Adam Nagourney's blog (very funny):

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12/1/04
Torn!
— Adam @ 1:17 am

What up, y’all. Still on vay-kay, but found a cabana man with wireless! Pissed that Charlie didn’t call me to be on his show yesterday! Why couldn’t I have been the one Karl called to out that spy bitch! Now Judy gets to go to jail and look like a real journalist. Fuck!


Lil’ Richie Co-co’s from the Post was on. What Bullshit! Why couldn’t Charlie have on two people from the times. Judy, cause she is going to jail and me cause I have to protect law breakers all the time. The only reason richie was on was because he’s from the Post and Charlie didn’t want two people on from the same paper- THAT IS A STUPID RULE! Richie was agnostic about the “leak” being criminal- i thought that was cool. It’s like, hello, we’re journalists, if people don’t trust us to protect them when they use us to committ treasonous crimes to further their political agenda it will have a chilling effect! If that happens how will we be able to go to parties? Hellooo? This is America, I don’t think parties should be illegal!

Seriously, think about it. What if this had been about the pentagon papers?

The only difference is that the pentagon papers was an obvious attempt to give information about illegal war acts to the american public at great personal peril and the passing of information that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA agent was an obvious criminal act to benefit the most powerful in the Bush administration and keep the public from knowing that they lied about an important reason why they took the country to war.

See? War. War. Same. Same.

(someone please forward this to Charlie but don’t tell him i told you to forward this to him. It is not still too late to have me on to talk about this. )

http://www.adamnagourney.com/index.php?m=200412

Yes, it's a parody.

Read the archives. They are VERY funny.

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1. 11/9/2004 - Mea Culpa

— Adam @ 1:03 pm

I know many people come here to mock me. I know I have in some way encouraged it by posting goofy thoughts here and sometimes being flip. I know some of you think this site is a joke and some of you have commented that this site doesn’t even sound like me.

Well I am making a little departure today. No joking. No joshing. No Nag Hags. I have spent some time examining how I covered this past election and have decided to write the below letter to my readers. The Times has refused to publish it so here it is:


To: the Reading Public
From Adam Nagourney, New York Times Chief Political Correspondent
Re: Mea Culpa

I have reflected upon my work as the chief political correspondent for the New York Times in covering this past election cycle and I feel it is necessary for me to acknowledge my mistakes and, frankly , to apologize.

I am not apologizing to those who have been so critical of me on the internet, through emails or on radio. That criticism was often too incisive, too passionate and too urgent. I won’t justify such criticism with a response, I would rather leave that to our Public Editor at the New York Times whose job it is to protect the paper’s writers from the complaints of the public.

However, there are people who read the New York Times unquestioningly, there are people who read the Grey Lady without having the proper amount of suspicion. These people are our true constituency, these are our most supportive and as such the most proper of readers. Now that the election has ended, (except for voting irregularities in Ohio, which I plan on writing about just after mid-term elections), it is the proper time for me to acknowledge that my coverage of John Kerry was a bit askew.

I want to make it clear, I am no Judith Miller. I did not help this country into a war for no reason. I did not make things up. I did not push one of the biggest lies upon the US population in modern times. I did not have a ‘relationship” with my only source of this false information, who also happened to be a source for a group of people in the defense department with an agenda for war, and who also happened to be a con man and a spy for Iran, who was also hoping to rape his former home for personal gain and who had promised me, as in Judith, that I would be named queen of Iraq by now. No I, Adam, did not do such things.

With all that said, mea culpa. Over the course of the campaign, beginning with the primaries, because I knew deep down that I supported John Kerry, and through the Presidential election, because I knew his opponent wanted to demonize people like me, I found it necessary to write in such a way that would make people believe the opposite. This is called being objective, I will not apologize for that. However, there were times when I had to sort of exaggerate or report things “imprecisely” in order to be objective and though I will not apologize for that, I will acknowledge that some people might think I should.

However, there were occasions where I derided Kerry for such subjective things as a lack of charisma, even in comparison to myself. This was not objective. Obviously when comparing yourself to a candidate, you may give yourself “extra points”. Please remember though, John Kerry is tall. Studies show taller people generally have an easier time with things- they slide by. When I was at USA Today, before I was at the Times, I was the third shortest person on the political beat. The point is, however, that I was on the Charlie Rose Show at the time of said indiscretion, which, if any of you have ever been on (I’ve been on numerous times), you know, Charlie expects you to have such things to say.

So, again, mea culpa. Know that I am not happy about Bush being reelected either. Believe me, if you knew what I knew about this administration, you’d feel even worse- not to mention, if you knew what I knew about how genuinely impressive John Kerry can be… well anyways…

p.s. please email Charlie Rose and explain to him that I can still be a relevant guest.


Comments (123)

http://www.adamnagourney.com/index.php?m=200411

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2. Kick. Because it's funny.