I read of Hastings’ death and pulled down my copy of The Operators: The Wild & Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan. Fortuitously, it’s just coming out in paperback, if you still need a copy. Here are the first and next-to-last paragraphs from the epilogue, “Someday, This War’s Gonna End”:
The car horns sounded like victory. I could hear them blaring from my apartment. Osama Bin Laden was dead. We’d killed him…
That night, I thought of all the dead, and what adding Bin Laden’s name to the list actually meant… I thought of the thumbs hanging off barbed wire, the pools of blood, like oil on concrete, in small outposts I could barely remember. The memorial services with grown men crying over empty boots. The memorial service with me crying over an empty coffin. The explosions in hotels and government office buildings. I thought of the operators, all of us who’d made our careers off Bin Laden’s horror show: McChrystal, Petraeus, Duncan, Dave, the Flynss, Lamb, Starkey, Hoh, Hicks, the twenty-three Navy SEALs who killed him, and even the president himself, who’d ridden to power on an antiwar tide. I thought of the harsh judgement history was going one day to render on us all…
Max Fisher, at the Washington Post:
…[F]or all his take-no-prisoners bravado, in my all-too-brief encounters with Hastings he was more thoughtful than he let on in public. After I wrote critically about his McChrystal profile, he reached out to offer a kind word and invite me to drinks, a small gesture but one that few writers – perhaps myself included – would have been generous and unguarded enough to make to a critic.
Last year, he offered ten tips on Reddit for aspiring journalists. He was in a better position to offer them than I was, but I can reproduce them for you here. If you’re just entering journalism or considering it, follow his advice, and not just because it’s good, although it is. We could use more like him.
1.) You basically have to be willing to devote your life to journalism if you want to break in. Treat it like it’s medical school or law school.
2.) When interviewing for a job, tell the editor how you love to report. How your passion is gathering information. Do not mention how you want to be a writer, use the word “prose,” or that deep down you have a sinking suspicion you are the next Norman Mailer….9) Mainly you really have to love writing and reporting. Like it’s more important to you than anything else in your life–family, friends, social life, whatever….
Ramalama
Hastings and other journalists like him remind me of when I was an umpire for a girls’ softball league. I was completely unprepared for the vitriol that would rain down upon me at correct but unpopular calls I made.
raven
@Ramalama: I spent 20 years running sports programs. Snake pit isn’t it?
Ramalama
@raven: A holy Hell. And I love sports! My mother worried for me. I did not last long. 20 years? That takes a lot of … gumption, nerve, ballsofsteel, candy corn.
raven
@Ramalama: Nah, I loved it. I officiated high school basketball and always coached in the programs that I was responsible for. I figured if I could not behave the way I asked other coaches I had no business doing it. I finally got out of it but I look back on it fondly. I have some great stories abut how nuts people can be.
JPL
@raven: What time is your appt.
raven
@JPL: Now. I talked with the on-call doc, got another dose and did it so here we go. My fear is that I’m not sufficiently clear but all indication are that I am.
thx
Baud
@raven:
Good luck with everything.
Schlemizel
@raven:
Here to clear sailing for you
Warren Terra
I’ll repeat what I said in the previous Hastings thread: a terrible loss, such a brilliant young man, with so much still to offer. A tragedy for his friends and family, who already suffered the violent loss of his fiance some years ago.
But from the description of the crash, there is more to his death that we don’t know. And, no, I’m not suggesting any conspiracies: I’m just saying he was reportedly on the roads at a bit past 4 in the morning, driving way over the speed limit and recklessly. I don’t know why: was he drunk? Drugged? Depressed? Paranoid, for good reason or ill? Just the world’s worst driver?
In any case, it’s a small mercy he didn’t manage to kill anyone else on his way out. An ignoble end to such a promising young man.
pamelabrown53
@Warren Terra:
I have to wonder if maybe he was suffering from PTSD and was drinking heavily to self-medicate. Anyway, you’re right it was a tragic end to such a promising young man.
Emma
@Warren Terra: And we might never know, if the fire burned away the evidence. Conspiracy theories are already flying.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Emma: I’d imagine someone somewhere saw him if he was out “using.” Also, someone asked if you could do toxicology reports on a badly burned body. I have no idea, but I would imagine an autopsy would be performed.
noodler
Mike was a good friend of mine, and he had so many stories left to write. And Damn, that McChrystal piece was good. Thing about it is, he was only supposed to be with him for a day or so, but when the Icelandic volcano blew, and European Air Travel slowed to a crawl, he got to tag along a bit longer, and that’s where many of the salacious details of the story emerged. He will be missed.
Ted & Hellen
Strangely, journalists with their noses firmly up the bung hole of the MIC, such as Laura Logan, rarely seem to die in fiery car crashes in which the engines are thrown sixty yards from the car. I’m sure she’ll enjoy a long and lucrative career inside the beltway.
aimai
@Ted & Hellen: Jeebus, could your hatred for women in general be any cruder? Its Lara Logan and, of course, famously, she was sexually assaulted covering the news in Egypt. Did you really have to intrude your psychosexual drama in this post about the death of someone completely unrelated to the person you are attacking? This poor guy died when he was young, after seeing and writing about way too much war, alone because his fiancee had already been killed in Iraq. If you can’t say anything meaningful about that because its too sad and human for you could you just try ,for once, toSTFU?
