Background Image

...

The One Thing I'm Quite Critical Of Hillary Clinton For, And It Obviously Hurt Her, Is That At Some Level, The Clintons Had To Know That She Was Going To Run For President. Why Did They Feel It Necessary To Make Tens Of Millions Of Dollars With Speaking Engagements? They Must Have Known That It Would Look Grotesque. The Word For It Is "buckraking." It's Beyond Me. I Don't Understand It.

-David Remnick

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The One Thing I'm

David Remnick

...

The One Thing I'm Quite Critical Of Hillary Clinton For, And It Obviously Hurt Her, Is That At Some Level, The Clintons Had To Know That She Was Going To Run For President. Why Did They Feel It Necessary To Make Tens Of Millions Of Dollars With Speaking Engagements? They Must Have Known That It Would Look Grotesque. The Word For It Is "buckraking." It's Beyond Me. I Don't Understand It.

Views: 3

Topic

More From David Remnick

Prediction Is A Low Form Of Journalism.

Donald Trump Lies With Astonishing Frequency And In Stunning Volume.

The Communist Party Apparatus Was The Most Gigantic Mafia The World Has Ever Known.

Everybody Has A Cartoon Of Themselves. Mine Is: I Write Very Fast, And I'm Ruthlessly Efficient With My Time.

I Know, Too, That Millions And Millions Of People Voted For Trump Not Because They Are Cartoon Racists, But Because They Did Not Like Hillary Clinton For A Variety Of Reasons, Because They Had Real Economic And Social Grievances.

Vladimir Putin Wants To Become The De Facto Head Of An Illiberal, Xenophobic, Hypernationalist Trend In World Politics.

The Democratic Vote Consists Of Minorities And Educated Whites.

You Have To Understand That A Lot Of The Working Class Is Not White.

The Notion That Somehow Through A Trade War Or Protectionism Or Magical Thinking That We're Going To Return To A Romanticized Economic Past Is, In The End, Going To Be An Illusion. And A Severe Disappointment To Millions Of Decent, Hard-working People.

The Future Is Itself A Story, And Predictions Are Stories We Tell To Amaze Ourselves, To Give Hope To The Desperate, To Jolt The Complacent.

Clearly Independent Journalists - Domestic Journalists - Run A High Risk If They Dare To Take On Serious Investigative Work.

There Are Two Forms Of Populism, Left-wing Populism And Right-wing Populism. Right-wing Populism Requires The Denigration Of An "other." Left-wing Populism Tends To Be About The Haves And Have-nots.

I Actually Have Great Hopes For The Future.

Hope For The Future

Maybe Santa Claus Is Real. Here's The Problem: Reality.

We Run All Kinds Of Ads, As Long As They Are Clearly Marked As Advertising When There's Ever A Question. I Think Advertising Is Advertising. If It's 100 Percent Clear What It Is, Then, With Certain Exceptions, I Can Live With That.

What I Object To Is Tricking The Reader And Blurring The Lines So That Unsuspecting Readers, Thinking That They Are Getting Something That Is Assigned And Edited By The Editorial Side, Are Getting Something Quite Different. They Are Getting An Advertisement.

What About Our Refusal To Look Squarely At The Degradation Of The Planet We Inhabit? In The Last Election Cycle Many Candidates Refused Even To Acknowledge The Hard Science, Irrefutable Science, Of Climate Change. The President, While Readily Accepting The Facts, Has Done Far Too Little To Alter Them. How Long Are We, Are You, Prepared To Wait?

Instagram - It's Fun, But Facebook, No, Just Here And There. I Use Instagram As A Kick, Like When Somebody Tells Me To Check Out So-and-so's Instagram Account To Check Out Their French Toast Or A Trip To Tanzania. But I Don't Have An Account.

Donald Trump Is Going To Have To Live In The Real World In Which Vladimir Putin Is Exactly Who He Presents Himself To Be, And Putin Is Extremely Skilled. He's Not Going To Make It Very Easy For The United States Or Germany. And He's Going To Test Trump.

