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Did any thought reading this..."Malcolm Gladwell"?
by desireco42 14y ago
Did any thought reading this..."Malcolm Gladwell"?
- msrpotus 14y agoHe's specifically mentioned in the article, unsurprisingly.
- GFischer 14y agoIndeed: "Malcolm Gladwell got into hot water in 2005 by telling a story about games he played in the pages of the Washington Post that turned out to be almost entirely untrue. In print, Gladwell is often knocked for reducing social science to easy epiphanies and is occasionally called out for ignoring evidence that contradicts his cozy theories"
- tptacek 14y agoI dispute how much "hot water" Gladwell got into over the Moth story. First, it's hard to listen to that story and take it seriously; it's pretty over-the-top. Second, The Moth is a somewhat informal venue; for instance, Mike Birbiglia's Moth performance is more or less a standup routine. The story was covered in the media because it suggested (playfully) that major publications were sometimes run more by gamesmanship than by a duty to report the facts; true or not, it was obviously catnip to media critics. The latter allegations --- that Gladwell's stories are too pat, and that they exclude contradictory evidence --- amount to Gladwell being "wrong" about things. But being wrong isn't a journalistic crime; journalists, columnists, and essayists are wrong all the time. It's disingenuous to lay that case out in an article about someone who committed real journalistic crimes: fabrication and plagiarism. In the actual NYMag piece, the case against Gladwell consists largely of innuendo: that he gives a lot of high-priced talks, that in marketing himself and The New Yorker, he created a brand that he can milk for his own personal gain. Well, we all milk things for our personal gain; it's called "having a career".
- GFischer 14y agoThanks, I didn't have the context - that's a quote from the article. Undoubtedly, Lehrer's journalistic crimes are pretty serious, and shouldn't be compared to Gladwell. And you're right that having a brand is no crime :) .
- binxbolling 14y agoJust curious, but why did you feel the compulsion to comment on an article you very clearly didn't even read?
- btilly 14y agoJust curious, why would you draw such a horribly flawed inference? I read the article closely, and I was also struck by the similarity of what he was trying to what Malcolm Gladwell does. And the end of the article the parallel is made very clearly.
- aptwebapps 14y agoI'm guessing that binxbolling thought that desireco42's post was in response to the title, supplying Gladwell for "... wasn't the only ...". It's a common sort of generally useless comment.
- shardling 14y agoIf an article mentions Gladwell several times, and someone asks if the article made anyone think of Gladwell, it's a pretty good guess that they didn't get to that part of it before commenting.
- tptacek 14y agoI had to resist making the same comment that you replied to, because I felt like the article was at some pains to put Lehrer in the context of Gladwell. I too assumed that anyone who could ask this question probably hadn't read the article.
- btilly 14y agoSome pains - sure. But I would have been drawing the parallel anyways, and in fact was well before the article twisted that way.