Comrade Mary
AL, that MSNBC is severely broken on the mobile version of the site (iPhone running both Safari and Chrome). The video smears out to some melange of pastels and totally hides all the text written below.
RIP Hastings. That was a horrible way to die.
SmallAxe
Man, sad to see him go. One of the only true journalists left that had no fear of speaking truth to power. Was just working my way through Operators and enjoyed his combative TV appearances as well. May he RIP and my condolences to his good friends and family. @aimai FYI he was married to Elise Jordan (one of Condi’s former press agents) post tragedy of his first fiance.
Mnemosyne
Here’s a link to a Google map where you can see a street view of the intersection — the crash happened about half a block south of Melrose. The sudden transition from wide-open street to narrow lanes with an island in the middle has caught me by surprise a few times when I’ve been driving at normal speed in broad daylight, so I’m not surprised that someone driving at high speed at 4:00 a.m. would get into trouble. Very sad ending to his story.
Silver
@aimai: Lara Logan being raped in Tahir Square is an odd excuse for her defense of McChrystal. But don’t let actual events get in the way of your righteous indignation against your (admittedly very deserving) target.
sherparick
@Ted & Hellen: Very poor judgement on your part in your choice of comparison, especially since Lara Logan was raped and almost killed in Egypt in 2012 while covering the Egyptian Revolution, so she is not your typical neo-conservative. I think it unfortunate,where her politics has evolved, especially since her affair and marriage with a blackwork contractor is unfortunate, and her criticism of Hastings was wrong. But she is not your typical Village neo-conservative and I suspect suffers a fair amoutn of PTSD herselph.
However, if Matt Tabbai, Glenn Greenwald, and Jeremy Scahill have unfortunate accidents over the next year, I think I will also put on the tinfoil hat.
Augie
God, I hate to make this some kind of wretched narcissistic lament (Hastings death is all about ME), but I can’t help but feel increasingly pained by his death because I essentially accused him of being a “Benghazi-truther” on twitter. Which he actually took the time to respond to! (Unconvincingly, I might add). But still, the massive good he did to the world (and to the world of journalism) vastly outweighs what I considered to be a disproportionate attention to a made-up scandal. For that reason, I can’t help feeling like a God damn asshole.
pat
How fast does a Mercedes have to be travelling for it to burst into flames and the engine to be thrown several yards? I’d expect those cars to be sturdier than that.
BobS
@pat: Me too. A one car accident at 5AM with an impaired Hastings hitting a tree and having his Mercedes burst into flames is certainly plausible. On the other hand, the guy made some enemies who are probably capable of staging a murder to appear like just such an accident. While I think there’s a zero percent chance that the administration is involved, living in a country in which who-knows-how-many special ops soldiers and intelligence agents are trained in assassination skills- one or more of them with a bug up their ass specifically about the McChrystal story- I also think that at least some scepticism is wise.
pat
I’m not trying to fuel scepticism here, but it is an unusual accident, IMHO. Not what one expects to happen to a Benz.
I hope there is some sort of police report. They can usually estimate how fast the car was going. Also, I suppose if it hit at just the right angle the car might have been stopped but the engine kept going….. Just wierd, it seems to me. Has there been more information in the local papers?
Trooptrap Tripetrope
I live just a short walk away from where Hastings died. There are still news vans from local TV stations parked nearby.
While I agree that his death is a tragic loss, I can’t rule out the controversial conspiracy theory that he died because he was driving recklessly at an absurdly high speed for no justifiable reason. Even smart people do some incredibly stupid things behind the wheel. I see it all the time around here.
pat
that he died because he was driving recklessly at an absurdly high speed for no justifiable reason
That’s what I think is the most logical. But man, was he going FAST!
Harold Samson
@sherparick:
If Matt Tabbai, Glenn Greenwald, or Jeremy Scahill had writen any stories that directly caused the downfall of a military Master of the Universe, your comment might make sense.
Revenge. Is it a conspiracy theory? Or just something that actually happens?
Mnemosyne
@pat:
Here’s a link to a video of the crash aftermath (the picture at the top is a freeze frame, so you need to scroll down to see the actual footage). I’ve lived in Los Angeles for over 20 years and it is EXTREMELY plausible that someone traveling at high speed would crash like that, because it happens at that intersection all the time. You’re traveling down a wide, four-lane street that suddenly splits in half with a median in the middle that has trees and grass on it, and if you don’t know to watch for the switch, you could easily lose control of your car, particularly if you’re speeding.
And though I know it will bring Timmy back down on my head again, Hastings frequently talked about his struggles with alcohol, so it’s also not implausible that he was drunk, unfortunately, especially given the speed he was going and the hour of the morning it was.
ETA: Basically, people use Highland Avenue as a freeway alternative and often drive at freeway speeds (or more), even in the middle of the day. And if Hastings wasn’t familiar with the area, it would have looked like he would have a wide-open street all the way to Wilshire.
pat
I don’t doubt that it happened that way, I’m just surprised that a car like that would end up like a Pinto. As I said, he must have really floored it. And at that hour, if alcohol wasn’t involved I would be shocked.
pat
@Mnemosyne:
OMG, I just watched the video. I bet from the distance the engine traveled after the car stopped, the accident reconstuctors can estimate how fast he was going.
What a tragedy. What a senseless loss of a young life.