I'm A Journalist - I'm Not Robert Caro. I Have A Day Job, And A Pretty Consuming One - A Joyfully Consuming One.

The One Thing I'm Quite Critical Of Hillary Clinton For, And It Obviously Hurt Her, Is That At Some Level, The Clintons Had To Know That She Was Going To Run For President. Why Did They Feel It Necessary To Make Tens Of Millions Of Dollars With Speaking Engagements? They Must Have Known That It Would Look Grotesque. The Word For It Is "buckraking." It's Beyond Me. I Don't Understand It.

I Would Like To See Russia Not Invade Ukraine Or Put Pressure On And Threaten Baltic States. But We Live In The Real And Existing World.

If This Day Means Anything, It Means That You Are Now In The Contingent Of The Responsible. You Must Be Kind, Yes, But You Must Also Look Beyond Your Own House. We're Depending On You For Your Efforts And Your Vision. We Are Depending On Your Eye And Your Imagination To Identify What Wrongs Exist And Persist, And On Your Hands, Your Backs, Your Efforts, To Right Them.

Democratic Institutions, Even In The Oldest Operating Democracy In The World, Are Anything But Perfect.

You Are Losing Because Blacks Are Getting Their Civil Rights In The Cities.

I Live In A Country Where, At Least By My Sense Of Arithmetic And Justice, Al Gore Should Have Been President, Not George W. Bush. To This Day, John Kerry Probably Thinks He Won Ohio In 2004 Because He Had Suspicions About The Vote In Ohio. And, By The Way, Richard Nixon Had Suspicions In 1960 About The Vote In Chicago When He Lost To Jfk.

I'm Not The Slowest Writer That You Know.

I Use Social Media Every Day. I Don't Have A Twitter Account, But Not Because I'm A Dinosaur About It. I Have Enough Of A Platform Here. People In My Position Who Do It Tend To Use It In A Promotional Way Or In A Hamstrung Way. I Look At Twitter All The Time As A News Tool Or For Cultural Conversation. I've Used It In My Reporting. It's Very Useful.

Russian Is Such A Tough And Complex Language That I Am Happy Enough To Understand Everything And Read Most Things Pretty Well, But, Without Constant Practice, My Speech Is Not What I Wish It Was, And I Would Sooner Write In Crayon Than Write A Letter In Russian.

I've Never Encountered Someone In Public Life Who Has Less Desire To Hold Office Than Michelle Obama, Though She Is Incredibly Gifted At Retail Politics.

Mobile Is Great For Us. I Think, Even Though The Size Of The Screen Doesn't Give Everything The New Yorker Has To Offer, People Are Spending A Lot Of Time Reading - And Reading Seriously - On The Phone.

You Are Losing Because Of Jewish Bankers.

I Know From My Conversations With People In The Administration That Every World Leader That Obama Met In Berlin, In Peru, In Athens Was Extremely Alarmed By Trump's Election. That Very Much Includes Angela Merkel.

I Got In Journalism For Any Number Of Reasons, Not Least Because It's So Much Fun. Journalism Should Be In The Business Of Putting Pressure On Power, Finding Out The Truth, Of Shining A Light On Injustice, Of, When Appropriate, Being Amusing And Entertaining - It's A Complicated And Varied Beast, Journalism.

I Would Love To Have A Stable, Productive Relationship With Russia.

There Are Inconsistencies In Donald Trump's Ideology.

Being An Editor It's A Complicated Job, But The Last Impression I'd Want Anybody To Have Is That It's Onerous. It's A Joy - A Complicated Joy, But A Joy.

Donald Trump Seems To Think It Is Within His Rights To Trample The First Amendment, To Disdain The Press, To Punish Protesters Or Flag-burners, To Ban Ethnic Categories Of Immigrants, And So On.

Being Nervous, First Of All, Puts You At A Distinct Disadvantage, And If You've Really Prepared And If You've Really Thought Through How To Start The Conversation, Things Start To Fall Into Place. There Are Other Things I Get Nervous About, But Not That.

