Hershel Parker · Top Commenter · Northwestern University
As
Dorothy Rabinowitz says in the WALL STREET JOURNAL, Cohan wrote a
dishonest book and compounded his folly by embarking on a Media blitz in
which he has made increasingly reckless false claims about the
falsely-accused Duke lacrosse players. He may turn out to have said
actionable lies. The WSJ on 11 April had already published a puff piece
by David M. Shribman, one of many ignorant incompetent puff pieces that
welcomed THE PRICE OF SILENCE. Cohan was the beneficiary of the
corruption of reviewing in the mainstream media. I have a vested
interest here because the President of Duke University (as he is now),
Richard H. Brodhead, lied about me in the NEW YORK TIMES in June 2002,
saying that only I in my "black hole" had ever heard of the book Herman
Melville finished in 1860 and called POEMS. That is, the Dean of Yale
College defamed me as a biographer who
merely "surmised" rather than worked from documentary evidence. Of
course, everyone had known about POEMS since 1922. I became interested
in the non-rape case because I knew of Brodhead's dishonesty in the NEW
YORK TIMES, and then became appalled at the behavior of the Gang of 88
at Duke. I have written about this at some length in MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY:
AN INSIDE NARRATIVE (published January 2013). Now, I am one of the
Amazon reviewers of Cohan's THE PRICE OF SILENCE. I have also made
several comments on other reviews of the book. If you go to my
(admittedly long) review on Amazon you will find detailed criticism of
the incompetence and even viciousness of Cohan's book. I dare to hope
that Rabinowitz's review will be a turning point. This may be the time
when the amateur reviewers in Amazon push the mainstream media toward
honesty. Here is a comment I posted this morning on the comment by
carla4515:
What's most encouraging is that the WSJ corrected itself. Someone assigned a review to someone who ought to have been responsible, David M. Shribman, boss at the Pittsburgh POST-GAZETTE. That review, published 11 April 2014, was an incompetent puff piece. So the WALL STREET JOURNAL had to look at its own mistake and decide to protect its new reputation as the most serious national reviewing newspaper (much better now than the NEW YORK TIMES) even if it meant repudiating its own review. Don't look for more reviews by the shamed Shribman in the WSJ! All this speaks very well for the seriousness of the Book Review editor at the WSJ and the integrity of some members of the editorial staff, particularly Rabinowitz herself, who paid attention to what Cohan was doing on his Media Circuit Circus as well as the falsifications in the book. I regard Rabinowitz's review as a turning point in the long-term fate of Cohan's very bad book, but I am optimistic enough to see it as just maybe a turning point in reviewing, the point where the corrupt mainstream media meets the Great Waters of the Amazon. How can I be so optimistic at almost 80? Well, I'll tell you--I'm optimistic after reading so many intelligent one-star reviews of William D. Cohan's THE PRICE OF SILENCE here on Amazon.
I will keep using the image of GREAT WATERS OF THE AMAZON in celebrating the best hope readers have of fighting the ignorance and incompetence of the mainstream media.
What's most encouraging is that the WSJ corrected itself. Someone assigned a review to someone who ought to have been responsible, David M. Shribman, boss at the Pittsburgh POST-GAZETTE. That review, published 11 April 2014, was an incompetent puff piece. So the WALL STREET JOURNAL had to look at its own mistake and decide to protect its new reputation as the most serious national reviewing newspaper (much better now than the NEW YORK TIMES) even if it meant repudiating its own review. Don't look for more reviews by the shamed Shribman in the WSJ! All this speaks very well for the seriousness of the Book Review editor at the WSJ and the integrity of some members of the editorial staff, particularly Rabinowitz herself, who paid attention to what Cohan was doing on his Media Circuit Circus as well as the falsifications in the book. I regard Rabinowitz's review as a turning point in the long-term fate of Cohan's very bad book, but I am optimistic enough to see it as just maybe a turning point in reviewing, the point where the corrupt mainstream media meets the Great Waters of the Amazon. How can I be so optimistic at almost 80? Well, I'll tell you--I'm optimistic after reading so many intelligent one-star reviews of William D. Cohan's THE PRICE OF SILENCE here on Amazon.
I will keep using the image of GREAT WATERS OF THE AMAZON in celebrating the best hope readers have of fighting the ignorance and incompetence of the mainstream media.
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