Monday, August 23, 2010

The 72-Hour Expert

P.J.O'Rourke, in typical P.J.O'Rourkian fashion, shows how real professionals know all about a place in 72 hours, so as to impart their wisdom to us.
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've recently listened to 3 lectures by John Bowen at the LSE about Islam and attitudes to it in Aceh, France and England.

He claimed that if an anthropologist wanted to have anything relevant to say about a place he/she had to have lived there a MINIMUM of 18 month. Language learning and not staying in a comfort bubble are so much of an "of course" that they need no extra mention.

Now why a foreign correspondent telling us country bumpkins how the great wide world is ticking should need less local knowledge than an anthropologist eludes me.

Silke

August 23, 2010 at 11:33 AM
Anonymous said...

Walter Russell Mead on the State Department's staffing policies?
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/08/21/smart-diplomacy-as-crisis-hits-karachi-bureaucrats-sideline-star/
T34zakat

Although Ethan Bronner apparently still doesn't understand Israelis.

August 23, 2010 at 1:17 PM
Anonymous said...

Elder of Ziyon has a summary of change of minds foreign correspondents have "suffered" from. Ethan Bronner figures in it which makes me wonder what all this brouhaha about ethics and the editor defending him really was about.

Michael Totten at Pajamas has a very good interview of foreigners in bubbles posted - but can you remain in a bubble even if your son serves in the IDF?

Silke

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2010/08/hungry-or-not-mainstream-medias.html

August 23, 2010 at 1:58 PM
Anonymous said...

Silke, he seems to do a very good job of being clueless and possibly dishonest. But having read some of the finance articles I think clueless and dishonest is a hiring requirement at the NYT.

Danny

August 23, 2010 at 4:13 PM
Anonymous said...

Danny
clueless and dishonest is a hiring requirement at the NYT

not only for journalists and not only at the NYT!

Decades ago I took training lessons in how to sell life-insurance at our most esteemed insurer who paid me well for taking part. That's only to emphasize that what I was told didn't come from some shady corner and that it stems from the "good ol' times" before greed became a virtue.

That said when I kept asking questions like any self-respecting clerk would I was told in the most friendly and benevolent way by the excellent lecturer, specialist in selling stuff to celebrities:

Too much knowledge is a hindrance to selling.

Could it be that that is part of journalists' Know How also?
(btw there is a book out on the Balfour Declaration by a "historian" who didn't even get Churchill's WW1 job title right - maybe it is sloppyness sells, it makes the world look so much of one piece and easily understandable.)

Silke

August 24, 2010 at 10:26 AM

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