Fall Into Place

Donald Trump Appoints People Of Low Quality, To Say The Least.

I Don't Want To Romanticize The World In Which Everybody Watched Three Networks And The Washington Post And The New York Times And The Wall Street Journal Were Incredibly Dominant. That Time Has Passed.

I Left Gorbachev's Office Thinking That Everything About Him Was Outsized: His Achievements, His Mistakes, And, Now, His Vanity And Bitterness.

There Are Systemic, Painful Problems Of Globalization And De-industrialization That Cannot Be Solved With A Phone Call Or A Tweet Or An Angry Speech Or Trying To Isolate The Press And The First Amendment. Sooner Or Later, The Donald Trump Show, Which Is A Projection Of Strength And Authority, Will Have To Deliver To His Voters. And If He Doesn't, In Very Real Terms, If He Can't Supersede A Situation Where A President Cut The Unemployment Rate In Half, If He Can't Do Better, If He Can't Open Factories And All The Rest That He's Promised, Then I Think He's In Trouble.

Ronald Reagan Came To Office And Had Already Been An Experienced Politician As Governor Of California, Whose Ideology And Ideas, No Matter How Simplistic Or No Matter How Much You May Disagree With Them, Were Fairly Well-developed And Fairly Consistent. Donald Trump Is A Real-estate Branding Operator And A Reality-show Television Star Whose Entrance Into Big-time Politics, As A Victor, As Someone Who Will Now Wield Tremendous Power, Was As Shocking To Him As It Was To Everybody Else.

As Journalists, We Need To Find Every Avenue To Distribute Our Work, And Try To Be So Good That We Become Increasingly More Influential Than Before.

I Understand The Difference Between Journalism And Scholarship That Comes 20 Years Later.

Trump's Election Is Part Of An International Trend That's No Less Alarming, In Britain, In France, In Germany, In Austria. Vladimir Putin Wanted To See This Outcome No Less Than He Would Like To See Nationalists And Anti-europeanists Win In France.

A Huge Constituency, Such As Hispanics, Is Not 100 Percent Democratic.

Speaking To The Subject Is The Most Overrated Thing In Journalism.

We Should Put Pressure On Power And Write The Truth And Write Relentlessly And Fearlessly. That's The Job.

I Have To Always Remember, Writing Is Really Hard.

We Can Hope That The Responsibilities And Realities Will Weigh On Donald Trump And He Will Not Be The President We Fear, But Rather Something More Stable.

The Question For So Many Is The Quality Of Work, The Future Of Work Under Globalism And De-industrialization. A Typical Example Is A Person Who Had A Good Factory Job Making 80,000 Dollars, With Health Insurance, Who Was Able To Send His Kids Possibly To College And Then He Or She Suddenly Loses That Job Because The Factory Closed Down. And Now That Same Person Is Bagging Groceries At Walmart And Making $35,000.

My Deep Sense Of Alarm Has To Do With Donald Trump's Seeming Lack Of Fealty To Constitutionalism.

Constitutionalism

Every Good Journalist Is Aware That His Trade May One Day Go The Way Of Phrenology-and, What's More, The Population Will Hardly Protest The Extinction.

There Are Days When You Might Enjoy Being An Editor A Little Less, Due To One Crisis Or Another. It Is Absolutely Vital, To Me, In A Period Of Technological Evolution And Sometimes Financial Stress That I And My Colleagues Not Only Put Out A Fantastic Magazine And Web Site And All The Rest, But Also That We Are Smart Enough About What We Are Doing.

The Only Reason The Word "brand" Gets A Little Tiresome Is That Something That Is Complex And Wonderful And Deep Begins To Sound Like A Can Of Tomato Soup. I Recoil At That, But I'm Used To It. I Know What It Means: It Means That The New Yorker Is Not Merely The Magazine That Comes Out In Print Once A Week. It's The Web Site, It's The Festival, It's Our Mobile Application - All These Things - And What They Stand For And What They Mean.

