Scathing/super snarky review of A Warning:
“A Warning,” Anonymous says, is intended for a “broad audience,” though to judge by the parade of bland, methodical arguments (Anonymous loves to qualify criticisms with a lawyerly “in fairness”), the ideal reader would seem to be an undecided voter who has lived in a cave for the past three years, and is irresistibly moved by quotations from Teddy Roosevelt and solemn invocations of Cicero.
Chris Hayes’s tldr version:
She is cowardly enough, for sure.
Not sure that is particularly meaningful. Unless… is Anonymous Jane Austen?!
Tim_N
5872
Jane Austen does love to write about men who have pride and prejudice.
I think Austen is like Nostradamus. She wrote about Trump way back then…
“for he is such a disagreeable man, that it would be quite a misfortune to be liked by him.”
Djscman
5874
Well, it has to be someone who has or multiple people who have access to the Oval Office and has been with Team Trump since at least Inauguration Day allllll the way until now. That can’t be many people. At least J + I haven’t been fired and presumably might have had the opportunity to yoink a folder or unsigned bill off the Resolute Desk.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an old miserable bastard in possession of a vast fortune, must be in want of dictatorial power.”
Prophetic!
Pretty much. I was reading Northanger Abbey recently, and the book has a pair of solipsistic narcissists, and the male half of the pair was basically her lampoon/portrait of Trump. It’s a good description of the guy despite being written a few centuries earlier. Idiocy is timeless.
Starting a sentence with “it is” is an identifiable idiosyncrasy. The repeated use of the phrase is weak writing that should be fixed with an editing pass, because the “it” is usually superfluous. For example, the quote from Gordon’s post:
A typical edit to make it stronger would be:
If Kirsten Nielsen regularly leads with “it is” and you find that hasn’t been edited out of the book, that makes for an eligible clue that she might be the anonymous author.
-Tom
I mean, we’re discussing my comic bastardization of the famous opening sentence of Pride & Prejudice, but I at least do not consider the edit an improvement…
Or she secretly moonlights as an editor for Hachette Book Group.
More likely, there just are no proper editors at major book publishers anymore.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure I do, either. But my point is that repeated us of “it is” to open a sentence can be part of a writing habit. And given how Anonymous’ book singled out Trump’s treatment of women, I’d love to think it’s Nielsen who’s out there writing op eds and books about what a horrible person she worked for (i.e. enabled). I still don’t have any sympathy for her, but there’s more of a sense of karmic justice if a woman turns against Mr. Grab 'Em By The Pussy.
-Tom
The mention of quoting Cicero made me think it’s gotta be Don Jr.
Junior can’t spell ‘it’, so he’s in the clear.
You’re sure you didn’t misspell Caligula?
rei
5885
Cyber security czar of trump administration ladies and gentlemen
HumanTon
5886
So having managed to somehow extricate herself from the Trump administration without getting smeared in shit, Nikki Haley is back with a new book and interview where she … turns right around and dips her foot back into the cesspit.
On the one hand she talks about how she was shocked - shocked! - that other Cabinet members thought Trump is an incompetent idiot and treated him accordingly, instead of being faithful soldiers who carried out his dubious policies unquestioningly. On the other hand, she makes sure to get it on the record that she privately shared her disagreements with Trump on things like making the USA Putin’s bitch and praising Nazis.
It’s hard to tell who this equivocation is aimed at. Dear Leader expects complete and total abasement from his flying monkeys, and Haley’s “I’ll carry out your policy even though I disagree” attitude does not cut it with him (which is presumably why she is no longer around.) This book isn’t going to make him reinstate Haley. And If instead if Trump goes down in flames one way or another and the GOP finds themselves trying to distance themselves, “I did whatever Trump told me” isn’t going to be a selling point; better to have people assume you were part of the sekrit resistance all along (which some people had indeed been assuming, apparently incorrectly, about Haley.)
Haley clearly expects to run for President in 2024. The smart thing would have been to keep her mouth shut until November 4th so she could gauge the political winds. Instead she wrote this book now. Why?
(I know, I know: it’s doubtless the usual explanation for Team Trump: they’re just not that smart.)
ShivaX
5887
Maybe she’s just cashing out before moving onto the private sector.
Tim_N
5888
Even the MAGA people heckle him.
