"KNOW IT ALL" Jill Lepore, who publishes so very much more than anyone could think carefully about before going into print, is at it again in the September 23, 2019 THE NEW YORKER. Her article on "Edward Snowden and the Culture of whistle-blowing" could not have had better timing from my point of view, or perhaps worse timing from hers. Up front, I declare my credentials: back in the early 1970s I blew the whistle on Fredson Bowers at the Center for Editions of American Authors and ended up with my textual career on the CEAA destroyed and myself blackballed by Bowers from the Center for Scholarly Editions (something he falsely denied). I am a whistle-blower partisan. Jill Lepore is not.
Whistle-blowing, she says, "is a contentious subject, especially when it concerns intelligence operations." "People who consider Snowden a traitor argue that his disclosures set U. S. counterterrorism efforts back by years, and endangered American intelligence agents and their sources all over the world." She goes on: "The patriot-traitor divide should be less a matter of opinion than a matter of law, but the law here is murky." "Whistle-blowing, at least by that breezy name, is on the rise." Here Lapore's use of "that breezy name" strikes me as pretty contemptible--absolutely contemptuous of those who have been sacrificed for their whistle-blowing. She goes on: "the presence of a lot of whistle-blowing--an age of whistle-blowing--isn't a sign of a thriving democracy or a healthy business world; it's a sign of a weak democracy and a sick business world." DUH. DUH.
After posting this I checked on this North Carolina native and of course he is a cousin of mine, not really close but there in red are the the three whistle-blower segments.
Whistle-blowing, she says, "is a contentious subject, especially when it concerns intelligence operations." "People who consider Snowden a traitor argue that his disclosures set U. S. counterterrorism efforts back by years, and endangered American intelligence agents and their sources all over the world." She goes on: "The patriot-traitor divide should be less a matter of opinion than a matter of law, but the law here is murky." "Whistle-blowing, at least by that breezy name, is on the rise." Here Lapore's use of "that breezy name" strikes me as pretty contemptible--absolutely contemptuous of those who have been sacrificed for their whistle-blowing. She goes on: "the presence of a lot of whistle-blowing--an age of whistle-blowing--isn't a sign of a thriving democracy or a healthy business world; it's a sign of a weak democracy and a sick business world." DUH. DUH.
After posting this I checked on this North Carolina native and of course he is a cousin of mine, not really close but there in red are the the three whistle-blower segments.
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