There's Nothing Wrong With Creating Jobs. What's Wrong Is To Seed The Illusion That You Will Magically Bring Back The Economy Of 1970, That You Will Reopen Coal Mines.

A.j. Liebling, One Of My Heroes, Used To Say That He Could Write Better Than Anyone Who Wrote Faster, And Faster Than Anyone Who Could Write Better. I'm One Nine-hundredth As Good As Liebling, But That Principle May Slightly Apply.

Disaster Can Take A Nation By Surprise, Slowly, And Then All At Once.

From A Personal Point Of View, I'd Like To Interview My Great-grandparents Because I Barely Knew Them, And I Know Next To Nothing About My Family Beyond 100 Years.

100% Of The People Who Get The Magazine Say They Read The Cartoons First - And The Other 2% Are Lying.100

I Think The Electoral College Is An Absurd 18th-century Construct. But That Is The Law.

The World Is A Crazy, Beautiful, Ugly Complicated Place, And It Keeps Moving On From Crisis To Strangeness To Beauty To Weirdness To Tragedy. The Caravan Keeps Moving On, And The Job Of The Longform Writer Or Filmmaker Or Radio Broadcaster Is To Stop - Is To Pause - And When The Caravan Goes Away, That's When This Stuff Comes.

The Minority Vote Is Growing, Which Is Part Of The Alarm Of So Many Republicans And Why Trump Constantly Whipped Up Their Alarm With His Racist Statements.

The Only Reason To Be In Business Is To Be Great.

On Facebook, A Lie Can Seem As Convincing To Some As An Article From Spiegel Or The Washington Post. That's A Problem. I Can Then Like It And Like It Again And Start Creating My Own Media Universe, Both For Me And For My Friends, And So We Become More And More Fenced Off From One Another.

I Think Dealing With The U.s. Senate Is Very Different From Dealing With The Electorate.

Capitalism In Russia Has Spawned Far More Al Capones Than Henry Fords.

Trump's Rise Is Troubling Not Just On An American Level But On An International Level.

I Would Also Like To See Russia Not Interfere In Our Elections.

Nature Is Cold, Wet, Hard And Unforgiving.

I'm Interested In Russian Language, Culture, History... And I Lived There, For Four Years, As A Reporter For The Washington Post And Have Visited Many Times Since.

The Internet Is Very Democratizing In Some Ways, But It Also Has Other Effects.

Donald Trump's Temperament And Character Is Precisely What You Would Hate To See In Your Children, Much Less Your President.

I Don't Think There Will Be Fascism In America, But We Have To Do Everything We Can To Fight Against It.

Journalism, Some Huge Percentage Of It, Should Be Devoted To Putting Pressure On Power, On Nonsense, On Chicanery Of All Kinds And If That's Going To Invite A Lawsuit, Well, Bring It On.

Vladimir Putin Wants Practical Things, Like The End Of Economic Sanctions, But He Also Wants Far Greater Sway In Europe And In The Overall Ideological Trends Of The World.

Economic Sanctions

I Am An Adult; Deliberately Naïve, Dewy-eyed Optimism Is Not The Proper Posture For A Responsible Adult, Is It?

I Think We Should Be Alarmed, Watchful, And, As Journalists, Rigorous And Fearless. I Think We Should Be Alert.

We Begin To Inhabit Oppositional And Rarely Intersecting Mental Universes Having To Do With Ideology And Fact And Non-fact And News And Non-news.

Not All Political Prisoners Are Innocents.

Political Prisoners

There Is No Single Field Of Activity, Not A Single Institution, Free Of The Most Brutal Sort Of Corruption. Russia Has Bred A World-class Mafia.

You Are Losing Out Because Mexican Rapists Are Taking Your Job.

I Don't Know That Donald Trump Is Anything More To Putin Than What Lenin Called A Poleznye Durak, A Useful Idiot.

We Have To Do Our Jobs Better, More Tirelessly And Stop Whining About It.

Trending Author

Melissa Joan Hart

Category