorney general was a saboteur. Instead, Taylor looks like a relatively minor gremlin, for whom the venerable opinion page should have maintained the normal rule: if you have an opinion, you should attach your name and reputation to it like an adult. “Speak in your own name,” my colleague David Frum wrote at the time the op-ed came out. “Previous generations of Americans have sacrificed fortunes, health, and lives to serve the country. You are asked only to tell the truth aloud and with your name attached.”
....
The New York Times should never have run the op-ed in that form, and since it no longer has to protect its source’s identity, it should explain its reasoning for the obfuscation in the first place. If the author were very senior, the granting of anonymity might have been defensible: that would have been the only way to convey to readers that (say) the attorney general was a saboteur. Instead, Taylor looks like a relatively minor gremlin, for whom the venerable opinion page should have maintained the normal rule: if you have an opinion, you should attach your name and reputation to it like an adult. “Speak in your own name,” my colleague David Frum wrote at the time the op-ed came out. “Previous generations of Americans have sacrificed fortunes, health, and lives to serve the country. You are asked only to tell the truth aloud and with your name attached.”
